Two Sides of the Same Coin: Kamala Harris and Joe Biden’s Unwavering Support for Israel Amid the Gaza Conflict

During the US presidential debate, Vice-President Kamala Harris pointed to Donald Trump’s felony conviction and accused him of aspiring to dictatorship. She urged him to stand for “democracy” and the “rule of law,” emphasising the need for clarity on “where each person [candidate] stands on respecting the rule of law and law enforcement.”

Since she embarked on her presidential bid, Harris has framed her campaign against Trump as a showdown between “the prosecutor” and “the felon”, the law-abiding attorney versus the lawless businessman. Yet, when comes to Israel and Palestine regarding the question of international law, Harris proves she’s not so different from Trump.

In her acceptance speech, Harris stated her collaboration with Biden to secure the Palestinian people’s security, freedom, and self-determination. By often pairing “freedom” with “self-determination,” she implies a recognition of Palestinians’ struggle to end Israeli occupation.

Denying occupation

However, for Harris to genuinely support Palestinians’ right to self-determination, she would need to denounce the Israeli occupation as an illegal use of force, much like her stance against Russian aggression in Crimea. This would require her to uphold the international legal foundations for Palestinians’ rights, including adherence to UN Security Council and General Assembly resolutions, as well as the rulings of the International Court of Justice (ICJ).

In its July 2024 ruling, the ICJ declared Israel’s 57-year occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank illegal, calling for its immediate end. The Court also found that over 160 settlements, housing more than 700,000 Jewish settlers, violate international law, equating Israel’s actions to an unlawful annexation of territories where it has no sovereignty. The ruling concluded that Israel’s policies are in breach of its obligation to respect the Palestinian right to self-determination, impacting the legal status of the occupation.

The Court’s ruling primarily reinforces numerous legally binding UN Security Council resolutions concerning Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestinian territories following the 1967 Six-Day War. Notably, resolution 252 (1968) declared that “all legislative and administrative measures and actions taken by Israel, the occupying Power, which tend to change the legal status of Jerusalem are invalid and cannot change that status”.

Despite her statements on Palestinian’s right to freedom, dignity and self-determination, Harris’ record offers little indication that she considers Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands illegal. On the contrary, her unwavering support for Israel extends to backing its colonial-settler policies. In 2017, she voted in favour of a Senate resolution celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Six-Day War and the so-called “reunification of the city of Jerusalem”.

By endorsing the illegal Israeli annexation of Jerusalem and declaring it the “undivided capital of Israel”, the Harris-backed resolution embraced the biblical narrative to justify the colonisation of East Jerusalem and other Palestinian territories. It echoes the Zionist narrative which invokes claims of ancestral lands, historical rights, and a three-millennia-old Jewish national presence in Palestine. This is a view challenged by many Jewish scholars, including historian Shlomo Sand, whose landmark book The Invention of the Jewish People debunks the historical foundations of such myths.

Two sides of the same coin

The resolution came just months before the UN disapproved Trump’s proclamation of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, ironically placing both Harris and Trump on equal footing in their disregard for the status of Jerusalem under international law.

Harris also backs Israel’s policies of illegal settlements and the annexation of Palestinian territories.

In January 2017, in her very first vote as a new senator, she co-sponsored a resolution rejecting UN Security Council Resolution 2334, which called on Israel to immediately and completely halt all settlement activities in Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem. However, Harris’s resolution argued, in a twisted logic, that the UN’s stance, not Israel’s colonial policies, undermines direct negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians in view of achieving a two-state solution. Her backing of Israel’s occupation and settlements suggests that, like Trump, she would grant Israeli leaders unchecked authority in support of their expansionist agenda in East Jerusalem, Gaza and the West Bank.

Harris strong embrace of Israel’s settler colonial policies was evident well before her partnership with Biden, the self-proclaimed Zionist. It explains her support for the US supply of multi-billion-dollar weapons and financial aid to Israel, long before the 7 October.

In keeping with Israel and Biden’s line, Harris invokes Israel’s right to self-defence in response to the Hamas attack, based on Article 51 of the UN Charter, which affirms the states’ inherent right to self-defence against armed attacks. However, many experts strongly dispute that Article 51 applies to Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, has stated that Israel cannot invoke the right of “self-defence” under international law, as Gaza is a territory under its occupation.

