Kamala Harris's speech killed any hope she would end the Gaza genocide
23 August 2024
The Democratic hopeful has presented herself as ready
to continue with Joe Biden's unconditional support for Israel's war of
extermination
Any hope that Kamala Harris would condition or suspend
arms and funding for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza was killed by her speech at the Democratic
National Convention (DNC) on Thursday.
In front of an excitable crowd chanting “USA, USA,
USA”, Harris deployed familiar language: “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend
itself, and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.
Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that a terrorist
organisation called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual
violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”
The references to sexual violence and the festival
massacre have long been deployed as a way to legitimise Israel’s war on the
whole of Gaza, which has continued for nearly a year now.
Meanwhile, Palestinians are raped in Israeli prisons, and Israeli politicians
openly say this is justified. Harris, like most US leaders, had nothing to say about it.
She described what has happened in Gaza over the past
11 months as “devastating”, “desperate” and “heartbreaking”. In the lexicon of
pro-war liberal politicians, these words are an empty, meaningless facsimile of
empathy.
The words that peace campaigners were looking for were
wholly absent: nothing about Israel’s vast catalogue of war crimes - not even a
swipe at war-criminal-in-chief Benjamin Netanyahu, who, after all, wants Donald
Trump back in the White House. Whichever pro-war candidate is victorious in
November, the Israeli leader wins.
Palestinian voices excluded
When Joe Biden announced last month that he would not
be standing for re-election as a Democratic candidate, there was a sigh of
relief among those who had watched the avowedly Zionist president supply Israel
with billions of dollars in lethal aid from day one of the war. Could a new
candidate potentially bring an end to Israel’s campaign, which has killed at
least 40,000
Palestinians?
The hope was that Harris, despite her history as a
pro-Israel centrist Democrat and loyal vice president to Biden, would change
the tenor of US policy on Gaza and put some kind of pressure on Netanyahu to
come to a ceasefire deal.
The Democratic convention in Chicago has been the
scene of many pro-Palestine protests, with participants saying they could not
vote for Harris as long as the Biden-Harris administration continued to supply
weapons for Israel’s genocide.
On Monday, progressive Congresswoman Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez was given the job of rallying the left of the Democratic Party to
support Harris. In her DNC speech, she said Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a
ceasefire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home”. It left many wondering what
had happened to the fearless critic of the Democratic establishment elected in
2018.
Later, she FaceTimed into a protest by the Uncommitted movement
outside the convention hall, pledging her support.
Other progressive Congress members, such as Ilhan
Omar, had the courage to join in solidarity with pro-Palestine delegates. She said this
week: “If you really wanted a ceasefire, you’d just stop sending the weapons.
It is that simple.”
The Uncommitted movement had modestly called for the
DNC to include a Palestinian speaker on the main stage, but the DNC refused.
The movement ended its
sit-in on Thursday
as the convention wrapped up.
A day earlier, the parents of American-Israeli
hostage Hersh
Goldberg-Polin, who
was seized during the 7 October Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, spoke on
the DNC stage, pleading for the release of those held captive in Gaza. No
Palestinian speaker was invited.
“The least they could do is allow a Palestinian
American, or somebody who is directly affected by this war, to speak from the
main stage of the DNC,” Rhode Island delegate June Rose said, according to
a report from
ABC.
At the same time, some activists and voters have
raised issues with the fact that the Uncommitted movement has demanded a
ceasefire and arms embargo, but continues to wed itself unconditionally to the
Democratic Party and Harris in this election. As a result, it is argued, they
are conceding all leverage that could be used to show the party that it can’t
rely on the 730,000
Uncommitted votes come
November.
“It doesn’t give people another alternative, something
… beyond the two parties that would actually lead to real change in Gaza,”
union worker Jared Houston told Middle East Eye outside the convention, adding
that the pro-Palestine movement should “pressure those delegates who have these
beliefs to leave the Democratic Party”.
War footing
Harris’s speech, meanwhile, offered bromides to the
American “middle class” - that imprecise category that signals to aspirational
and hardworking voters that she is one of them.
“The middle class is where I come from,” she said. “My mother kept a strict budget. We lived within our
means. Yet, we wanted for little.”
Signal to the markets: no generous spending for social
programmes. No self-respecting neoliberal Democrat ever mentions the
unmentionable: the working-class Americans living paycheque to paycheque.
As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always
has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” she thundered,
later adding: “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to
defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed
terrorists.”
That is the threat behind the mass of US forces deployed to the Mediterranean in preparation for an
Iranian-Hezbollah response to the recent twin Israeli assassinations in Beirut
and Tehran.
Harris had little to say about Palestine, other than
the usual warm words that Palestinians have long ago thrown into the dustbin of
false promises from US diplomats. She and Biden were working to ensure that
“Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and
the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, security, freedom
and self-determination”.
To use the word “freedom” in relation to Palestine may
be daring in US political terms, with the watchful eye of the Israel lobby
close at hand. But it is a cast-iron rule of US policy that the first clause in
such sentences will always be “Israel is secure”, which means only one thing
for Palestinians: further occupation, ethnic cleansing and endless war.
Harris has made it as clear as she can that her
presidency, if she wins, will be a continuation of Biden’s: war, war and war.
Azad Essa contributed reporting from the DNC in
Chicago.
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