Some are calling it Kamala Harris’s “Sister Souljah moment,” referring to when, in June 1992, then-presidential candidate Bill Clinton publicly rebuked racist comments made by a popular female hip-hop artist as a way of distancing himself from extreme elements of the Democratic base.
For her part, Harris appeared to be drawing her own line Wednesday, shutting down chants from pro-Palestinian protesters at a Detroit rally on Wednesday, with a firm, “I’m speaking now.” The chants— “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide”—received this stern rebuke from the vice president: “You know what? If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that. Otherwise, I’m speaking.”
Harris’s team said the Democratic nominee for president had already met with the protesters earlier so any suggestion she was ignoring this important segment of her constituency was wrong. Her defenders on social media applauded her willingness to call out disruptive tactics that feed into the notion that the party is divided. “At a moment when former President Donald J. Trump is attacking her as ‘radical’ her confrontation with protesters on the left offered a visual rebuttal,” wrote the New York Times’s Rebecca Davis O’Brien.
Heckling protesters and Sista Souljah moments aside, the incident raises another question, just as important—is Kamala hiding from the Israel–Gaza issue? And are the mainstream media and the Biden administration helping her do it?
Consider that just four months ago, her boss had stood up at the State of the Union and pledged a military “surge” of humanitarian aid into Gaza to save starving Palestinians on the ground. “To the leadership of Israel I say this: Humanitarian assistance cannot be a secondary consideration or a bargaining chip,” Biden said. “Protecting and saving innocent lives has to be a priority.”
By July—just four months later—the humanitarian pier project was built and then dismantled amid stunning failure. A major reason: The Israelis never provided safe passage for the aid delivery. The entire spectacle has been memory-holed. But the population in Gaza is getting less aid than it was in March, and is now at risk of suffering from diseases not seen since the 1950s—like polio—and somehow the “priority” has just vanished as a topic at White House and State Department briefings.
Calls for Israel to allow more trucks into Gaza? Silence. Questions about what aid organizations are equipped to deliver global donations waiting at the border? Crickets. Updates on the maritime corridor which in May was hailed as a “multinational and combined effort” between the U.S., Cyprus, Israel, the UN, and international donors, including the UAE, the United Kingdom, and the European Union? None.
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