Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called on U.S. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris to more forcefully denounce the claim that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza on Monday, following footage circulated of the Democratic nominee for president appearing to agree with an anti-Israel heckler.
“The protester’s charge of ‘genocide’ is an outrageous and dangerous lie,” Deutch wrote. “While I appreciate the Harris campaign official stating that ‘this is not her position,’ I urge Vice President Harris to forcefully reject the charge of genocide directly.”
On Thursday, a heckler confronted Harris at a campaign event for students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and accused her of having invested “billions of dollars in genocide.”
“What about genocide?” the man said, as security removed him, “19,000 children are dead and you won’t call it a genocide.”
“What he’s talking about, it’s real,” Harris replied. “I respect his voice.”
Video clips of the exchange went viral on social media on Saturday after they were first reported by the New York Post.
Harris campaign officials have denied that Harris was accusing Israel of committing genocide.
In response to the anti-Israel protester’s charge that Israel is engaged in “genocide,” a Harris campaign official told JNS “that is not the view of the Biden administration or the vice president.”
Harris has not personally said what she intended her comments to mean.
Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have previously faced criticism for how they have talked about and dealt with anti-Israel protesters, who frequently accuse the Biden-Harris administration at campaign events of abetting “genocide” in Gaza.
“I think those folks who are speaking out loudly in Michigan are speaking out for all the right reasons,” Walz said in a radio interview last month. “It’s a humanitarian crisis. It can’t stand the way it is.”
“I respect your voices,” Harris told anti-Israel protesters in Arizona in August.
Harris’s defenders point to the Biden-Harris administration’s record of supporting Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks as evidence that she does not secretly harbor sympathies for claims that Israel is committing genocide.
“In the recent video spreading online, Kamala Harris was not agreeing there was a genocide, she didn’t say there was a genocide and she has never agreed with that premise either,” wrote Todd Richman, co-chair of Democratic Majority for Israel. “If Harris thought there was a genocide she would not have supported $18 billion in weapons to Israel.”
“I can agree that her wording is wrong, and we are all rightly sensitive to this issue as the word ‘genocide’ is wrongly being thrown all over the place, but let’s have a real conversation about this,” Richman added.
Harris’s critics, however, believe that she should not be providing any encouragement to anti-Israel protesters.
“Vice President Harris’s validation of this ugly genocide charge is ignorant, malign and thoroughly disqualifying for any public office, let alone the presidency,” wrote David Friedman, U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Trump administration. “Since Israel became a state, its Palestinian-Arab population increased more than 10-fold.”
