Karma for Kamala: Ignoring Gaza has lost Harris the US election

We did it, Joe.

The race was Kamala Harris’s to lose. Trump ran a terrible campaign; barring a quick shift at a McDonald’s, his heart no longer seemed to be in it. He eschewed traditional media for the bro podcast circuit. Manchild tech billionaire Elon Musk gripped Trump in a bear hug for the last weeks of the campaign, acting as a noxious surrogate.

The former president failed to make any of his juvenile barbs stick to Harris and managed to collapse support among Latino voters just before the election after a comedian referred to Puerto Rico as a "floating island of garbage" at one of his last campaign rallies.

There was no, "Because you’d be in jail," moment. He never managed to build a cohesive narrative. He even failed at turning two assassination attempts into any real boost in the polls.

The real unknown variable was Gaza. After a year of watching the Dems back Israel to the hilt, it was unclear how many Liberal voters would give up the crumbs Harris was offering in solidarity with Palestinians. Students across the country had created encampments despite brutal police crackdowns and physical assaults from pro-Israel counterprotestors. Prominent celebrities, academics, and other public figures were speaking out at considerable personal risk.

It did seem for a brief moment that perhaps Harris had managed to capture any opposition.

The advocacy group the Uncommitted National Movement had mounted a pressure campaign during the Democratic primaries, resulting in 37 uncommitted delegates being sent to the DNC. Despite their sit-ins and vocal criticism, they failed to achieve even minor concessions from the Harris campaign, like allowing a Palestinian to speak at the convention.

Then, in early October they released a three-minute video endorsing Harris. The narrator warned of the threat Trump posed to Palestinians in Gaza over footage of the performative aid air drops and photos of the destroyed World Central Kitchen convoy that occurred under the Biden/Harris administration.

The day before the election, Middle East Eye published an article detailing the breakdown of the relationship between the national group leadership and the grassroots movement, centring on the former’s capitulation to the Democratic Party, which resulted in an eventual split. MEE looked through the Uncommitted National Movement’s Federal Election Commission filings to discover they had received over $400,000 from the Democratic-aligned PAC Movement Voter Project.

Movement Voter Project is explicit in its expectations that "partners" will not endorse third-party candidates. Their website states, "We would not support groups to get out the vote for such candidates." Uncommitted received its first payment of $100,000 from the PAC on March 18, the day it was founded.

Kamala Harris rehashes 2016 election, voters did too

As though to add insult to injury, Kamala Harris paired her outright rejection of Arab American voters with courting neocons. Alongside Taylor Swift and Beyonce, the Democrats boasted about endorsements from former Vice President Dick Cheney and seventeen former Reagan staffers.

Cheney’s daughter, Liz, who lost her seat as Wyoming’s sole congressional Representative to a Trump pick in her primary in 2023, did press for Harris. While on The View, co-host Whoopi Goldberg stated Liz Cheney’s "moral core is magnificent," and tapped her to become Harris’s Attorney General. Goldberg then said she would feel "a lot better" if Cheney was in charge of the CIA or the FBI.

Harris was likely amenable. She stated in a CNN interview that she was committed to "inviting diversity of opinion" and felt a Republican on her cabinet would benefit America. That value of diversity clearly did not extend to those who wanted a ceasefire.

Harris failed to demonstrate even a basic capacity to empathise with Palestinians at every turn. She responded to every protest with the same callous, insistent, "I’m speaking." The implication was clear: everyone on the Left was expected to bend the knee.

Many did. The justifications I have heard among the pro-Palestinian voters who eventually cast a ballot for Harris were varied. Some admitted naked self-interest, while others pointed to Trump’s track record on Israel and his capacity to somehow be worse for Palestinians. Less convincingly, many say they felt Harris would be easier to push towards a ceasefire once elected.

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Still now, top Democrats are likely mobilising to make criticism of Israel increasingly difficult. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has committed to passing the Antisemitism Awareness Act in the lame-duck period, attaching it to a must-pass bill.

The legislation would make it a statutory requirement for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights to consider the IHRA definition of antisemitism when investigating discrimination complaints.

The IHRA definition is incredibly broad, and includes "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavour." Good luck with any future encampments.

In the final week before the election, while Republicans donned garbage bags and worked themselves into a frenzy over an euthanised squirrel and male concubines, the Kamala campaign sent Bill Clinton to condescend to Arab Americans in the crucial swing state of Michigan.

Israel, he said, were "forced" to kill civilians by Hamas, who he claimed failed to understand, "[Israelis] were there first, before their faith existed."

The former president needed only a few minutes to dispel the years of myth-making around the Oslo Accords. America has never been a neutral arbiter.

After treating Arab Americans as expendable and dismissing pro-Palestinian advocates outright, Harris found their votes simply were not there. It has been an act of hubris that potentially outstrips even the arrogance of the Hillary 2016 campaign.

In the end, Harris campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond addressed the crowd at Howard University stating the Vice President would not appear until the following day. She was no longer speaking.

Alex Foley is an educator and painter living in Brighton, UK. They have a research background in molecular biology of health and disease. They currently work on preserving fragile digital materials related to mass death atrocities in the MENA region.

Follow them on X: @foleywoley

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Opinions expressed in this article remain those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The New Arab, its editorial board or staff.