Kamala Harris is regularly bashed for her unwillingness to answer tough questions. But as she has done since the beginning of Israel’s war with Hamas – a war that began a year ago this week – Harris has never missed an opportunity to be tough on Israel.
Case in point: In a recent interview on a special edition of CBS’s 60 Minutes, host Bill Whitaker asked the vice president whether “we have a close ally in [Israeli] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.” In an answer uncharacteristically void of flinch, Harris retorted clearly and directly: “I think the better question is do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people – and the answer is yes.”
Good stuff, at least it sounds that way. But – coming mere days after Tim Walz, Harris’s vice presidential pick, committed that “Muslims will be engaged in… and serve side by side” with a Harris-Walz administration – Harris’s Netanyahu diss only enhances, if not confirms, her oily approach to relations with Jerusalem.
Her comments, though shocking, got lost in the clamor surrounding the dual hurricanes that hit the southeast US last week. But they should not be ignored. Indeed, her cryptic answer around Israeli-US allyship underscores the core problem with just about everything surrounding the Harris-Walz platform: It’s just a mess of great unknowns. For Israel, such unknowns have the potential to get Israelis killed.
In the case of Israel, Harris’s reasoning, while sounding perfectly acceptable and palatable, belies the fact that people do not make policy, leaders do. So any potential policy around Israel, and its multi-front battles with Islamists, would be negotiated with Israel’s leaders, not its citizens. Leaders like Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. That’s how diplomacy and statecraft work, even if Harris has so little experience in either she fails to understand this principle.
Harris's answer sends a clear message
The earnestness of her answer is nothing less than frightening. For once she’s not cackling, and we’re grateful. Instead, she’s sending a clear message that she, the White House, and her future administration are not in lockstep with Netanyahu and do not believe he is a fundamental American ally – or perhaps, even, that his entire leadership is legitimate.
But why not? While Netanyahu may face intense criticism at home, both from ultra-right government factions and wide swaths of the Israeli public, such opposition is part of the democratic process that fundamentally aligns Israel with the US.
The past year since October 7, while war-filled and bloody, is rooted in the same type of good-vs-evil playbook that saw the US invade Afghanistan following our own terrorist horrors on September 11, 2001. There is nothing Israel is doing in Gaza that the US has not done itself, albeit on a far grander scale.
Israel’s ambitions in Lebanon, though ongoing and deadly, actually involve Israel cleaning up the left-overs from America’s own war-on-terror failures, most notably, the death in an Israeli strike of Hezbollah leader Ibrahim Akil, a key architect in the bombing of the US embassy in Beirut in 1983 that killed scores. America even offered a $7 million reward for his arrest, money which might now be used to support Israeli victims of Hezbollah terror attacks.
Despite the destruction in Beirut, the erosion of Hezbollah’s military might be the type of win for the West (and world) that perhaps only leaders more seasoned than Harris are capable of truly appreciating.
THEN THERE is Iran, whose economy has doubled during the Biden-Harris administration despite the layers of sanctions intended to choke its nuclear ambitions. Today, as Iran executes record numbers of civilians, nuclear readiness is mere weeks away thanks to the Biden-Harris reversal of president Donald Trump’s “maximum pressure” strategy.
Although still a work in progress, Netanyahu’s bad-ass engagement with Tehran is proving effective: No Israeli casualties in last week’s Iran barrage, no major escalation from Iran’s proxies in Yemen, Lebanon, and Gaza. And a clear demonstration that Tehran’s defensive capabilities, particularly its aged air force, are weakened, possibly beyond repair (we can only hope so).
And still, Harris refuses to confirm whether Netanyahu is an ally of America? What then, madame vice president, does allyship look like? Indeed, Harris’s interview this past Monday revealed far more about her campaign and potential White House than anything about Netanyahu. After all, he’s held senior-level political positions for decades; Harris, not so much.
Like him or not, the only surprises coming out of Netanyahu’s war cabinet are the Bond-worthy, strategic triumphs, such as Israel’s recent mass-pager explosions in Lebanon and Syria. Who knows what a Harris White House might have in store for Israel, if not the entire Middle East? Most worrisome is Harris’s use of the word “people” to describe her approach to policy-building.
People are fickle, people are malleable, and often people don’t know what they want. That is the job of a president, to anticipate and excel beyond their citizenry to ensure their nation’s long-term well-being. Allyship with Israel, including intelligence sharing and adequate arms shipments, is what’s best for the US in the long term. I shudder to think Kamala Harris might believe otherwise.
The writer is an editor and columnist at the New York Post and an adjunct fellow at The Tel Aviv Institute.