Last Wednesday morning I set my alarm clock to 3:45 in order to listen to the Kamala Harris-Donald Trump presidential debate on ABC. I was particularly curious to see and hear how Harris would fare in her new role as the democratic candidate in the 2024 presidential election, following the embarrassing performance of President Joe Biden in his debate with Trump on June 27.
The presidential election is an internal US event concerning the choice of the American people for the head of the US administration in the next four years. However, since our continued existence as an independent, sovereign state in an increasingly unstable and violent Middle East is unfortunately becoming progressively more dependent on the good will of the democratically elected president of the US, we cannot remain partial to the election results on the other side of the Atlantic.
It is no secret that if it were up to the Jewish citizens of Israel, Donald Trump would be elected by a landslide, this being contrary to the preference of American Jewry, 60-65% of whom are expected to vote for Kamala Harris on November 5. It is a fact that American Jewry is much more liberal and progressive than the Jews in Israel, and in the current situation is much more supportive than them of a far-reaching deal to bring back the Israeli hostages from their Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip.
While no one can blame us in Israel for viewing the contest in the US through Israeli eyes, I find it shocking how ignorant most Israelis seem to be about the two presidential candidates. From conversations I have had since September 11 with friends and acquaintances, I learned that, like myself, very few of them knew much about Harris, even though she has served for the last three and a half years as Biden’s vice president, and before that, inter alia, as the attorney-general of California and as a US senator for California. The majority stated that they prefer Trump because they believe he will be better than Harris for Israel – believe, but do not necessarily know for fact, especially since there is no definitive answer to the question of what is “good for Israel” at this stage.
Few of the people I talked to had actually seen the debate and thus had not been subjected to Harris’s much more impressive performance. In fact, according to a poll conducted by CNN right after the debate, 63% of those who had watched it felt her performance had been better than Trump’s performance.
While Harris appeared attentive to Trump when he spoke, when she was speaking, Trump put on a facial expression that combined a grumpy look with a crooked smirk.
HIS PRESENTATION was full of falsehoods and unsubstantiated statements: For example, he said that Venezuela – and other countries from which illegal immigrants into the US originate – have emptied their prisons and sent millions of criminals to the US (in fact, in recent years, crime rates have fallen in the US); he came up with a false story about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, who allegedly were seen eating the pets (cats and dogs) of local inhabitants; he predicted that if Harris is elected, Israel will cease to exist within two years, from which he concludes that Jews, who will vote for Harris, should have their heads examined; and finally he also made unsubstantiated statements about the alleged economic foibles of the Biden administration, on the basis of frequently totally imaginary statistics.
What is Kamala Harris's potential weakness?
No doubt one of Harris’s greatest weaknesses is in the sphere of macroeconomics. When asked about her views on economics, she spoke of plans for supporting small businesses, which is a microeconomic issue at best. One may assume that she opposes extreme laissez-faire economics, and doing away with most forms of gatekeeping, but it is unclear whether she has any clear ideas about how the various economic mechanisms work. Her support for public health insurance elicited a comment by Trump accusing her of being a Marxist.
But of course, all this does not interest most Israelis. What we care about are the candidates’ positions regarding the Middle East in general, Israel’s current war in the Gaza Strip, and against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in particular. Harris keeps referring to the Hamas incursion into Israel on October 7 as an act of terror involving the massacre and rape of hundreds of innocent Israeli civilians and reiterates her full support for Israel’s right to defend itself.
However, she also speaks of the suffering of innocent civilians in the Gaza Strip, the massive physical destruction and large number of civilian casualties, including children, as well as the need to bring all this to a rapid end. Like Biden, she speaks of a Palestinian state forming part of a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Perhaps the main difference between her approach and Biden’s is that he refers to himself as a Zionist while she does not, and his approach includes an emotional element that hers lacks. In fact, Trump also believes that Hamas is a terrorist organization, that Israel has a right to defend itself, and that the current war must be ended with a ceasefire and the return of all the hostages. Let us also not forget that Trump’s plan for an Israeli-Palestinian settlement, which he made public in a press conference when he was still president in January 2020, included the eventual establishment of a Palestinian state.
Furthermore, Israel and Trump both laud Trump’s move of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in May 2018, without mentioning that the movement was to west Jerusalem, and that the embassy in Jerusalem does not only serve bilateral US-Israel relations, but the Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank and Gaza Strip as well. Thus, the embassy includes a section that acts on behalf of USAID, one of whose tasks is to improve “the lives of the Palestinian people to set conditions for a viable two-state solution,” as quoted on the US embassy website.
My bottom line is that though in my opinion Harris is not necessarily the best candidate for US President, under the circumstances she is the preferable of the two options. Harris’s candidate for vice president, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, has referred to Trump and his candidate for vice president as “weird.” Last week’s presidential debate demonstrated that “weird” is probably an understatement.
The writer worked in the Knesset for many years as a researcher, and has published extensively both journalistic and academic articles on current affairs and Israeli politics. Her most recent book, Israel’s Knesset Members: A Comparative Study of an Undefined Job, was published by Routledge.