Would Kamala Harris adopt Joe Biden’s policies on Israel?

(RNS) — Vice President Kamala Harris missed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress on Wednesday (July 24), but as befits a presidential candidate now staking out her own relationships with foreign leaders, Harris met privately with the Israeli premier on Thursday.

As Harris continues to gather pledges from delegates ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention, she will also begin forming her own policies separate and apart from those of President Joe Biden, including toward Israel. (Netanyahu is flying to Florida on Friday to meet with the Republican nominee, former President Donald Trump.)

In some ways, Harris has already established a different tone on Israel. In March, she became the first in the Biden administration to call for an immediate cease-fire in Israel’s devastating war on Gaza, which has she repeated since becoming the Democratic front-runner. She has expressed empathy for the plight of Palestinians, nearly 40,000 of whom have been killed over the course of the nine-month offensive.

For some young Jewish activists, Harris’ ascendancy to the top of the Democratic ticket gives them hope there might be some shifts in Israel policy if she wins the presidency in November.

“I think it means there’s an opportunity for some change,” said Lily Greenberg Call, a former Interior Department staffer who in May became the first Jewish appointee of the Biden administration to resign in protest over the war in Gaza.

Greenberg Call, who is now devoting her time to activism with young Jews on Palestinian liberation, was among thousands of protesters who demonstrated outside the U.S. Capitol against Netanyahu’s speech on Wednesday. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks to a joint meeting of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, July 24, 2024. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

“Young voters are feeling very betrayed by the president,” said Greenberg Call. “Over 700,000 Democrats voted uncommitted in the primaries, which is a direct protest of Biden’s Gaza policy. If Harris and her team is smart, they will realize that they need young people and they need progressives and they need Arab Americans and Muslim Americans.”

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But if some young people are hopeful that a Harris administration would end its unconditional sale of arms to Israel or take a more evenhanded approach to Palestinians in Gaza, political analysts are more guarded. They say Harris heard the chants of “Genocide Joe” and charges of complicity in a human rights calamity but may not fundamentally change course.

“She’s clearly been aligned with that majority of Biden’s advisers who felt he was being too soft on Israel for too long and not honest enough,” said Ian Lustick, a retired political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and a Middle East expert. But, Lustick added, “I don’t think her policy will be very different in substance.”

Debra Shushan, policy director at the center-left Jewish lobby group J Street, said she expects to see continuity on matters related to Israel. “Vice President Harris and her key national security advisers, particularly those who focus on the Middle East, are really top-notch experts who have been engaged in foreign policy under the Biden administration at a high level,” Shushan said.

Harris, said several sources, would almost certainly continue to advocate for a two-state solution, even as opposition by Netanyahu and his Cabinet makes that unlikely.

While Biden was frustrated with Netanyahu’s execution of the war, Israel’s obstruction of humanitarian aid and its refusal to craft a postwar plan for Gaza, Biden largely kept those concerns private, said Dov Waxman, director of the UCLA’s Nazarian Center for Israel Studies.

“Biden’s instinct, which has been honed over many years, has been to try to resolve his disagreements with Netanyahu behind the scenes,” said Waxman. “I’m not sure if Kamala Harris shares that same instinct or whether she might be more willing to go public.”

Over the course of her life and career, Harris has had close relationships with American Jews. She has a deep and easy familiarity with American Jewish traditions and ways even before she married Los Angeles entertainment lawyer Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, in 2014.

It was Harris who sensed that Emhoff needed a yarmulke or kippah on his head when they approached Jerusalem’s Western Wall on a 2017 trip, and pulled one out of her pocket and fixed it on his head, as the JTA reported.

Like many American Jews, Emhoff, who is originally from New Jersey and grew up attending a Reform synagogue, had a strong Jewish identity but not an observance. His first wife, Kerstin Mackin Emhoff, was not Jewish and his daughter, Ella, does not consider herself Jewish.

When Harris became vice president, however, he took on the role of an informal liaison to the Jewish community, chairing a task force that developed the Biden administration’s strategy to counter antisemitism.

It’s a role Emhoff embraced wholeheartedly, said some Jewish American activists in Washington, speaking on condition of anonymity. They said he educated himself on the issues and showed a sincere and deeply felt passion for the role.

Emhoff hasn’t spoken much about Israel or the U.S. role, but on a Wednesday Zoom call organized by the Jewish Democratic Council of America and Jewish Women for Kamala he vowed that Harris would always support Israel.

American Jews vote Democratic by a 3-1 ratio, and its likely Harris has already secured the American Jewish vote. J Street endorsed Harris within a day after Biden bowed out of his reelection bid. Its PAC helped her raise $81 million toward her election bid in the following days.

The GOP has already moved to paint Harris’ support for Israel as weak: The Republican Jewish Coalition had named her earlier this year in its vilification of students and university administrators over campus protests against the Gaza war. In a new ad, the coalition mocked her for excusing herself from Netanyahu’s speech to Congress for what she said was a prior commitment. 

But her backers in the organized, mainstream Jewish community are projecting confidence in Harris. Said Shushan: “It is very exciting to think of those folks as, as those who will be really hopefully managing the staff level aspect of foreign policy under a President Harris and I think there’s a lot to be hopeful for and a lot to work for.”

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