How Kamala Harris is Navigating the Israel-Palestine Conflict

Is the pro-Palestine left on a collision course with the Democratic nominee? Next week at the Democratic convention in Chicago will be a crucial test for all sides.

One week ago, when a group of pro-Palestine protestors heckled Vice President Kamala Harris during a campaign stop in an airplane hangar in Detroit, my heart sank. As Mother Jones’ Najib Aminy reports, Salma Hamamy and Zainab Hakim, students at the University of Michigan who had been involved in their school’s Gaza solidarity encampment, shouted “Kamala, you need to call for a ceasefire in Gaza. We demand an arms embargo and a free Palestine.” Then, with others, they chanted: “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide.” Harris sternly replied, “If you want Donald Trump to win, say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.” The crowd of 15,000 roared their approval, drowning out the students who were then escorted away.

Two days later, Harris was speaking to a similar sized crowd in Glendale, Arizona, when protestors chanting “Free, Free Palestine” interrupted her. This time, as the crowd tried to shut them down, she was more diplomatic. She interrupted her planned remarks and ad-libbed, “We are all in here together ... because we love our country," she said, with a nod toward the protesters. "We're here to fight for our democracy, which includes respecting the voices that I think that we are hearing from,” gesturing toward the protestors.

“And let me just say this on the topic of what I think I am hearing over there. … Let me say, I have been clear," Harris continued. "Now is the time to get a ceasefire deal and get the hostage deal done.” The crowd roared appreciatively. “Now is the time. The president and I are working around the clock every day to get that ceasefire deal done and bring the hostages home. I respect your voices, but we are here to now talk about the race in 2024.” This interchange, which seemed clearly prepared in advance, went over better than her scolding in Detroit. But what a narrow needle Harris is trying to thread.

As the New York Times’ Ezra Klein noted on Sunday, one of the reasons Harris has surged past Joe Biden in the head-to-head race with Donald Trump is her high-energy campaigning style. Unlike Biden, who took a low-key approach both in 2020 as a candidate and then as president, Harris is very good at fighting and winning the battle for attention—even more so now with her running mate Tim Walz. They are both much more fluent with digital media than past Democratic flag-bearers.* But one more thing has been important to her surge, as Klein notes: “The left’s 2020 energy, in which there was pressure for ever more self-destructive displays of purity, has given way to an on-message ruthlessness…. There’s been little pressure for Harris to move left and easy acceptance of her swings back to the center,” he adds, noting how she has backed off past support for fracking bans, single-payer health care and police reform. The result has been a remarkably positive media run for her, which has left Trump flailing and Harris opening up a four-point lead among likely voters in several of the key swing states, including Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

But a campaign that attracts a lot of attention is also a magnet for conflict entrepreneurs who feed on controversy. And with the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week it sure looks like the black hole of the Israel-Palestine conflict is exerting its gravitational pull on the Harris campaign. Next week, perhaps 50,000 to 100,000 pro-Palestine protestors are expected to gather outside the convention, with controversies already flaring about whether they will have police permits for their marches and some activists urging support for disruptive action. Inside the hall, a small band of about 30 delegates from the Uncommitted movement are hoping to make the most of their moment in the sun. And militant pro-Israel groups like the Israel-American Council—which helped lead violent counter-protests against some of the college encampments in the spring--have announced their plan to host a “hostage square” installation somewhere near the convention hall.

It's very hard to parse all of this. Should Harris announce some kind of shift in her approach to Israel-Palestine? She is demonstrably more empathetic than Biden about Palestinian suffering and the need to get more humanitarian aid into Gaza, but as Layla Elabed of the Uncommitted movement quite rightly says, “Palestinian children can’t eat words.” If Democratic convention managers give the Uncommitted delegates a chance to address the convention, or give Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a pediatric physician who has served in Gaza, a speaking role, per their demands, will that be enough of a shift to mollify them? Will hardline pro-Israel delegates rebel in response? What about changing the language of the party platform plank on the Middle East, a bone that has been picked over quadrennially by both sides?

