The poltergeist is back. Will it scare Kamala Harris?

Kamala Harris hosted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his Jerusalem office, November, 2017. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO) (TOI July 18, 2018).

Over two years ago, I wrote a blog for The Times of Israel entitled, “Obama’s ghost  haunts the Democratic party.” It still does, as has become evident during the present Presidential campaigns, which are currently in full swing. As they say, the poltergeist is back.

It is well known that the the Obama White House and Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not get along. Then Vice President Joe Biden, who had been supportive of Israel for over thirty years in the Senate, was an exception. Michael Oren, then Israel’s ambassador to the United States, wrote in his book “Ally” that when he was not otherwise welcome in the Obama White House, the door to the office of the Vice President (Biden) was always open to him. That is not to say that Biden and Israel always agreed. Biden was  supportive of Obama’s Iran nuke deal (Joint Plan of Action, “JCPOA”), a deal which Israel and Netanyahu emphatically opposed. Still, when the issue of whether the United States should veto UN resolution 2334 which, among other things, provided that Jerusalem’s Old City, where Jews had lived for over 3,000 years, constituted an illegal settlement, Biden argued that Obama should veto the resolution, but Obama refused to do so.

Fast forward to January 21, 2021, when Biden was inaugurated as President of The United States. Unfortunately, he surrounded himself with old Obama advisors. Antony Blinken, who had been Obama’s Deputy Secretary of State, became Biden’s Secretary of State. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s National Security Advisor, the highest post in the White House on foreign policy, had been Obama’s Director of Policy and Hillary Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff, when she was Obama’s Secretary of State, Biden appointed Jacob Lew to be the United States Ambassador to Israel. From 2009 -2010 Lew was a Deputy Secretary of State, From 2012-2013, he was Obama’s Chief of Staff.

So far, Kamala Harris seems to have similar views of Israel as the members of the Biden/Obama crew. Just last week, she hired Nasrina Bargzie to join the the Harris campaign to lead outreach to Muslim and Arab-American communities. An Afghan-American, Bargzie is well known for her hostile views towards Israel. Similarly, Harris appointed Israeli-American Ilan Goldberg as a liaison to the Jewish community for her campaign. Goldberg was an outspoken supporter of the Iran nuke deal.

All of the above-described appointments have two things in common:
1.  All have experience which goes back to the Obama administration.
2.  All share Obama’s view that American policy toward Israel should focus on making an agreement with the Palestinians, not dealing with the threat that Iran poses to Israel.

That is understandable with Biden. He is now nearing the end of his one-term presidency. He must be looking at his legacy. The best that he can do is hope to effect a settlement of some sort between Israel and Hamas, ending the war in Gaza, but in the short time he has left, he cannot end the present threat that Iran poses to Israel.

A bit of history is helpful. Early in his second term, George Bush 43, coined the term “axis of evil”, which was composed of Iran, Iraq, and North Korea. Iran’s response was to create what it termed “the axis of resistance, which it headed. In fact, back then, the axis of resistance (now sometimes just called “the resistance”) was relatively insignificant. Today it, still headed by Iran, is much stronger. It includes not only Iran and its proxies Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), but a Shia group of terrorists in Iraq, which has already fired a number of missiles at Israel. It also includes Hamas, but even though Hamas receives millions of dollars and advanced missile technology annually from Iran, Hamas is a small part of the axis of resistance. (For an excellent explanation of the axis of resistance, see the YouTube video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek7P0hFzoNM )

Syria is also a part of the axis of resistance. Recently, by announcing that it is ready to attack Israel, Turkey, if not actually part of the axis of resistance, is allied with it.

Including Turkey, the axis of resistance goes all the way from Europe on the northwest of Israel to Yemen on the southeast. In their distorted view of Islam, the members of the axis of resistance share a religious belief that Allah promised Muslims all the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, so Israel must be eliminated entirely and replaced with a Muslim theocracy.

When so viewed, the October 7th massacre was merely a shot across Israel’s bow. The reality is that no matter what the result of negotiations between Hamas in Gaza and Israel are, the real threat to Israel will remain and Israel will be no less threatened than it already is.

As Biden’s Vice President, Harris must be supportive of his view that peace with Hamas is peace for Israel. Still, Harris is a smart, perceptive woman who, as President, would not be so bound. (She is far more perceptive than Trump, who does not seem to understand anything, but is the best huckster since P.T. Barnum.) Because Harris is smart and perceptive, she should understand that Israel’s real enemy is the Iran-headed axis of resistance and not just Hamas. My worry is that Harris will surround herself with old Obama people who are entrenched in the  world that existed in 2009, when Obama took office, and take their advice. I can only hope that she will appoint people who understand the present.