Why Jews Are Concerned About Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris presents herself as someone who is evenhanded, but her actions raise a lot of questions that must be answered for the sake of the safety of the Jewish community.

While Kamala has “surrounded” herself with Jews “from her schoolmates to her colleagues to her close family members,” many are noticing the dissonance between Kamala’s words and deeds, and there is a growing chorus of concern about Kamala from the Jewish community, members of both sides of Congress—Democrats and Republicans—and of course, former President Trump.

Whether she intends to or not, Kamala’s rhetoric seems tailored to the demographic that is the shrill extremist minority that burns the American flag, vandalizes our most sacred monuments, chants “death to America!” and calls for the elimination of Israel and the genocide of the Jewish people.

In just the past few months, Harris has chastised Israel for defending itself, disrespected Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, normalized terrorism, and legitimized anti-Semitism.

Chastising Israel for How It Defends Itself

At Kamala’s well-publicized meeting with Netanyahu this week, she is accused of “insulting” the Prime Minister and jeopardizing the hostage deal with Hamas. Harris came out with a surprising statement after the meeting with Netanyahu, where she attacked Israel for how it is fighting the war against Hamas after their barbaric terror attack on October 7:

Israel has a right to defend itself. And how it does so matters.

“How it does so“?

Perhaps if Kamala had had the decency to attend Netanyahu’s speech to Congress, which she should have presided over, she would know that the civilian casualty rate in Gaza is the lowest in modern urban warfare. Moreover, according to John Spencer, the Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, who was quoted in the speech:

Israel has done more to prevent civilian casualties in war than any military in history, setting a standard that will be both hard and potentially problematic to repeat.

Additionally, one could ask who Kamala is to question Israel on its conduct in warfighting after 10/7 when after 9/11, the United States invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in over 430,000 civilian deaths.

Disrespecting the Prime Minister of Israel

This past week, Kamala, who as Vice President should have officiated over Netanyahu’s speech before Congress, for which he received a bipartisan invitation to give, instead took the opportunity to publicly snub the head of state of one of the U.S.’s closest allies and friends. To add insult to injury, she made a painfully lame excuse that she was already booked for a sorority event with Zeta Phi Beta. 

Harris chose to side with the fifty-plus Democrats who boycotted Netanyahu or called him vile names like a “war criminal” for defending Israel from existential threats. She did this instead of respectfully and constructively engaging with Israel on solutions to the historically intractable problems of the Middle East. In this respect, Kamala has failed her first serious test in diplomacy and statesmanship.

Overall, it is no wonder that Barack Obama, the prior radical left president, came out endorsing Kamala this week. If you remember, Obama and his administration had a history of disrespecting Israel and putting them and the West in danger with the horrible nuclear deal with Iran that removed sanctions, gave Iran billions of dollars to fund terror, and paved the way for them to attain the bomb. Further, you will recall the vile name-calling of Netanyahu attributed to Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor, who called him a:

Chickenshit

It was reported that Obama was so disrespectful of Israel’s Prime Minister that he ate dinner while making Netanyahu wait for him, and it is rumored that eventually, Obama had him ushered out the back door of the White House.

On her current path, Kamala is going along as a continuation of the Obama and Ben Rhodes legacy of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism.

Normalizing Terrorism

After she met with Netanyahu, Kamala fundamentally ignored Israel’s suffering under ceaseless and indiscriminate terror attacks from Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, the Houthis, and Iran, and went on with a rant of sympathy for the Palestinian people, declaring about their “suffering” in Gaza that:

I will not be silent.

Kamala took the side of the Palestinians instead of calling out Hamas for starting the war on October 7, recognizing them as a terrorist proxy of Iran in the Middle East, and calling for a ceasefire based on Hamas’s unconditional surrender, demilitarization, de-radicalization, and the release of the Israelis that they are holding hostage.

Unfortunately, this is not the first time that Kamala has demonstrated radical left-leaning toward Islamic terrorists as she rejected not only the term “illegal alien” (perhaps a symptom of her oft-cited failure as “border czar”) but also said similar to her radical mentor, Barak Obama:

We must have the courage to object to the term ‘Radical Islamic Terrorist.’

Legitimizing Anti-Semitism

As an outcome of the Hamas terror attack on October 7 and the vile and often violent city and campus protests against “Zionists” (i.e., Jews), Kamala chose not to decry antiSemitism and work to protect the Jewish people from the dramatic rise in hate crimes; instead, she opted to denounce Islamophobia, saying:

I’m proud to announce a National Strategy to Counter Islamophobia to protect Muslims.

While Kamala did finally condemn this week the pro-Hamas terrorist protesters’ burning of the U.S. flag and desecration of our monuments with terrorist graffiti, Kamala in the past has been openly sympathetic with and supportive of the pro-terrorist protesters, saying that the protests are:

Showing what human emotion should be.

Further, Kamala’s husband, Doug Emhoff, has been the token face for warding off anti-Semitism; however, he hasn’t accomplished anything substantive as anti-Semitism is at an all-time high in this country. Meanwhile, his daughter, Ella, has been publicly raising money for UNRWA, which has ties to the terrorist attack of October 7 and which Israel is in the process of designating a “terrorist organization.”

A Radical in Moderate Clothing

Aside from Kamala’s stretch of mistreatment of Israel and the Jews, she is known as an extreme leftist so much so that The Hill has called her:

Bernie Sanders with lipstick

They pointed out that GovTrack, which keeps a score of legislators’ voting records, had Kamala as a Senator in 2019 listed as that year’s:

Most liberal [of all U.S. senators]

While Kamala and her well-oiled PR machine try to polish and present her as “Momala” and elegantly photo-ready, the current administration policies have been resoundingly criticized as a failure on everything from border security to our spiraling inflation and national debt, escalating violent crime, and foreign policy blunders like the rushed withdrawal from Afghanistan and the endless Ukraine War.

Destroying All the Gains from the Trump Years

In contrast to Kamala, Trump has been one of the most pro-Jewish and pro-Israel presidents ever, from moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem to recognizing Israel’s annexation of the strategic Golan Heights to withdrawing from the failed Iran deal and putting in place the toughest sanctions on Iran ever to putting forth a peace plan for Israel with the Palestinians and making the Abraham Accords establishing peace with many of Israel’s neighbors.

Trump has voiced surprise at how any Jews could still vote for Kamala in 2024, one who favors pro-Hamas terrorists over their longtime ally and friend, Israel. I can tell you from my conversations with other Jewish people that, while many have been skeptical of the far right, they are becoming more concerned than ever about the radical left.