On Thursday, following her one-on-one meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Vice-President Kamala Harris said some good things and some not so good things.
Here are the good things:
Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization. On October 7, Hamas triggered this war when it massacred 1,200 innocent people, including 44 Americans. Hamas has committed horrific acts of sexual violence and took 250 hostages.
There are American citizens who remain captive in Gaza: Sagui Dekel-Chen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Edan Alexander, Keith Siegel, Omer Neutra. And the remains of American citizens Judy Weinstein, Gad Haggai, and Itay Chen are still being held in Gaza.
I have met with the families of these American hostages multiple times now. And I’ve told them each time, they are not alone and I stand with them. And President Biden and I are working every day to bring them home.
The Times of Israel noted, "The vice president made a point of reading out the names of all eight American-Israel hostages still held captive by Hamas — something no other US official has done."
She said their names.
But here are the not so good things:
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.
While there is no question Palestinian civilians have been killed, the Hamas run Gaza Health Ministry makes no distinction between civilian deaths and those of Hamas terrorists. Harris, too, fails to make this distinction.
While it is true that the deaths of some Palestinians civilians are as a result of Israel's defensive military operations, it is also true that Hamas uses its own people as human shields. Harris again fails to make this distinction.
Claims of hunger, famine and starvation are equally dubious. Yet Harris sees fit to spread misinformation.
In so doing, she undermines her rhetoric about U.S. hostages in Hamas' captivity by treating Israel as Hamas' moral equivalent. So long as Harris places pressure on Israel instead of Hamas, the hostages will remain in captivity.
While former President Donald Trump pounced on Harris' remarks, he has shown himself to be no more sympathetic to Israel's plight imploring Netanyahu to "finish it up and get it done quickly." If only it were that easy.
Unfortunately, given Harris' vow not to be silent concerning the Palestinians, I suspect we will hear more of this rhetoric from her which in the long run will do more harm than good especially for the hostages.
No doubt some of this rhetoric is motivated by recapturing the support of "uncommitted" Democratic delegates alienated with President Biden's support for Israel which earned him the nickname "Genocide Joe". Minnesota's uncommitted delegates have indicated they will not support Harris and it is unclear if her remarks changed anything. If they haven't changed anything then I shudder to think what Harris might say about Israel to earn their support.
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