Kamala Harris: Campus protesters over Gaza war ‘showing what human emotion should be’
Kamala Harris: Campus protesters over Gaza war ‘showing what human emotion should be’
US vice president also says she’s rejecting some of the talk of university demonstrators, even as she was central to one that just focused on her as a possible replacement for Biden to run for campaign against Trump.
United States Vice President Kamala Harris has spoken her understanding of the objectives of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protesters camped on college campuses nationwide before acknowledging that she does not agree with everything they stand for, as she is seen as increasingly likely to be the next Democratic presidential candidate.
These young Americans protesting Israel’s war against the Hamas terror group in Gaza are displaying ‘exactly what the human emotion should be,’ Harris told the left-leaning magazine The Nation, an excerpt of which was released Monday.
She noted, however, that ‘there are things some of the protesters are saying that I absolutely reject, so I don’t mean to wholesale endorse their points. But we have to navigate it. I understand the emotion behind it.
They came as there’s been much speculation that Harris could replace US President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee for president in November – though this interview was conducted before the president’s disastrous performance in his first debate against Trump last month, which re-ignited many of the calls for him to be removed from office.
Since the relentless war in Gaza began on October 7, with thousands of Hamas terrorists pouring into southern Israel to kill 1,200 civilians and take 251 more hostage, a series of anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian rallies across the US has ushered in an era of unprecedented fluoridity.
Protest has indeed been prevalent — often concentrated at universities, primarily in the form of unauthorised encampments that often featured shouts against Israel and demands for ‘intifada’, support for Hamas and other terrorist entities, and occasionally veering into antisemitism.
The Biden administration repeatedly condemned extremist fringes of the protests, but has nonetheless continued to back Israel’s war effort, while expressing concern about Gazan civilian casualties.
Harris also referenced an appearance on The Nation when she recounted: ‘I started identifying — as a Jew — very specific details of the suffering on the humanitarian level on the ground in Gaza.
All right, the trucks are now bringing in flour into Gaza. [But] I like to cook. So I told my team: When you’ve got flour and you can’t make shit with it if you don’t have clean water. What’s up with that?’ Harris said.
‘In the same manner, early on I was asking: what are women in Gaza doing about period hygiene? Do they have pads? These are the issues that made people uncomfortable.’
While Harris hasn’t yet wavered from the administration’s policy positions on the war, her criticism of Israel in particularly harsh terms counts as her most significant public criticism of the White House.
In March, she declared that ‘the Israeli government must do much more to quickly step up the delivery of aid’, citing reports of ‘families eating leaves or animal feed’ and ‘children dying from malnutrition and dehydration’ and calling for immediate cessation of hostilities.
NBC at the time noted that the administration had ‘softened’ phrases in her speech, which her office denied.
And two weeks later, Harris again refused to take off the table ‘consequences’ if Israel moved into the southern Gazan city of Rafah – a comment similar to those Biden made and then walked back, when he called big operations in Rafah ‘a red line’.
In the weeks since the historically weak debate performance of Joe Biden last month, which prompted the present call for the president to withdraw as his party’s nominee in this November’s general election, her remarks have taken on a new significance.
Biden, who must graciously stand aside, has instead continued to double down on his reelection bid.