If there is one reliable political rule, it is: “Personnel is policy.” In a US presidential election, a candidate’s appointments to important campaign posts are the most accurate indicators of how an administration will govern. Candidates may spew sound-bites reflecting all manner of half-baked proposals during a campaign, but the appointed executive staff fleshes out those policies and brings them to life post-election.
These appointees are particularly influential where a candidate, like Kamala Harris, is no master of policy detail. Contrast Harris with, say, policy wonk Hillary Clinton, and Harris’s policy shortcomings appear stark. Thus, Harris’s advisers will have an outsized role in shaping her administration’s policies.
Harris’s own Israel-related record, statements, political allies, and vice-presidential choice are already unsettling, and her party’s unmistakable de-Zionization is already problematic; but her campaign appointments have ominous implications for a Harris-administration US-Israel relationship.
However she now repackages herself, Harris has a decidedly left-leaning ideological orientation: support for government-imposed price controls, reparations for slavery two centuries ago, and lukewarm support of Israel. Her impeccable progressive credentials are reinforced by her Senate voting record: according to nonpartisan GovTrack.us, she was the single-most left-wing senator – to the left of socialist Bernie Sanders. On the political landscape, that is “squad” territory.
But while she may assert hazy Israel-related platitudes along with her policy reversals calibrated to sound more palatably centrist, her newly appointed aides and Mideast advisers are not similarly coy about their own Israel orientation. Theirs is clear, and it is menacing.
The newest appointment
Brenda Abdelall is Harris’s newest appointment to lead outreach to the Arab-American community. She is an Egyptian-American lawyer and Muslim rights activist and recent senior counselor to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro (“The Border is Secure”) Mayorkas.
“The Zionists have a strong voice in American politics; I would say they’re controlling a lot of it,” Abdelall said at a convention of the American Muslim Council, a Muslim Brotherhood-supported organization founded by a terror facilitator on the FBI’s 10 Most Wanted list. Notably, Hillary Clinton refused AMC campaign donations; more notably, Abdelall’s mother founded the Ann Arbor, Michigan, AMC chapter.
Abdelall’s specific role, as described in the Arab community press, is “to woo Arab-American voters outraged by the Biden administration’s unbridled support for Israel’s genocidal war in besieged Gaza.” Just what, precisely, will be the substance of such wooing?
The Harris campaign had just hired Nasrina Bargzie to also “lead outreach to Muslim and Arab voters.” Bargzie has been an advisor to Harris on “Muslim, Arab, and Gaza-related issues.” Her tenure corresponds with Harris’s increased criticism of Israel, including statements implying that Israel “intentionally” targets civilians.
Bargzie has worked closely with Hamas-affiliated CAIR and vocally defends Students for Justice in Palestine, the radical campus thugs making Jewish university life intolerable and celebrating Hamas terror. (SJP was recently banned from several campuses).
While Jewish students warily navigate “anti-Zionist” campuses, Bargzie has argued that even investigations of SJP hostilities violate free speech, and that complaining Jewish students and organizations engage in “organized legal bullying.” She was one of the attorneys who caused the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to close three investigations against University of California schools regarding whether Palestinian rights activism created an antisemitic climate. In other words, she has worked to block efforts to combat campus antisemitism and protect Jewish students from hostile environments.
Harris might have balanced those appointments with her choice of director of Jewish outreach. Alas, quite the opposite; she appointed Ilan Goldenberg, who, on the Zionist spectrum, falls on J Street’s left-most fringe. His history is of zealous advocacy on behalf of Iran’s Islamist regime and the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear agreement).
Plus, he is the architect of the administration’s pernicious sanctions on growing numbers of Jewish Israelis – including US citizens – whose political persuasions are at odds with the administration’s. Under the guise of combating “settler violence,” the sanctions have metastasized to entwine non-settlers and non-violence. Sanctions summarily imposed with no due process against Jews. “Outreach,” indeed.
More worrisome, such campaign liaison/outreach positions are usually filled by junior staffers who maintain contact with community organizations and federations. But Harris’s appointments are senior level and already steer policy. They are in line for administration policymaking positions.
Others in Harris’s shadow administration cause further concern. Her national security advisor, Phil Gordon, an advocate of rapprochement with the Islamic Republic, has worked so closely with pro-ayatollah lobbyists and likely Iranian agents that he is the subject of a congressional investigation.
Harris’s presumed director of national intelligence is Palestinian-American Maher Bitar, a former leader of Students for Justice in Palestine who worked for UNRWA and for the rabidly anti-Israel Foundation for Middle East Peace.
In any normal year, people with such radical records wouldn’t be allowed near a presidential campaign, let alone given senior appointments, but radical anti-Zionism is unremarkable in today’s Democratic Party. Whatever one’s usual party preference or feelings about the Republican nominee, it is crucial for Israel sympathizers to face this election alert to developing dangers and be appropriately alarmed.
The writer is an American attorney and political commentator living in Israel. He serves as counsel to Republicans Overseas Israel.