‘Harris halo effect’ speaks peace, promises genocide

Alameen Templeton

Kamala Harris is aiming for the Oval Office and will promise almost anything to almost anyone to get in. She’ll oppose “Trump tyranny” at home and arm Israeli tyranny in Gaza; she’ll embrace Gaza victims’ families and she’ll freeze out their ceasefire demands from her party platform; she’ll promise “a new way forward”, but she’s “Embraced Biden’s Balancing Act”, says the New York Times.
So, the act must go on and on and on. If Harris’s embrace is a full one, then Palestinians can expect a peace deal will be “just days away” when she’s leaving office in four years’ time. Her aides will be telling us of the “widening gap” between Harris and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. She’ll be laying down “red line” after ignored and forgotten “red line”. She’ll be “cancelling deliveries of 2000 pound bombs”, only for them to continue falling.
Psychologists call the ability to simultaneously believe two opposing beliefs “cognitive dissonance”. We know it as hypocrisy. In America, it’s called “politics”.
The Guardian Friday says Israel confirmed as Harris accepted her party’s nomination in Chicago that its negotiators were in Cairo for ceasefire talks – a warm sign that the new, Harris dawn is already spreading healing shafts of benevolence.
It forgets to mention that there won’t be anyone at the other side of the table as Hamas won’t be there.
Hamas has had enough of Zionist delay and spoiler tactics – agreeing to deals and then reneging every time. It’s refused to attend the Biden charade as long as the US fails to hold Israel accountable for the agreements it makes.
Biden tried to rein in Netanyahu, or pretended to. Perhaps it was all just part of the “act”. He said he’d hold Netanyahu accountable if peace talks in Doha last weekend failed.
Then, they failed, despite US foreign minister Anthony Blinken’s butterfly flights to Tel Aviv and Cairo.
The failure was ignored and Biden said nothing about Netanyahu nor made any apparent attempt to call him to heel. Perhaps, he just “forgot”.
Instead, US negotiators this week started pushing Netanyahu’s two new “demands” – control of the Netzarim and Philadelphi Corridors, Al Mayadeen reports.
Hamas is demanding the US must force Israel to stand by the last peace deal agreed to two months ago, but Biden just can’t stop bowing down to Netanyahu’s mercurial thirst for more genocide, more land and more war.
Now, Harris is accusing her opponent, Donald Trump, of “bowing down to tyrants”. It’s a confusing declaration to anyone outside the US red-and-blue wonderland.
Decoding it to its essentials, it means Harris is also going to continue arming Ukraine, the war engineered by Biden while he was still vice president. Trump has said he’ll end the war “in a day”; the “Blue pill” side of America sees that as confirmation of its long-publicised suspicions he’s a “Russian spy”.
Allow yourself a gasp or sigh of exasperation at this juncture. This doesn’t make for easy reading. Or writing.
Harris strewed promises across the floor in Chicago last night in such generous profusion that delegates may have been forgiven for thinking they were participating in an Oprah Winfrey Special.
Pollsters warned she may be spreading herself a bit thin and may end up alienating everyone by trying to please everyone. That could blunt her message against Donald Trump.
Also, failing to differentiate herself from Biden could also taint her with the feebleness and sense of failure that has clung to Biden’s last days in office.
“Now is the time to get a hostage deal and a ceasefire deal done,” Harris told the crowd Thursday night, adding, “And let me be clear, I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself.”
So, we must look forward to peace breaking out while the genocide slouches inexorably towards Al-Quds.
The promise is classical Biden – it breaks tensions with an apparent call to arms for peace, with an apparent admission of culpability, but it never goes anywhere. It’s only real intention is to cast a halo effect, ensuring a delay until the next uptick in tension or the next opportunity to strike.
Because “now”, the time to implement a ceasefire, passed almost 10 months ago. And it has been “now” every day, every second, every dead child, blasted crater and destroyed city since then.
Here’s more “Harris halo” affectation: “What has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months is devastating. So many innocent lives lost, desperate hungry people fleeing for safety over and over again. The scale of suffering is heartbreaking”.
And more: “President Biden and I are working to end this war such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”
But her adamant statements earlier this month that she “does not support an arms embargo on Israel” will cast a long shadow, a pall, over any hopes by the “uncommitted” ranks of Democrat supporters that she’ll do anything effective to end the Gaza genocide.