Before President Joe Biden finally bit the bullet and bowed out under tremendous pressure, passing the torch to Vice President Kamala Harris, the US presidential race looked truly miserable, with a self-confessed Zionist actively engaged in genocide pitted against a rank charlatan, convicted felon and opportunist running on a fascist ticket.
This was a sorry state of affairs, even for the most ardent of American liberals. They finally heaved a sigh of relief when Harris took over and pumped some enthusiasm into an otherwise morbid election.
Overnight, millions of dollars flooded towards her presidential bid and the prospect of a woman of Indian and Caribbean descent sitting in the Oval Office energised the country’s moribund politics.
In domestic terms, for liberal Americans, Harris is head and shoulders above her competitor, former President Donald Trump. What he has to offer is nothing more than a past record of chicanery, deceit, barefaced racism and xenophobic white supremacy.
Then came the acid test of war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, delivering one of his infamously vulgar speeches to the US Congress. Scores of Congress members skipped the gaudy spectacle. The man is toxic and even Aipac’s millions cannot buy him a respectable audience.
To her credit, Harris refused to preside when Netanyahu staged this spectacle, coming up with an excuse to leave Washington. But she could not completely avoid meeting the Israeli warmonger. After their meeting, she praised how “ironclad” and everlasting US support is for Israel, even as it carries out a genocide in Gaza.
Then came a moment when Harris assumed a sombre tone, expressing sympathy for Palestinians and vowing she would not be silent about their wholesale slaughter. Such a statement, in this dismal climate, could be seen as a sign of hope. But it is not.
Worse than nothing
This is not just because Harris is fully aware of the internal left wing of the Democratic Party and recognises that she must cater to them. It is also due to something far more sinister.
Harris expressed concern for the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza. Ten months into Israel’s round-the-clock genocide of Palestinians, this is not much to say. But still, the implications of what she did say are even worse.
This is the full phrasing: “I also expressed with the prime minister my serious concern about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians. And I made clear my serious concern about the dire humanitarian situation there, with over 2 million people facing high levels of food insecurity and half a million people facing catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.”
“What has happened in Gaza over the past nine months is devastating – the images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering. And I will not be silent.”
In short, she has “serious concern” over the human costs of the genocide of Palestinians on her watch. This concern does not suggest that Harris could care less about the sacrifices that Palestinians have made in their struggle to fight their vicious occupiers and reclaim their homeland. Rather, her sentiments reduce the Palestinian national liberation movement to a humanitarian crisis to be addressed by humanitarian agencies.
Harris’ position on Israel is identical to that of Biden, and before him Trump, and before him Barack Obama: “ironclad support” and an “unwavering commitment” to Israel.
What does that mean? Uninterrupted military aid and unfailing diplomatic support for the genocidal Zionism are now fully at work in Gaza and elsewhere across Palestine. Refusing to acknowledge an inch of the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance to the murderous armed robbery of their homeland, Harris repeats the useless mantra of the two-state delusion.
There is not an iota of difference between Harris and her predecessors. Her weak expressions of sympathy for Palestinian suffering are even worse than saying nothing.
Sinister turn
For 10 months, the Biden administration has even bypassed Congress to provide Israel with deadly weapons to slaughter Palestinians. Was Harris not a party to those decisions? How can she aid and facilitate genocide in Palestine and then hit the campaign trail to say she has “serious concern” over the suffering she enabled in the first place?
I do not question her sincerity; I just mark the sinister turn to “humanitarian” concerns as a means of depoliticising a national liberation movement.
After meeting the chief war criminal, Harris comes out to say she is horrified by these crimes. So what? How does that translate into any modicum of reconsideration of her country’s “ironclad” commitment to genocidal Zionism?
She further noted: “I have had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the state of Israel.” Can you imagine her saying this about any other state anywhere else on this planet: Argentina, Mexico, Morocco, India, Iran, Egypt, Turkey, France or Finland?
Why do all these US officials keep emphasising their commitment to the “existence” of Israel? Because they know it was built on the stolen homeland of another people. There is, thus, an anxiety in the West that manifestly belies all these expressions of support for the settler colony.
The New York Times, meanwhile, is on the move to make sure Harris behaves and does not go overboard with her expressions of sympathy for Palestinian suffering. Indeed, the entire regime of liberal imperialism is actively at work to transform the Palestinian question into a humanitarian crisis, but we should never fall into that trap. The “two-state solution” is similarly a sinister delusion, devised by Zionists as a mirage while they continue to steal Palestine piece by piece.
The American political landscape is trapped between thuggish imperialism abroad and militant fascism at home on one side and liberal imperialism abroad and semi-sane domestic policies at home on the other. Millions of Americans are rightly poised to go and vote for Harris just to prevent her competitor, the racist charlatan Trump, from retaking office.
But when it comes to the settler colony now at war on multiple fronts, Harris would do nothing differently – absolutely zilch, zero. She would continue to arm Israel to the hilt and facilitate its atrocities. The rest of the world, meanwhile, must remain vigilant and focused on the heroic struggles and immense sacrifices of the Palestinian people to liberate their homeland from the river to the sea.
The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Sunna Files Website.
