OPINION:
If one is to trust Vice President Kamala Harris, each American must suspend disbelief and consign any working cerebral synapses to the dustbin. The unholy alliance of China, Russia and Iran, already running rings around President Biden and his team, are salivating at the prospect of Ms. Harris assuming the presidency. To understand their exuberance, you need look no further than her contempt for Israel.
“It is important for the American people to remember the war in Gaza is not a binary issue. However, too often, the conversation is binary when the reality is anything but.”
So said the vice president after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last month. Of course, the Democratic presidential candidate did not extend Mr. Netanyahu the customary courtesy of the joint appearance in his first visit to Washington since Oct. 7, refused to meet him at Joint Base Andrews and skipped his address before a joint session of Congress.
While the press works overtime to excuse Ms. Harris’ intellectual and rhetorical incoherence, she has been remarkably consistent when it comes to Israel. She has promised to discuss an arms embargo on Israel, which would be an unprecedented move.
Ms. Harris’ contempt for Israel also includes charging Mr. Netanyahu with committing “genocide.” At the Munich Security Conference in February 2023, she called for the immediate establishment of a Palestinian state and refused to answer questions about Palestinian Authority corruption and the continuing threat of Hamas terrorism. And her selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate over Pennsylvania’s popular governor, Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, adds to fears about her position on antisemitism and Israel.
Ms. Harris and the Democratic Party’s “woke” mindset collapses humans into a binary of oppressors and oppressed. When Ms. Harris and progressive Democrats look at Israel and Hamas, they can see only critical race theory.
Collectively, this should be alarming to those concerned not only about the fate of not only the world’s only Jewish state but also that of the United States.
That is not simply because of our shared spiritual heritage or because Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Rather, it is because of what the survival of both nations means for the cause of liberty and freedom.
One can acknowledge civilian suffering and call on Israel to continue to do all it can to mitigate their suffering, as it does. One can even accept the Biden-Harris administration’s approach — however strategically ineffective — of coordinating with Israel on pauses to allow humanitarian relief to reach those is need.
That, however, is a far cry from questioning the objective of Israel’s war: the destruction of the Hamas death cult. The war between freedom and tyranny is binary. We face enemies who tell us repeatedly that they want to kill us. The destruction of Israel is the first step on the road to replacing the American-led world order with a new dark age dominated by theocratic fanatics and their totalitarian co-conspirators in Beijing and Moscow.
Ms. Harris’ disdain for Israel masks a strategic incoherence that has given us the shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan, the appeasement of Iran’s ayatollahs and the cratering of our defense budget at the most dangerous time for our nation since the Cuban missile crisis.
Ms. Harris is content to leave our most important ally in the Middle East to fend for itself while the world’s most sinister theocracy marches unopposed toward a nuclear weapon. And make no mistake: China and Russia will fill the power vacuum left by the United States.
Lord Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth who died in 2020, had it right: “The Jewish people in its very being constitute a living protest against a world of hatred, violence and war.”
But the drive to genocide has never been about Jews alone — it is about freedom-loving people around the globe. It is about us, and that is something Kamala Harris does not understand.
• Robert Wilkie served in the Trump administration as the 10th secretary of veterans affairs and as undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness. He is currently a distinguished fellow at the Center for American Security at the America First Policy Institute.
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