The Memo: Gaza conflict roils presidential race

The conflict in Gaza is roiling the presidential campaign with roughly two months to go before Election Day.

Those contours have become particularly sharp since Hamas killed six hostages last week, including an Israeli American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.

President Biden and Vice President Harris have both promised that Hamas will pay for Goldberg-Polin’s death — and for its broader conduct, including the killing of around 1,200 people in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Former President Trump has blasted the Biden-Harris administration over the loss of the hostages.

On social media, Trump wrote that the hostages were “murdered by Hamas due to a complete lack of American Strength and Leadership.” This echoes a frequent attack from the former president, who blames many adverse events in the wider world on purported Democratic “weakness.”

On Thursday, Trump will deliver a virtual address to a Republican Jewish Coalition summit in Las Vegas.

Harris, for her part, has at times sounded a slightly more sympathetic rhetorical tone than Biden in relation to the suffering of the Palestinians. But she has not telegraphed any significant change in policy.

In her recent CNN interview, Harris was asked whether she might consider suspending arms shipments to Israel. She said that she would not do so — rebuffing a central demand of many pro-Palestinian voices on the left.

In her big speech to the Democratic National Convention last month, Harris said she would “always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself” and condemned the “horror” that Hamas inflicted on Oct. 7. But she added that what happened in Gaza was “devastating” and that “the scale of the suffering is heartbreaking.”

The attempt to cater to the concerns of both sides has, naturally, earned Harris the condemnation of some activists. 

The Uncommitted National Movement — an organization that arose as a voice for those who cast protest votes against Biden over Gaza during the Democratic primaries — complained about Harris’s “embrace of militarism” after she contended, following the killing of Goldberg-Polin, that Hamas was an “evil terrorist organization” whose “threat” had to be “eliminated.”

On Tuesday, the Department of Justice unveiled new charges against Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar and five other senior members of the group. 

However, three of the six people indicted are known or assumed to be dead. It also seems highly unlikely that Sinwar — believed to be hiding in the tunnels under Gaza — would ever be arrested and brought to trial in the U.S.

Also, although the killing of the hostages has drawn widespread outrage, many Americans remain deeply critical of Israel’s 11 months of reprisal assaults following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks. 

Israel has killed upwards of 40,000 people in Gaza, roughly two-thirds of whom are said to be women and children, according to local health authorities. There has been a humanitarian crisis in the small strip of land for months. Almost 2 million people have been displaced within Gaza, many on multiple occasions.

All of that has fueled anger in the U.S. — especially acute among progressives, young people and minorities — about the scale of American military assistance to Israel.

That would seem to put Harris in a bind.

That said, it is notable that Harris leads Trump by 5 points among Michigan voters, in a new CNN poll released Wednesday. She is up by almost 2 points there in the polling average maintained by The Hill and Decision Desk HQ.

Biden was behind Trump in polling averages Michigan, which has an unusually high concentration of Arab-Americans, before he dropped out of the race.

In April, Biden signed a bill that included $17 billion in aid for Israel. Last month, the State Department approved $20 billion in arms sales to the nation. And just last week, Israel’s Defense Ministry said that, since Oct. 7, more than 50,000 tons of armaments and military equipment have been delivered from the United States.

In an Economist/YouGov poll released last month, 35 percent of all Americans wanted military aid to Israel to be decreased, compared to 20 percent who wanted it increased. Among Democrats, 42 percent wanted military aid decreased and only 10 percent wanted it increased.

The conflict more broadly has divided Americans. In a Gallup poll in June, 48 percent of Americans disapproved of Israel’s actions in Gaza and 42 percent approved.

There have been pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the streets of many American cities and on college campuses. Meanwhile, pro-Israel Americans worry about a loosening of the traditional alliance between the two countries — and about a rise in antisemitism.

Trump has sought to take political advantage of this situation.

His appearance via satellite with the Republican Jewish Convention is plainly part of an effort to reduce Democrats’ traditional advantage with Jewish voters. That effort has itself been controversial, including Trump’s contention, made more than once, that any Jewish person who votes for Democratic candidates “should have their head examined.”

There is scant evidence that Trump’s efforts are working — though polling on the topic is infrequent. A poll from the nonpartisan Jewish Electoral Institute this spring, when President Biden was still the Democratic nominee, showed Jewish voters favoring Biden over Trump by 67 percent to 26 percent.

For Biden, the search for a cease-fire in Gaza is also an attempt to put to rest one of the most troublesome issues of his presidency — and one that could negatively impact his legacy.

Biden has recently grown more critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in regard to cease-fire talks.

Asked Monday whether the Israeli prime minister was doing enough to reach a deal, Biden simply replied, “No.”

Aides have not clarified exactly what the president meant — though those talks appear to have foundered in part because of Netanyahu’s insistence that Israel should maintain a military presence on the border between Gaza and Egypt.

Netanyahu’s perceived intransigence has also fueled massive demonstrations in Israel following the killing of the hostages.

So far, a cease-fire remains out of reach — which also ensures the conflict will keep affecting the final stretch of the presidential race.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.