Jews, don’t be surprised

These are treacherous times for Israelis, and Americans face a consequential election. The Democrat candidate for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, has a well-documented record of animus towards Israel and sympathy for Palestinians, and she continues to show her bias.

If Kamala Harris is victorious on November 5, she will inherit a Biden administration replete with seasoned anti-Israel operatives most of whom are President Barack Obama-era alumni, and who, at every turn, advantage Iran. The hundreds of billions of dollars awarded Iran, directly or indirectly, by presidents Obama and Biden fueled the October 7 Hamas massacre, the Hezbollah terror in the north and the Houthis’ provocations.

One day after Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu’s fourth speech to a joint session of Congress, and one that received fifty standing ovations, Harris spoke with Bibi. She hadn’t presided over the impactful session as President of the Senate nor did she hear his lauded speech. Instead, she was in Indianapolis with Zeta Phi Beta, one of the nation’s oldest Black sororities.

Bibi’s conversation with Harris was sandwiched between his conferring with President Biden and then later with former President Trump. The White House reported, “The Vice President expressed concern regarding civilian casualties and discussed the need to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The Vice President also expressed her concern about actions that undermine stability and security in the West Bank, such as extremist settler violence and settlement expansion.”

David Friedman, former American Ambassador to Israel, critiqued her post-meeting comments. “You are no friend of Israel and you have exhibited a shocking lack of command of the relevant facts. Your insensitivity to Jewish suffering and failure to attribute good and evil where they belong, means you will never help to bring peace to this troubled region.”

An anonymous official also shared about Netanyahu’s reaction, “We should hope that the things the vice president said at the press conference will not be interpreted by Hamas as if a gap has opened between the United States and Israel, which would delay a deal.”

On July 27, an Iranian-built missile from Hezbollah killed a dozen young Israeli citizens playing in a soccer field. Were Iran and Hezbollah testing Israel with this red line crossing assault? While Israel plans retaliation, many in America are thrashing around trying to prevent a broader war. John F. Kirby, a spokesman for the US National Security Council, said, “Israel has a right to defend itself — no nation should have to live with this kind of threat.” Envoy Amos Hochstein, responsible for the Lebanon portfolio, similarly told Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, “…that Jerusalem has a right to defend itself against the Iranian terror proxy but must avoid an all-out war and minimize civilian casualties.”

Almost a week after the deadly missile attack in the Golan, Harris had not yet commented.

It seems that Biden and Harris are OK with Israel’s self-defense but not OK with Israel responding strategically, preemptively or with a show of dominant force. Let’s remember that President Roosevelt on December 8, 1941, at a joint session of Congress, and in response to Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack, included the words, “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”

The ayatollahs, Hamas, Hezbollah and Houthis need a strong dose of “absolute.”

The smart players in Teheran have evaluated Kamala Harris and her far Left extreme radical politics. Arab investment to undermine American education with an anti-Israel, antisemitic mindset paid enormous dividends with the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel chaos on American campuses. Now they can see that Harris’s intersectional/Critical Race Theory sympathies formulaically relegate Israel to be the enemy. Iran can revel in the “common cause,” noting that it was reported, “While speaking with Israeli President Isaac Herzog to mark the Jewish holiday of Passover in April, Harris shared ‘deep concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza and discussed steps to increase the flow of life-saving humanitarian aid to Palestinian civilians and ensure its safe distribution.’”

Tehran must also be reassured to learn that the majority of American Jews will likely vote Democrat therefore placing Israel’s importance behind other progressive causes. They must delight in hearing American Jews’ dissatisfaction over Israeli politics and their second-guessing of the IDF’s conduct of the complex Gaza war. They could well wonder why the Jews have such short memories or have other more important things to think about.

With less than 100 days to go until the 2024 American elections, the Democrat Party’s well-funded, aggressive reach and frequency campaign, bolstered by Hollywood A-lister endorsements, bombards America with images of Kamala Harris trying to look presidential. Concurrent with the election’s clubhouse turn, America’s geopolitical profile on the unsettled world stage is compromised by President Biden’s lame duck status and the reveal of his carefully hidden cognitive deficit. It is a certainty that America’s commitment to its “indispensable ally” Israel will surely be tested.

The wit Oscar Levant famously said, “I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.” Massive efforts are underway to white-out Vice President Harris’s cackling buffoonery and word salad orations. Her California ascension has undergone a major rewrite with the Willie Brown chapter glossed over. Her “Most-Liberal-Senator” record is there for review. Her pontifications in 2016 that it is racist to refer to “radical Islamic terrorism” will probably be given context.

Mainstream media would have you believe in her miraculous transformation and that as the presidentially assigned Border Czar she never had any responsibility for America’s southern invasion (or for the resultant murders and rapes by illegal immigrant), and that her record as a criminal-freeing California prosecutor is incorrect. Her anti-Israel history is now being mitigated by highlighting her Jewish spouse, and even by her possible selection of a Jewish vice-presidential candidate or one with a Jewish spouse.

Are the optics of the younger Harris versus the older, weathered Trump convincing the undecided and the Jewish Left that she is somehow a different person from the one with her well documented radical past? Is the Trump Derangement Syndrome so powerful that any kind of rational comparison is impossible?

Jews, please don’t be surprised when things go sideways if Harris is elected. You have been warned.