Experts who hold this view often refer to the 2004 ICJ  advisory opinion, which rejected Israel’s claim of self-defence under Article 51 to justify the construction of the West Bank wall. The ICJ ruled that Article 51 applies only to armed attacks between states and that Israel, as an occupying power, cannot invoke the right to self-defence within the territory it occupies.

Additionally, in a separate case brought by South Africa against Israel, the ICJ’s 26 January 2024 ruling characterised Israel’s ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip as a “plausible” case of genocide. Attorney Harris appears dismissive of the ICJ’s rulings, despite the Court being the world’s highest legal authority with general and universal jurisdiction.

Empty words

The Vice President’s calls for the respect of international law and human rights ultimately prove hollow. She stated that while Israel has the right to defend itself, it must do so in a manner that “respects international humanitarian law.” Yet, both Harris and Biden showed disregard for the International humanitarian law, which explicitly acknowledges wars of national liberation as a legitimate right of occupied peoples, as outlined in the Geneva Conventions.

Harris repudiates the international law to align with the US characterisation of Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” since its 2006 parliamentary elections victory. By overlooking Israel’s occupation, she is unlikely to ever acknowledge Hamas as a Palestinian resistance movement engaged in armed struggle against colonial occupation.

In her March 2024 speech in Selma, the Vice President went as far as reversing reality to portray Palestinian resistance as genocidal. She asserted that Israel—a nuclear-armed occupying force—faces a constant threat of “annihilation” from Hamas, an implicit euphemism for genocide. “Hamas cannot control Gaza, and the threat Hamas poses to the people of Israel must be eliminated,” she proclaimed.

A few months earlier, the Vice President had met with Arab leaders to communicate the US vision for Gaza’s future, envisioning some day-after scenarios where Hamas would have no role, thus undermining the very right to self-determination for Palestinians that she claims to support.

Harris and Trump once again find common ground on Hamas. Following the October 7 attack, Trump stated that if he returns to the White House, he would “fully support Israel in defeating, dismantling, and permanently destroying the terrorist group Hamas.”

Both Trump and Harris have unconditionally supported Israel in ways that undermine Palestinians’ rights under international law. The main difference lies in their styles: Trump flaunts his disdain for international law and human rights, while Harris, consistent with the Democrats’ Orwellian rhetoric, projects an image of adhering to them.

Hypocrisy

In her interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, the presidential candidate was pressed on whether she would change the policy on military aid to Israel. She vowed to continue Biden’s policies, including the supply of weapons, despite this violating the Leahy Law that prohibits US assistance to any military unit that is known to commit “a gross violation of human rights”.

As Harris clarified her position, she revealed that, if elected, her genocidal policies would be indistinguishable from Trump’s, who advocates for Israel to “finish the job”.

There is nothing more revealing of Harris’s deceptive rhetoric than her talk of supporting a ceasefire deal and displaying a broken heart over the suffering of civilians in Gaza, while simultaneously sending more lethal weapons to Israel.

Worse still, her Selma speech made it clear that the fate of the ceasefire deal doesn’t depend on Israel, but Hamas: “Hamas claims it wants a ceasefire. Well, there is a deal on the table. And as we have said, Hamas needs to agree to that deal.”

Harris and Trump surprisingly clashed over Gaza during the presidential debate. As Trump accused her of “hating” Israel for advocating a ceasefire, Harris firmly defended her lifelong support for Israel. Indeed, for many Arab and Muslim Americans, her stance, reinforced by the Democratic National Convention where Palestinian voices were muted as she pledged to continue arming Israel, has obliterated any notion of her being the lesser of two evils on Palestine.

Harris has now revealed herself as the female face of “Genocide Joe.” Arab and Muslim voters who still cling on to the hope that she might adopt a more anti-war stance, or are considering voting for her out of fear of Trump, must confront the harsh reality: what could be worse than Harris aiding and abetting genocide, supporting illegal occupation, annexation, and settlements?

By: Aicha el Basri  –  a Moroccan author and journalist. She is also a former spokeswoman for the African Union and the United Nations Mission in Darfur, and recipient of the 2015 American Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling.