Vice President Kamala Harris expressed her condolences for protesters demanding an end to Israel’s assault on Gaza when she came face to face with a protester who accused the US of complicity in genocide and said he was right .
Her words will be seized upon by critics who accuse her of siding with America’s enemies, but they also illustrate the complexity of a spiraling crisis in the Middle East.
The moment is revealed in a newly posted video from her visit to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on Thursday, which was closed to the media.
Harris told students she had invested in them when a protester intervened
‘And genocide, right? Billions of dollars in genocide?” the activist said, according to the video posted by a pro-Palestinian student group.
Harris said she respected his right to speak, but that she was in the middle of a speech and wanted a ceasefire, a statement that drew cheers from her audience.
Campus police removed the Keffiyeh-clad man.
‘But what about the genocide? But what about the genocide?’, he shouted as he left.
And he added: ‘42,000 people are dead. 19,000 children are dead. And you won’t call it genocide.’
Harris turned back to her audience when calm was restored and said, “Listen, what he’s talking about, it’s real. That’s not the topic I came to talk about today, but it’s real and I respect his voice.”
Harris never used the term “genocide” when describing the military assault on Gaza in the aftermath of the October 7 attack on Israel.
However, she has repeatedly expressed concern about the number of civilian casualties and recently stepped up her call for Israel to allow more aid to the Palestinian enclave.
The UN reports that no food has entered northern Gaza for almost two weeks. Israel must urgently do more to ease the flow of aid to those in need,” Harris wrote on the social platform X.
Vice President Kamala Harris is under pressure from her party’s left to do more to rein in Israel and the attack on Gaza, which has killed more than 40,000 people in the past year.
She has had to navigate complicated political terrain. President Joe Biden remained close to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as his troops stormed the Gaza Strip and many other world leaders demanded an end to the attack.
That has caused problems for Harris as she tries to hold together support from Muslim Americans and from Jewish voters.
Critics of
Another said: “Harris does not like our most important ally, Israel.”
And when she was asked in Detroit on Saturday whether she could lose the election because of the anger felt by Arabs and Muslims as well as supporters of the Palestinian cause over the civilian deaths in Gaza, she responded by repeating the brutality of the Hamas attack on Israel.
“The first, most tragic story is October 7,” she said.