By Mark Goldfeder
On Tuesday, Vice President Kamala Harris gave a talk about voting rights to students at George Mason University. During the question-and-answer session that followed, a student complained that “just a few days ago there were funds allocated to continue backing Israel, which hurts my heart because it’s an ethnic genocide and a displacement of people — the same that happened in America — and I’m sure you’re aware of this.”
Instead of taking the opportunity to actually educate the people in the room about the relationship between the United States and Israel, or even, at the very least, to correct the record by factually responding to the false and discriminatory allegations made against the Jewish State, the vice president instead thanked the woman for her contribution to the discussion and told her that “your truth should not be suppressed and it must be heard, right?”
Harris’ response was irresponsible and dangerous. She should immediately apologize, because facts matter and truth is not subjective.
Here are the facts: Last week, an overwhelming bipartisan majority of Congress approved (by a vote of 420-9) $1 billion in funding for Israel’s Iron Dome, a missile defense system that protects innocent Israeli and Palestinian men, women and children alike from the indiscriminate rockets attacks of terrorist groups like Hamas. Iron Dome uses radar to detect incoming missiles and shoot them down before they kill innocent people. It poses absolutely zero offensive threat to anyone, anywhere. All it does is reduce the death toll in Israel, and minimize the need for preemptive strikes and ground maneuvers.
Iron Dome’s store of interceptors was somewhat depleted last May after Hamas, a U.S. designated terror organization, fired over 4,300 rockets at Israeli population centers. It is beyond shameful that even nine U.S. lawmakers would vote against funding a defensive system that saves innocent lives. A vote against Iron Dome is nothing short of a vote for more effective terrorism, and for more dead civilians.
The vice president could have easily explained all this. She could have also clarified American military aid to Israel is generous to be sure, but it is an investment and not a charity. Supporting Israel in combatting Middle East terrorist groups and expansionist potentates is crucial for America’s own national security. Israel is our closest ally in the Middle East and our only reliable source of intelligence and cyber-defense in that region. As President Biden once said at an Israeli Day Celebration, “…Were there no Israel, America would have to invent one. We’d have to invent one because…you protect our interests like we protect yours.” Our shared security interests include but are not limited to preventing nuclear proliferation, combating terrorism, containing Iranian, Turkish and Russian expansionism, and promoting the rule of democracy. In addition, American military aid to Israel is actually spent in the United States, providing jobs and economic growth that benefit our own economy and defense industry.
The vice president could have, and should have, explained all that as well. But at the very least she had a responsibility to call out the harmful slander of Israel as a genocidal state, and to debunk the false narrative of Israel as an occupying power.
The idea that Israel is committing ethnic genocide against the Palestinians is just an uninspired update on a classic anti-Semitic trope: the blood libel. Thankfully it is also quite easy to refute — at least for someone who is interested in doing so. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide says that genocidal acts are “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.” The problem with the claim that Israel is committing genocide (aside from the complete lack of evidence for such a charge) is that the irrefutable math here tells a very different story. Since 1967, the Palestinian Arab population has actually increased by 387%.
The vice president, however, said none of that. Nor did she push back on the fundamentally false narrative of displacement which denies the demonstrable historical and legal Jewish claims to the land and places the blame for the current situation entirely on Israel.
Maybe the student asking the question really did not know that the Jews are the indigenous people living in their own ancestral homeland. Maybe the others in that classroom weren’t aware that Israel has repeatedly (over 30 times) offered plans for peace and division of the land, and that some of those plans were even supported by much of the Arab world.
But the vice president knew, and she didn’t tell them.
Our government has a responsibility to protect its citizens from acts of hate and bigotry that are motivated by discriminatory animus- including antisemitism. Study after study has shown that the kind of inflammatory discriminatory rhetoric that the vice president heard and appeared to affirm eventually leads to violent anti-Semitic action, and to innocent Jewish people around the world getting hurt. The vice president had an opportunity to distance herself and her party from these demonizing and delegitimizing lies. Instead, she gave them validation.
No one is saying that this student should have had her question or her voice suppressed. Free speech, even wrong and offensive speech, is part of what makes our democracy great. But as Harris herself once said, “Anyone who claims to be a leader must speak like a leader. That means speaking with integrity and truth.”
An apology, and a correction, are the necessary next steps.
Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder, Esq. has served as the founding Editor of the Cambridge University Press Series on Law and Judaism, a Trustee of the Center for Israel Education, and as an adviser to the Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations. Read full bio here.