Former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris criticized the Biden and Trump administrations on Wednesday for failing to use U.S. leverage to curb Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, saying Washington should have acted “sooner and more forcefully.”
“Most recently, the failure to use our leverage to curtail the Israeli government’s horrific conduct in the war in Gaza, both under the current administration, which offers [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu a blank check, and our administration before, where we should have acted sooner and more forcefully,” Harris said while speaking at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul, South Korea.
The Republican Jewish Coalition called Harris’s remarks “unsurprising,” citing her absence from Netanyahu’s 2024 address to Congress and her opposition to legislation targeting the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
The group also criticized Harris for calling for a halt to Israeli military operations in Rafah, where the Israel Defense Forces later found and rescued hostages, and for agreeing with a student in 2021 who accused Israel of “ethnic genocide.”
Attorney and author Warren Kinsella, who worked on Harris’s 2024 presidential campaign, wrote that he is “ashamed to have worked with her,” following her remarks about Israel.
