Harris steps out on Israel as she navigates Biden and Netanyahu

(CNN) — Four days into the most consequential week of Kamala Harris’ political life, she confronted the most fraught foreign policy issue facing the country by looking directly into the eyes of an Israeli prime minister who decided not to even give her a passing name check in his address to Congress Wednesday afternoon.

Up until now, Harris has been defined by working for President Joe Biden, arguably the most explicitly pro-Israel American president, even though his relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu has frayed.

But now that she’s the presumptive Democratic nominee, Harris has to define what kind of president she wants to be — on this and every other issue, while Biden remains at the White House trying to nail down a Israel-Hamas ceasefire deal and with some around him thinking that restarting the normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia could be a top legacy project for the remainder of his term.

Harris didn’t preside over Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday, instead choosing to stick with a pre-scheduled trip to a sorority event in Indiana, as antisemitic protests erupted near the US Capitol where fences were put up like in the days following the January 6, 2021, riot.

But after her meeting with the prime minister Thursday afternoon, she laid out what she wanted to be a very clear position, speaking to reporters in a way she has not done after previous meetings with foreign leaders.

Harris started by recalling a history of connection to Israel that dates back to her childhood collecting money to plant trees there, and she ran through her work in the administration. She has, she said, “unwavering commitment” to Israel, its right to exist and its security.

She called Hamas a “brutal terrorist organization.” She read the names of the American hostages still being held, and those who have died in captivity.

“Israel has a right to defend itself,” she said, “and how it does so matters.”

And the toll on the Palestinians matters, she said, as she called for everyone involved to push for a hostage release and ceasefire deal, and eventually, a two-state solution.

“What has happened in Gaza over the last nine months is devastating,” she said. “We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies, we cannot allow ourselves to be numb. And I will not be silent.”

Harris is trying to clear up uncertainty about her position toward Israel, which has left even people who have talked in depth with her about it responding with pauses when CNN has asked whether, for example, she would have done the same as Biden in sending some, and halting other, weapons to Israel.

And her remarks follow a statement on Thursday condemning the protests around Netanyahu’s speech in Washington as unequivocal: “I condemn any individuals associating with the brutal terrorist organization Hamas, which has vowed to annihilate the State of Israel and kill Jews.”

Change is coming, predicted Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Foreign Relations Committee who has been critical of Israel in this period and observed Harris’ foreign policy thinking when they served on the Senate Intelligence Committee together.

“President Biden brought to the White House a lifelong relationship with Bibi Netanyahu and a very mature history on the US-Israel relationship,” Murphy said. “This certainly seems to be a moment for a reconsideration of the relationship and for some fresh thinking on how to approach an Israeli political landscape that is lurching further to the right than we could have ever imagined.”

Murphy added, “I think we would all benefit from getting a fresh set of eyes on this conflict and the way that the United States could try to create a viable Palestinian state.”

A question of considering herself a Zionist

But Harris has so many different pulls on her that an aide did not give a direct answer when asked if the vice president considers herself a Zionist — a term Biden again proudly embraced just weeks ago.

That’s a reflection of how much Zionism, which for a century meant believing in the right of a Jewish homeland to exist, has been co-opted by anti-Israel forces, who argue it has come to symbolize colonialism and the killing of Palestinians.

It’s also a reflection of the difference in thinking and rhetoric between the Democratic Party’s new standard bearer and a president who has made allegiance with Israel one of his defining positions for 50 years in national politics.

“The vice president has been a strong and longstanding supporter of Israel as a secure, democratic homeland for the Jewish people. She will always ensure Israel can defend itself from threats, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias such as Hamas and Hezbollah,” said Harris’ deputy national security adviser Dean Lieberman when asked if she considers herself a Zionist. “One can criticize specific policies of the government of Israel while still strongly supporting the state of Israel and the people of Israel. And that support for Israel in no way conflicts with the vice president’s strong view that the Palestinian people deserve freedom, dignity, and self-determination.”

Many close observers see a sign of where Harris’ inclinations are in her choice of Phil Gordon to be her national security adviser. A former Obama administration official, Gordon in 2016 co-authored a report for the Council on Foreign Relations, which, seven years before the October 7 attacks, begins: “The U.S. relationship with Israel is in trouble.” The root of the problem, the authors wrote, is that while America and Israel used to agree on the threats to Israeli security and what to do about them, now those threats have become broader and more complicated, and the opinions about how to tackle them have too.

Gordon has traveled to the region since October 7, holding meetings separate from the ones that Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others have been having.

One official who has been deeply involved with Biden administration policy on Israel said that Harris’ differences will actually be key to keeping the overall relationship from getting worse.

