Cracking Kamala Harris' doublespeak Israel code

Kamala Harris' Israel policy sounds reasonable but is carefully worded code for leftist and Islamist ears.

The Democratic Party’s brains trust has been busy turning vice president and presidential candidate Kamala Harris into a serious candidate with grown-up positions on everything from fracking and immigration to Middle East politics.

She is adopting more centrist positions to become more electable and is running on a platform of continuing President Joe Biden’s Israel policies.

In one sense, that is reassuring. There were fears she would be less supportive of Israel because she is more from her party’s Left than President Joe Biden. She has now said that Israel has a right to defend itself and that, as president, she would keep exporting weapons to Israel to ensure it has the means to do so.

Harris’ comrades in the liberal media are fawning over her stating her support for Israel, saying that she has dispelled fears that she would be less supportive of the Jewish state.

Yet, it has been her own actions and language that created these fears in the first place, such as her snubbing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to US Congress, and her vowing not to “stay silent” about Palestinian suffering in Gaza.

What is less reassuring is that we do not know how committed she is to Israel’s security, especially as she changes policies like an octopus changes colors. Also, Biden’s policies, which she has vowed to continue, are confused, contradictory, and misguided. They are less policy and more a wish list of mutually incompatible ideas, based on flawed premises, which have failed, and will do so again.

Here are some of her quotes.

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 organization called Hamas caused on October 7, including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.

At the same time, what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking. President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.

The first paragraph sounds reasonable, but recognizing Hamas’ evil and what Israel experienced on October 7 really should be a minimal requirement for anyone with even a rudimentary moral sextant.

It is the second paragraph that bears particular scrutiny. It has clearly been written to make her position appear “balanced” in a sop to her party’s more left-wing members and the anti-Israel kooks who inhabit much of the Democrat voter base.