Anti-Israel protesters repeatedly interrupted former U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris during her book-tour stop on Tuesday night at Benaroya Hall in Seattle, where she sat for a discussion about her new work, 107 Days, with political commentator Angela Rye.
JNS observed demonstrators both inside and outside the event. Some donned keffiyehs and waved Palestinian flags, chanting, “Kamala, you can’t hide, you profit from genocide.” Some bore signs stating “Glory to the martyr Abu Iyad,” honoring the Palestinian militant Salah Mesbah Khalaf, who was assassinated by a Palestinian rival.
A masked speaker wearing a red keffiyeh called Harris a “genocide and war criminal, who is not welcome in our city,” adding that the former Democratic nominee for president doesn’t deserve “any type of peace, let alone a triumphant book tour.”
Inside, Harris was greeted with cheers from a packed audience. Less than a minute into the program, a man stood up in one of the front rows and shouted unintelligibly about Palestine, prompting the audience to erupt in chants of “Get him out.”
Security took more than a minute to wrangle him out the door. “I’m reclaiming my time,” Harris quipped.
The former vice president was interrupted four more times. One audience member said, “I’m embarrassed. This is so embarrassing.”
When a young woman shouted over Harris, the former vice president joked, “I’m sure there are other people who wanna get up, so let me just.” She paused before adding, “I get that I would not exist if it weren’t for people who were active in protesting.”
Harris addressed U.S. policy toward Israel and Gaza during her vice-presidential tenure.
“We should have done more as an administration,” she said, to applause. “We should have spoken publicly about our criticism of the way that Netanyahu and his government were executing the war.”
“We had more levers,” she said.
Harris said that she is “happy” about the current ceasefire but said that what has happened to the Palestinian people in Gaza is “inhuman,” citing “hunger, famine, suffering, death.”
Outside, members of Super UW, a University of Washington activist group which allegedly caused more than $1 million in damage to an engineering building at the university, led an anti-Hamas, anti-Israel protest. A promotional flier of the group quoted Harris’s “unequivocal” support of “Israel’s right to defend itself.”
During the event, Harris also had some criticism for fellow members of the Biden administration.
“There were plenty of folks in the White House that were not happy about me speaking out,” she said.
Harris, who did not mention U.S. President Donald Trump by name throughout the conversation, said that the current administration “gave a blank check to Netanyahu.”
She also discussed post-war reconstruction and Gaza’s governance, at which point another protester interrupted. Audience members shouted the demonstrator down, with one repeatedly calling the person “deranged.”
