War zone: Israel lights up Harris-Trump debate

JTA – In the first debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Harris said Israel’s fight against Hamas was justified but that the war “must end immediately” in part because of how many Palestinians have been killed.

Trump predicted that if Harris won, Israel would disappear “within two years”.

Moderators at the debate on Tuesday night, 10 September, in Philadelphia asked Harris to explain her repeated claims that Israel had the right to defend itself, but also that “it matters how” Israel conducts the war.

Harris made the same arguments she has made in the past, saying she would ensure Israel could defend itself and she believed Hamas was to blame for the war.

“Let’s understand how we got here. On 7 October, Hamas, a terrorist organisation, slaughtered 1 200 Israelis, many of them young people who were simply attending a concert, women were horribly raped, and so, absolutely, I said then, I say now, Israel has a right to defend itself. We would,” she said.

“How it does so matters,” Harris said, “because it’s also true that far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed – children, mothers. What we know is that this war must end. It must end immediately.”

She didn’t lay out her own plan to end the war, instead leaning into the efforts of President Joe Biden to bring about a hostage-release deal before he leaves office. Hamas and Israel have been negotiating for months over a deal that hasn’t materialised, and hopes have recently dimmed that the sides will come to an agreement in the near future.

“The way it will end is we need a ceasefire deal, and we need the hostages out,” she said. “And so we will continue to work around the clock on that.”

As the Democratic nominee, Harris has had to contend with two Democratic constituencies, supportive and critical of Israel, that are at odds with each other, and has sought to stick to Biden’s policies of backing Israel while conveying sympathy for mounting Palestinian casualties. She called for Palestinian statehood, which the current Israeli government forcefully rejects.

“We must chart a course for a two-state solution, and in that solution, there must be security for the Israeli people and Israel, and an equal measure for the Palestinians,” she said. “But the one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel.”

Trump, as he has before, claimed the 7 October attack wouldn’t have happened on his watch because of sanctions he placed on Iran, which funds the terror group. He said Iran was “broke under Donald Trump” and unable to fund its other proxies including Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthis in Yemen, both of which have attacked Israel. About the war, he said, “I will get that settled, and fast,” though he didn’t elaborate.

He also mentioned that Harris didn’t attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress this summer, instead speaking at an event in Indiana. Netanyahu met both candidates later in the week.

On Tuesday, Trump made a new claim: that Israel would disappear in two years if Harris were elected.

“She hates Israel,” he said. “If she’s president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years from now, and I’ve been pretty good at predictions. I hope I’m wrong about that one.”

He also sought to appeal to Harris’s perceived vulnerabilities among Arab Americans who have been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza.

“At the same time, in her own way, she hates the Arab population, because the whole place is going to get blown up, Arabs, Jewish people, Israel will be gone,” he said.

Harris shot back that she doesn’t hate Israel. “Oh, that’s absolutely not true. I have, my entire career and life, supported Israel and the Israeli people,” Harris said. “He knows that.”

In another section of the debate, about the pro-Trump riot at the Capitol on 6 January 2021, Harris brought up Trump’s remarks after the deadly neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. Biden repeatedly cited the Charlottesville rally and Trump’s response as the reason he ran for president in 2020.

“Let’s remember Charlottesville, where there was a mob of people carrying tiki torches, spewing antisemitic hate, and what did the president then, at the time, say? There were fine people on each side,” she said. She also brought up something Trump said in a debate with Biden in 2020, where he told the Proud Boys, a far-right group, to “stand back and stand by”.

Trump said that the “very fine people” claim had been “debunked”. Trump backers have pointed out that in the same press conference where he said there were “very fine people on both sides”, he also condemned neo-Nazis, suggesting that the “fine people” remark was referring to peaceful protesters who wanted to preserve Confederate statues and who were marching alongside the extremists. The vast majority of protesters at the rally were white supremacists and neo-Nazis.