Pro-Palestinian groups are urging Vice President Kamala Harris to break with President Joe Biden on Israel during her first debate with former President Donald Trump on Tuesday.
Harris will meet Trump for the first time this week for the pair’s presidential debate. A Muslim-American organization, which has frequently pressured Biden to back off on supporting Israel, wants Harris to make new promises to pro-Palestinian voters on the debate stage, according to a report from Newsweek.
Emgage wants Harris to issue “a more nuanced stance that could resonate with voters, particularly among the pro-Palestinian movements and the broader Muslim and Arab American communities.”
“The Muslim-American community feels heartbroken by President Biden’s handling of the crisis,” the organization said in a statement to the outlet.
“To win over pro-Palestinian voters, Harris should make a strong commitment to ending the violence, supporting a ceasefire, and reassess current U.S. policy, including the need to condition aid to Israel that is in line with our own laws and adhere to international human rights standards,” it continued.
Along with a ceasefire, Emgage is pressuring Harris to condition U.S. military aid to Israel.
“Calling for the conditioning of aid to Israel based on compliance with U.S. law and international human rights standards would be a significant step in distinguishing herself from the Administration’s current policy without entirely breaking from it,” the organization declared.
Hamas, which controls and resides in Gazan territory bordering Israel, launched a surprise attack at an Israeli music festival and murdered 1,200 civilians last October. The Jewish state subsequently declared war on the terrorist group with the full support of the Biden administration.
For the past eleven months, pro-Palestinian students on college campuses across the United States have expressed strong displeasure with the White House’s support of Israel. Numerous protests have broken out in cities across the country, including Washington, D.C., since last October, as anti-Israel demonstrators argue that the Biden White House is helping the nation to carry out a genocide of Palestinians living in Gaza.
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With 56 days until the election, Harris has a limited amount of time to convince protestors, many of whom are young voters who heavily favor the Democratic Party, to support her candidacy.
During the Democratic National Convention last month, Harris faced down demonstrators from the Uncommitted Movement, who were angry that party leaders had refused their requests for a Palestinian speaker to address the event. Uncommitted Movement activists claim Israel is committing genocide in Gaza and have urged Harris to support an immediate ceasefire and arms embargo in the region. Their cries have found a listening ear with many members of the “Squad,” a group of progressive Congress members.
Meanwhile, pro-Israel factions in the Democratic Party have worried the vice president caved to fringe elements on the Left when she decided against tapping Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) as her running mate because picking a Jew could alienate pro-Palestinian voters.
Biden won a sweeping majority of the Jewish-American vote in 2020, but some members of the key Democratic voting bloc continue to view Harris with skepticism after she chose Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN) as her running mate.
Shapiro remains an ardent Harris supporter and has claimed his Jewish background played no role in the vice president’s decision against him.
Nonetheless, the debacle left a bad taste in the mouths of some members of the Democratic stronghold.
“There’s a kind of suspicion that was in the back of our minds, and it’s creeping more to the center of our minds, that maybe it had something to do with the Jewishness of Governor Shapiro,” Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, who leads the Stephen Wise Free Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, told the New York Times last month.
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“Even if it didn’t, that perception is not healthy for the Democratic Party,” he added.
Meanwhile, prominent pollster Nate Silver wrote Sunday that Harris “blew one big opportunity to tack to the center with her selection of Tim Walz rather than Josh Shapiro,” a move he said she made because “a tiny minority of progressives objected to.”