“She’ll be able to communicate with another generation. She has the ability, because of who she is, to be enormously helpful to us who care deeply about Israel and how we’re going to get through this disaster,” said the official. “She is the future of the relationship between us and Israel.”

Substance versus rhetoric

Aides and allies who have talked with Harris – from her Senate days up through her being on the line for nearly every conversation Biden has had with Netanyahu – insist that substantively there is little daylight between her and the president.

The difference is rhetorical, but that difference, they say, is very important. She has been concerned since right after October 7 both about expressing empathy for the Palestinians and about thinking of what the political reverberations could be back home from the way Biden hugged Netanyahu close, figuratively and then literally on his trip to Israel two weeks after the attacks.

It’s the explanation, aides involved tell CNN, for the fury that erupted from the West Wing in March about the way Harris punctuated prepared text that both decried the “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and thoroughly condemned Hamas. She built up to her reading of “there must be an immediate ceasefire,” taking a long pause, then adding the rest of the approved sentence: “for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table.”

Many Democrats outside the White House are making optimistic guesses that she aligns with them.

“Like most Americans, the vice president falls within the pro-Israel mainstream—somewhere between the ‘Greater Israel’ far right and the ‘Free Palestine’ far left,” said Rep. Ritchie Torres, a New York Democrat who has positioned himself as one of the most stalwart defenders of Israel. He added that he expects that position to translate into being for a two-state solution, keeping up security aid and Iron Dome funding for Israel and supporting the Trump administration-negotiated Abraham Accords.

Complicated politics remain

For all the Biden speeches that had to be paused as protesters were removed from the rooms, Harris’ first week effectively on the top of the ticket hasn’t seen such an interruption so far. That doesn’t mean the politics of this are settled.

Abbas Alawieh – a delegate who won a spot at the Democratic convention because he represents some of the 730,000 people who voted “uncommitted” in Michigan’s Democratic primary – told CNN on Wednesday that he remains “very curious how she will differentiate a Gaza policy.”

Alawieh said he’s hopeful. At the very least, he thinks that the party under Harris’ leadership will no longer make him and others aligned with him feel “neglected, ignored—and in some cases maligned,” as happened on a Tuesday night call of state delegates when another person told him to shut up when he tried to speak.

The Michigan Democratic Party chair condemned that behavior in an email to delegates.

Meanwhile, the Republican Jewish Coalition released an online ad on Wednesday repeatedly referring to Harris by a mispronounced version of her first name and falsely claimed that she “sided with the pro-Hamas demonstrators” and snubbed Israel by not attending Netanyahu’s speech to Congress.

Trump also accused her of this, saying at a rally in North Carolina that “she’s running away from Israel” and “totally against the Jewish people” for not going. Neither the ad nor the candidate mentioned that Ohio Sen. JD Vance also skipped the speech, though he had no other public schedule, with campaign spokesman Jason Miller telling CNN he “has duties to fulfill as the Republican nominee for vice president.”

Emhoff is key

Harris’ connection to these issues is more than policy. It touches second gentleman Doug Emhoff’s daughter, who has been noticeably active on pro-Palestinian causes since October 7. It has come up at Seder dinners at the Naval Observatory. And more than anything, it is rooted in the second gentleman.

Emhoff has talked at length about feeling a sense of duty, not just when he became the first Jewish spouse of a vice president or president, and channeling that into helping develop the administration’s strategy to combat antisemitism. He’s also talked about how much pain he felt personally after October 7.

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, recalled a trip to Jerusalem she took with Harris and Emhoff in 2017, when she was working in the California Democrat’s new Senate office. She still has photos of Harris taking out a traditional kippah head covering for Emhoff when they visited the Western Wall.

Soifer said she is satisfied that Harris remains committed to Israel — even after being read the indirect answer about whether the vice president considers herself a Zionist.

And Emhoff has stressed that even as this campaign picks up, he is going to keep talking about Judaism and Israel, as he has throughout this administration with his wife’s encouragement.

On a quickly organized Zoom call Wednesday afternoon hosted by the Jewish Democratic Council of America and Jewish Women for Kamala, where he made made a surprise appearance, Emhoff started by reiterating Harris’ unwavering support for Israel.

But he also told the story of not being with his wife on Sunday when the news broke about Biden exiting the race, dropping a little Yiddish by blaming “this flight mishigas” that had him stuck in Los Angeles.

Then he made a promise to the 1,700 people listening: “I’m going to keep living openly like a Jew and maybe there will be a mezuzah on the White House, like there is on the vice president’s residence.”

This story has been updated with Harris’ remarks following her meeting with Netanyahu.

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