The vice president — and likely Democratic presidential nominee — highlighted the plight of Palestinians in Gaza after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday.
She nonetheless pledged continued support for Israel. Activists argue that expressing sympathy for the Palestinians without a major shift from the U.S. policy of unconditional military and diplomatic support will not help Harris win back voters alienated by President Joe Biden’s approach to the war.
“Without an actual commitment to stop killing the children of Gaza, I don’t care about her empathy for them,” said Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago. She stressed that the US bears “responsibility” for the atrocities committed against Palestinians.
“To be empathetic to someone that you’re shooting in the head is not exactly laudable. We don’t need empathy from these people. We need them to stop providing the weapons and the money that is actively killing the people that they’re supposedly empathizing with.”
Moreover, while Harris’s comments have been characterized as a shift away from Biden’s rhetoric, critics point out the vice president did not articulate any new policy positions.
Harris appears poised to take over the Democratic nomination from Biden, who dropped out of the presidential race on Sunday and instead endorsed his vice president.
Biden won an overwhelming majority of the Democratic primary votes without facing any serious opposition. But in the Democratic primary, hundreds of thousands of people across the country chose the “non-commitment” option to express their opposition to the president’s Gaza policies.
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