If Harris Opposes Trump’s Horrific Gaza Policies, She Should Say So

Her defenders insist she would have been “better on Gaza.” This is very possible. But why doesn’t she explain how in her own words?

One of the more tedious, fruitless, morally vacuous political “debates” is between those who argue that organizations that sought to pressure Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris, and the voters angered and disgusted by Harris’ refusal to break from Biden on his support for the genocide in Gaza, are somehow responsible for the horrors unleashed by the Trump regime. The general argument is: Yes, Harris supported a genocide at a 7, but Trump supports it at a 9, so anything that falls between 7 and 9 on the genocide scale should require some deep introspection and soul-searching from those who were viewed as insufficiently nice to Harris on the topic of Gaza. Including, it turns out, those like the Uncommitted Movement who still largely supported her and explicitly told people not to vote for Trump. Here is a recent, typical tweet from the Kamala Harris campaign’s former director of Rapid Response:

Some on the other side counter that Harris would be “worse on Gaza.” But this, to me, was always absurd, mostly because Trump had already been president and was a glib, violent, hardcore zionist when he was. There was a brief period after the Trump-imposed ceasefire on January 19 that some “Trump would be better” types spiked the football, but this, clearly, turned out to be premature. The point is: I think morally healthy people don’t really fall in either camp—and think the whole back and forth is depraved and bizarre. The idea of putting two candidates, one in a counterfactual alternative universe, in some type of genocide horserace while said genocide is ongoing is the lowest form of political discourse: pointless, smug, partisan, and cruel. The very premise of the “debate,” of course, makes little moral sense. Putting the burden of winning elections on dinky nonprofits and obscure, powerless voters, rather than the extremely powerful people in charge, is the exact wrong way to view politics and political obligations.

So, the question for me is: Six months after the election, how can the energy and anger that goes into these tedious recriminations be parlayed into something constructive and useful? Something that can actually help the people in Gaza, rather than scoring online points for people seeking to Look Correct. Once again, it ought to involve redirecting our animus away from each other and towards those with actual power. Thus one fruitful step (and one, incidentally, that would help boost the case for those looking to score political points against Uncommitted and other “Gaza voters”) would be for Harris to publicly criticize Trump over Gaza, to articulate what her surrogates repeatedly claim: how she would, in fact, be “better on Gaza.” What are the specific steps Trump is taking—from explicitly endorsing ethnic cleansing to continuing the Biden policy of unconditional arm sales—that she would not have done, and why are they bad?

Harris has made several public statements since she lost the election last November. She has (correctly) criticized Trump over his tariff policies, his immigration policies, and his reckless rhetoric around taking over Canada and Greenland. She’s emphasized the importance of “self care,” she’s criticized Elon Musk meddling in Wisconsin politics. She praised the release Hamas captives in February, and she made a second statement celebrating the release of Hamas captive Edan Alexander last week. But she has, somewhat conspicuously, been completely silent on Trump’s genocidal Gaza policies. She has made no mention in speeches, social media, or any of her public statements about the accelerating humanitarian disaster in Gaza since Israel imposed a total aid blockade on March 2 and began a new bombing campaign on March 18. Over 3,000 dead Palestinians under Trump’s watch, and the only two vaguely related statements she’s made have been entirely about Israeli captives. If Harris would be meaningfully better on Gaza—as her high-profile supporters keep insisting—someone should tell Harris this, since she doesn't seem to know.

Slimy reporters and pundits keep shoving microphones in front of “Gaza voters” asking them if they regret not voting, trying to gin up viral gotcha coverage. Perhaps one of these dozen high status media types can try interrogating the whole basis for this enterprise and take their tremendous media resources and ask Harris if she, in fact, agrees with their premise in the first place.

Harris joining calls from anti-genocide activists and progressives in Congress seeking to pressure Israel with an arms embargo, and demanding Trump end his genocidal policies—with real leverage, not just vague appeals to “ceasefires talks”—would help Harris partisans score the political points they desperately seek to rack up and, far more importantly, would add pressure on the White House and normalize other Democrats coming out and opposing Trump’s genocidal policies more forcefully. Harris is the presumptive front runner for the 2028 Democratic Primary, and given Biden’s rapid deterioration, the most influential and popular Democrat in the country, other than Barack Obama. If she would have indeed been “better on Gaza” rather than a lateral pass who would have more or less let Israel continue destroying Gaza as Trump has—with some nicer rhetoric and a couple more bags of flour—she should come out and say so. She should say what those differences would have been and leverage this distinction for the broader good of helping Palestinians in Gaza.

As she continues not doing so, as she continues to shrug in the face of an unfolding exterminationist campaign, the smug “cc uncommitted movement” counterfactuals begin to look more and more like fanfic than a useful political or moral analytic.