Also, if Israel-Palestine isn’t your top issue, how much should this all matter? While it’s true that out of 14 million votes cast during this spring’s primaries, about 700,000 Democrats voted for Uncommitted (or similar options), this isn’t really a critical issue for most voters. Let alone swing state voters. According to the most recent New York Times/Siena poll, taken in early August, less than one percent of likely voters in Michigan, the state where everyone agrees the Arab- and Muslim-American vote could be most pivotal, say that the Israel-Palestine issue is the “most important” in deciding their choice in November. Two percent of 18- to 29-year-olds and four percent of Black voters in Michigan said so. Far more cited the economy, the cost of living, abortion, immigration, and democracy/corruption as top concerns. Maybe we need to pay more attention to the sentiments of the vast majority of the people at Harris’ rallies who made clear their desire to focus on the narrative and issues that are bringing Democrats closer to a win in November?

From Cease-Fire to Arms Embargo

One of the hardest questions to wrestle to the ground, I have found, is to understand what exactly pro-Palestine groups and their allies are demanding. If you haven’t noticed, in the past few weeks the “movement” has shifted its stance from calling for a cease-fire to calling for an arms embargo on Israel. At first glance, this is an improvement because it was never clear how the White House was supposed to unilaterally make a ceasefire happen, let alone whether the demand also applied to Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza, who continue to fire rockets at Israel. At least an embargo on sending US military aid to Israel is not only a clearer demand, but something that could be done unilaterally. And arguably such a move is even required by existing US law, which says that recipients of US aid can’t block humanitarian assistance or violate international human rights standards.

But look just a tiny bit closer and you discover that the “arms embargo” doesn’t mean the same thing to its various advocates. The NAACP, which was one of the first major organizations to embrace the demand back in early June, said then that—in pursuit of a cease-fire—it wants Biden to “indefinitely end the shipment of weapons and artillery to the state of Israel” but also added that Hamas “must return the hostages and stop all terrorist activity” while Israel should commit to “an offensive strategy that is aligned with International and Humanitarian laws.” So that means Israel can have an offensive strategy against Hamas if it doesn’t release the hostages? At the end of June, the Uncommitted National Movement announced that its 29 uncommitted delegates would back Biden if he would support a “permanent ceasefire” and ensure “that no more US bombs get supplied to the Israeli government’s war and occupation against Palestinians.” Note the addition—it’s not just an embargo until Israel stops dropping bombs in Gaza, it’s one until it stops its “occupation against Palestinians.” Not Another Bomb, an umbrella slogan/campaign spawned by the Uncommitted folks, uses similar language about Israel’s “occupation against Palestinians” in its call on Harris.

The Working Families Party, which is a mature progressive organization with a multimillion-dollar budget and a pretty central role in the electoral left’s ecosystem, is equally unclear about what its support for an arms embargo is supposed to mean. A petition it is circulating opens, “In order to achieve a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, secure the safe return of hostages, end the occupation, and prevent escalation of the conflict into a catastrophic regional war, we need to end the flow of U.S. taxpayer dollars and U.S. weapons being used by the Israeli military to commit war crimes against Palestinian civilians.” OK, that’s a relatively constrained demand—stop US military aid to Israel to achieve these goals. But then the last line of the petition goes further, calling for “the end of U.S. military funding to Israel.”

Does this mean the Working Families Party is no longer committed to Israel’s existence? Should America stop providing Israel with defensive support, ranging from long-term security commitments to the Iron Dome program to the kind of ad-hoc help it is cobbling together as I write to help defend against an expected Iranian missile attack? Will candidates seeking the WFP endorsement now be expected to embrace and defend these positions?

Ravi Mangla, the WFP’s press secretary, told me yesterday that, “We are calling on the Biden Administration and Congress to stop the sale or transfer of offensive military weapons to the Israeli government for as long as the Netanyahu government is bombing hospitals, schools, and refugee camps without regard for everyday people in Gaza.” That’s a much narrower stance than ending all military funding to Israel until, say, the occupation is over. From what I understand, the WFP is most worried about the danger of a regional war breaking out and sees its support for an arms embargo as the best way for Biden to use maximal leverage on Netanyahu to achieve an end to the current conflict. Nor does the WFP want Israel to disappear, or for its endorsed candidates to have to embrace every stance it takes as an organization. But to my mind, this is one of the perils organizations face when they steer away from their core missions into the minutia of foreign policy debates.

Polls like that New York Times/Siena survey I cited above showing the minuscule importance of the Middle East to most voters ought to give pro-Palestine progressives some pause. But instead, a lot seem to be high on their own supply. That’s what I thought as I listened to Cayden Mak, the publisher of Convergence magazine, heaping praise on two leaders of the Uncommitted movement, Layla Elabed and Elainne Farhat, for supposedly triggering Biden’s abdication. On Convergence’s Block and Build podcast this past week, he gushed, “You know, a couple of weeks ago, when Biden announced he was stepping down, I don’t think the mainstream media gave the Uncommitted movement enough credit for laying the groundwork for that. I really want to give you all that credit because I don’t think that would have happened just because of a bad debate performance. Like, let’s be real, right?” Farhat agreed, claiming the “the party’s attempt to attribute Biden's exit to solely because of a poor debate performance, I think, overlooks the significant grassroots that our movement has built.” Yeah, he was definitely on his way out the door before that hiccup of a debate performance.

Democrats can also reasonably ask themselves just how far they should bend toward pro-Palestine advocates before they get dragged into unwise and untenable stances. For example, in that same podcast conversation, after praising Harris for having a much better tone on Gaza than Biden, Farhat attacks the VP for “[falling] back on the language of Israel has a right to defend itself” in the wake of Israel’s attacks in Lebanon, Iran and Syria against Hezbollah and Hamas leaders. “That is extremely dangerous,” Farhat adds, “because exactly the kind of rhetoric we saw immediately after October 7 which essentially green-lighted Netanyahu’s regime to expand their war.”

Even if the Harris campaign and Democratic convention managers figure out a way to bring the Uncommitted delegates into their fold, the “From the River to the Sea” faction of the pro-Palestine left will be outside trying to stir up as much attention as possible. “When it comes to the genocide in Gaza there is no difference between Biden, Harris, or any of the likely candidates for the nomination,” the March on the DNC 2024 coalition says in its latest statement. “They are all complicit. This is why the coalition will still be marching on the DNC in the tens of thousands. We plan to have the largest march for Palestinian rights in Chicago’s history as we demand an end to the genocide and an end to US aid to Israel.”

You can search the web pages of the March on the DNC 2024 coalition for any mention of Trump and you will find only one—a short section arguing that Biden was as bad on immigration as the Orange Cheeto. To these people, one can only say, if you want Trump to win, keep doing what you’re doing.

*Our First Civic Tech White House

If Harris and Walz win this fall, it will mark the first time that digital natives hold the White House. Barack Obama, who was the first president to really embrace digital, creating the first White House Office of Digital Affairs and its first Chief technology Officer, needed to be taught how to tweet, for example. Harris, by contrast, is the author of the Digital Service Act, a bill she put forth when she was in the Senate in 2019 that would have provided $15 million in annual seed grants to state and local governments to create their own digital service teams akin to the federal U.S. Digital Service. When she was California’s attorney general, she set up a Code for America fellowship aimed at helping people get easier access to their rap sheets.

Governor Tim Walz, data nerd

And Walz is a fully-fledged data nerd, who has been using GIS software for decades since he was a high school geography teacher. He gave a keynote talk a few weeks ago at ESRI 2024, where he proved his chops beyond the shred of a doubt, sharing examples of how Minnesota uses geographical mapping tools to monitor and respond to severe weather in real time, to map its peat bogs, to do land-use planning, to track child poverty, to respond to COVID-19, and to manage the state’s lead water pipe replacement program. Civic tech, presente!

Speaking of Walz, there’s a vital lesson about organizing that must be attached to any discussion of his policy successes as governor of Minnesota, where, with the help of a Democratic-controlled legislature, he passed paid family and medical leave, paid sick days, drivers licenses for immigrants, universal free school meals, and pro-democracy reform. They are largely the product of a decade’s worth of coordinated organizing by a set of base-building groups. As Doran Schrantz of Faith in Minnesota and ISAIAH, a multiracial group of faith communities, explains in this 2023 Movement Voter Project webinar, it took multiple cycles for grassroots organizations to build the political power necessary to pass this agenda; it was critical for those groups to build power that accrued to them directly, not just to the Democratic party; and it took deep partnerships with elected officials to move that agenda.

Schrantz, who is widely respected among community organizers for her strategic vision, was part of a group of progressive leaders in the Midwest who played a crucial behind-the-scenes role in propelling Walz to the top-tier of vice-presidential contenders, as this story in the New York Times explains. Speaking with WBUR’s Here and Now program on Sunday, Schrantz offered an intriguing vision of how a Harris-Walz administration could partner with grassroots organizations. It’s a twist on the age-old problem of converting electoral power to governing power. “In a lot of our national conversation about grassroots organizing, what we're really talking about is voter engagement during elections,” Schrantz said. “But what organizing look like looks like in the context of governing is building a broad base of real community leaders in places. That looks like a pastor, a teacher, a labor leader, aligning those people to be not just voters, but leaders. And what leaders can do in places is partner with those elected officials to do things, like a letters-to-the-editor campaign, turning out to hearings, organizing round tables or halls. Really the sky's the limit when you're organizing actual leaders who live in places.”

I can’t help but hear echoes of the hopes organizers had back in 2008 with Obama’s Organizing for America. Don’t you? Schrantz notes that year-round organizing projects exist in many parts of the country, but there’s often a disconnect after people get elected to serve at the federal level. “The question is, oftentimes on federal policy--It's like we elect people and we send them off to Washington,” she says, implying that we basically give up after that. “But the opportunity with a President Kamala Harris is to have more of a pitch-and-catch between DC and people on the ground in states, in the districts where Congresspeople and Senators know their votes are. And so it would be exciting to explore what would be possible at the state to federal level, with a vice president who knows how to govern that way.” She also adds that we still have a long way to go to get many national Democrats “to understand that communities are not just there for votes, and if you only come around every two years or four years and ask for people's votes, but then nothing changes--meaning in terms of a delivery back to people's real lives and that they weren't involved in that change, then it gets a little tiresome to vote again and again and again. So we have more work to do to design the kinds of campaigns and capacity, that really invites people from the ground up to lead.”

Data Points

--Contributions to Democrats via ActBlue have topped a half billion since President Biden passed the torch to VP Harris. This week-by-week chart built by Ryan Murphy comes with a modest caveat; it’s based on the number that ActBlue posted on its homepage, not detailed reports to the FEC. Still, wow!

Odds and Ends

--More than 70,000 people got on the Republicans for Harris Zoom last night. Not bad!

--Feeling fired up and ready to go canvass? YesWeCanvass is a volunteer-curated list of opportunities in Pennsylvania. And The Grassroots Connector, a terrific Substack for this kind of information, has more info on similar guides to other states.

--Nearly 7,000 people attended last Wednesdays “Women for Harris” follow-up Zoom (watch here), featuring speakers like Mayor Michelle Wu of Boston, Senator Amy Klobuchar, and Ashley Judd. Most important, attendees got a refresher in grass-roots organizing from Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible. Out of that one meeting, nearly 400 new local “Action Teams” have formed, with names like Childless Cat People (Detroit, MI) Viva Las Vegas for Harris (Las Vegas); Barbies for Kamala (West Linn, Oregon); and Raising Rebel Girls (Columbus, OH). This sprouting of new local organizing groups is a very healthy sign; hopefully many will keep going past November. More info on tonight’s call (which has more than 12,000 pre-registered) here.

End Times

The Orange Cheeto sings “My Way,” lyrics courtesy of Chris Cerf, my old pal. And apropos of nothing at all, Baroque Obama.

A note to readers: I’m going to be in Chicago next week for the Democratic convention; if circumstances warrant I’ll post from there, but if my experience attending past conventions is any guide, all bets are off. If you are going to be there, drop me a line and maybe we can meet up!