It wasn’t so much what she said. It was how she said it.
“Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters on Aug. 10. It was a standard line, used many, many times by officials seeking to defend Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza.
But watch the video of the moment: Her discomfort is obvious. She raises her hands, palms outward, as if to say, Look. “I mean, Israel has a right …”—and she pauses.
“… to …”—her hands circle in the air, as if she’s searching for adequate words for the situation.
“… go after the terrorists that are Hamas,” she finishes at last. She sounds deeply exasperated. “But,” she adds—and now her hands are clasped, her words fluent—“as I have said many, many times: They also have, I believe, an important responsibility to avoid civilian casualties.”
These are the same words President Joe Biden himself has used many times to condemn civilian deaths, even as his administration has shoveled money to the Israeli war machine and provided diplomatic cover for its leaders. The difference is largely in Harris’ tone.
“Sometimes, it’s the music and not the words,” says Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of the advocacy group J Street, which supports Palestinian self-determination. “I think there’s a real sense that this is not just lip service, but she really means it, and I think that comes across.”
Sadly, the article goes on to say that "subtle signs might not be enough" for people to believe she means the opposite of what she says. "Harris may be singing their tune, but they might not hear her."
“Sometimes, it’s the music and not the words,” says Jeremy Ben-Ami, director of the advocacy group J Street, which supports Palestinian self-determination.
Hmm, I wonder what the views of this pro-Palestinian advocacy group are. From Wikipedia:
J Street's stated aim is to provide a political home for pro-Israel, pro-peace Americans who believe that a "two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is essential to Israel's survival as the national home of the Jewish people and as a vibrant democracy".
[Ben-Ami] says J Street is proud of AIPAC's many accomplishments and clarified that the two groups have different priorities rather than different views.
Oh.
Israel has a right to go after the terrorists that are Hamas
Our leaders have devolved to the point where sentence construction is starting to break down.
"Israel has the right to go after Hamas terrorists"
Like how much Xanax is she on
In clinical studies in rats, the LD50 — the dose that caused half of the rats to die — ranged from 331 to 2,171 mg per kilogram of body weight. This suggests that a person would have to take several thousand times the maximum prescribed dose to fatally overdose.
This is quite a Blue MAGA moment: chuds like to claim they feel what
actually meant and how it applies to themselves even if it's a ramble about Hannibal Lecter. And now we got... this. Yeah - David Brooks or Ross Douthat or some other Respectable Conservative had a line that went something like "Trump's supporters take him seriously but not literally; Democrats take him literally but not seriously."
I don't have a similarly symmetrical statement for this one. Chuds hate her for the wrong reasons, leftists hate her for the right reasons, libs love her for made-up reasons, I guess.
But watch the video of the moment: Her discomfort is obvious.
Maybe she’s an uncomfortable person
Not enough
