Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris said in a CNN interview that aired late Thursday that, if elected in November, she would not change the Biden administration's policy of steadfast military support for Israel, rejecting widespread calls for an arms embargo to help bring about an end to the devastating assault on Gaza.
"I'm unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel's defense and its ability to defend itself, and that's not gonna change," said Harris, recounting the horrors of the Hamas-led October 7 attack. "Israel had a right, has a right to defend itself."
Acknowledging that "far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed," the vice president responded "no" when CNN's Dana Bash asked whether a Harris administration would implement a "change in policy in terms of arms" and withhold even "some" weapons shipments to Israel.
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The CNN appearance marked Harris' first major television interview since becoming the Democratic nominee, a change at the top of the party's 2024 ticket that Palestinian rights advocates hoped would open the door to a fundamental shift away from the Biden administration's Gaza policy—which has been to arm Israel to the teeth while tepidly pressuring the country's far-right government to protect civilians and agree to a cease-fire deal.
"The vice president's statement was morally indefensible and politically shortsighted as the lack of American consequences for Netanyahu's horrific assault on Palestinian civilians in Gaza has emboldened Israel to now invade the West Bank," Layla Elabed and Abbas Alawieh, co-founders of the Uncommitted National Movement, said in a statement Friday. "Vice President Harris must turn the page from one of the most glaring foreign policy failures of our time by aligning with the American majority that opposes sending weapons to Israel's assault on Gaza."
Despite Bash's characterization of calls for an arms embargo against Israel as a demand from the "progressive left," survey data has shown that a majority of U.S. voters oppose sending weapons to Israel as it commits appalling war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank. Since October, the U.S. has sent Israel over 50,000 tons of weaponry.
"Harris is saying she will reject 77% of Democrats, 61% of Americans, international law, domestic U.S. law, and basic humanity to continue the flow of weapons to Israel while it stands accused of genocide," Middle East scholar Assal Rad said late Thursday, citing the results of a recent CBS News/YouGov poll.
A separate poll commissioned by the IMEU Policy Project suggested that voters in key U.S. battleground states would be more likely to vote for a Democratic nominee who pledged to withhold weapons from Israel.
The CNN interview aired as Israel continued its multi-day assault on the West Bank, a deadly military campaign that the head of the United Nations and others warned could become an extension of the nearly 11-month war on Gaza, during which Israel has killed more than 40,600 people, displaced 90% of the enclave's population, and sparked famine across the territory.
On Thursday, Israel's military killed five Palestinians in an airstrike on a vehicle convoy of the Washington, D.C.-based American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA) agency. It is a violation of U.S. law to provide weaponry to a country obstructing the delivery of American humanitarian aid.
The attack on the ANERA convoy came a day after Israeli forces opened fire on a World Food Program vehicle, forcing the U.N. agency to suspend employee movement in Gaza.
Harris' refusal to express openness to an arms embargo against a military that has repeatedly targeted aid and healthcare workers, journalists, and other civilians sparked immediate backlash from Palestinian rights advocates, including at least one member of Congress.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), the only Palestinian American in the U.S. Congress, said Harris' answer signaled that "war crimes and genocide will continue."
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, called the Democratic nominee's answer on Gaza "terrible" and "out of touch with voters, especially those in key battleground states who Harris needs to feel motivated to go to the polls."
"Poll after poll after poll tells us that a majority of Americans and even more key Democratic constituencies want the US to stop giving arms to Israel that it’s using to kill and displace Palestinian families," Lieberman added. "Not sending bombs to Israel is politically expedient and—quite obviously!—the morally correct thing to do for anyone reading the daily headlines of Israeli massacres being done with U.S. weapons."
In an op-ed for Common Dreams on Friday, RootsAction national director Norman Solomon warned that "time is running out for Kamala Harris to distance herself from U.S. policies that enable Israel to continue with mass murder and genocide in Gaza."
"Polling shows that a pivot toward moral decency would improve her chances of defeating Donald Trump," Solomon wrote. "But during her CNN interview Thursday night, Harris remained in lockstep with President Biden's unconditional arming of Israel."
This story has been updated to include a statement from the Uncommitted National Movement.
