Kamala Harris falls short as an ally for Israel

Americans are naturally fixated on the security lapses surrounding the attempted assassination of Donald Trump and the curious circumstances of Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the presidential campaign.

But another Washington development is also incredibly important, and it must not get lost in the gusher of news.

It involves the US visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which is already revealing in striking detail how the Democratic Party is turning its back on the Jewish state.

Moving away from Israel would be a grave error at any time, but coming in the midst of its war for survival against Iranian-backed terror groups, the move amounts to an outrageous betrayal of an endangered ally.

The hostility oozes from the top, with Vice President Kamala Harris refusing to preside over Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress Wednesday.

Coming just days after Harris became the Dems’ presumptive nominee, her absence takes on a heightened significance.

Her office claims she had a long-standing commitment to attend a sorority conference in Indiana.

Perhaps she does, but her absence is compounded by the fact that her replacement also refuses to attend the speech.

When a vice president is absent, the job of presiding falls to Senate president pro tempore, who is Democrat Patty Murray of Washington.

But Murray also declined, and is said to be boycotting the address despite the invitation to Netanyahu being bipartisan.

Shameful Oct. 7 record

Whatever Harris’ reason for missing the event, her record is full of harsh condemnation of Netanyahu’s prosecution of the war in Gaza.

Although Biden has run hot and cold in his support of Israel since the Oct. 7 terror attack by Hamas, Harris has been consistently critical.

As early as December, she said that our ally “needed to do more” to protect Gazan civilians, saying in a Dubai speech: “The United States is unequivocal; international humanitarian law must be respected. Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”

Although she also said Israel had a right to defend itself, her remarks were widely regarded as coming close to accusing Israel of war crimes.

In March, she again went further than the White House by demanding an “immediate cease-fire.”

According to USA Today, she called the situation a “catastrophe” and claimed that “people in Gaza are starving.”

That is a false claim repeated endlessly by pro-Palestinian activists and Jew-haters at the United Nations.

The real problem in Gaza is that Hamas uses non-combatants as human shields and steals most of the international aid meant for civilians.

Oddly, Harris leveled that scurrilous attack in March while attending the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in Selma, where Alabama troopers had clubbed peaceful civil rights marchers as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The place and timing of her comments suggested she saw a similarity between Jim Crow racism and the absurd claims that Palestinians are victims of Israeli apartheid.

Indeed, her comments consistently echo those from the Dems’ far left wing, which is dominated by harsh criticism of Israel and, often, blatant antisemitism.

It’s not a coincidence that the most virulent anti-Israel protests on college campuses took place in elite institutions dominated by leftists.

The White House was mostly silent, and it was only because of tough questioning by House Republicans, notably Elise Stefanik from upstate New York, that we learned of the cowardly excuses the presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania used to duck their responsibility to protect Jewish students from threats and harassment.

Bibi, Bubba and Bam

Thankfully, both of those antisemitic enablers are now former presidents.

For Netanyahu, the longest serving prime minister in Israel’s history, being hated by top Dems is old hat.

After a meeting in 1996, then-President Bill Clinton was reportedly so furious that he unloaded on his staff, shouting “Who the f–k does he think he is? Who’s the f–king superpower here?”

Barack Obama detested Netanyahu even more, if that’s possible, and his courtship of Iran turned most of Israel against him, not just Netanyahu.

In a poll of Israelis near the end of his tenure, Obama had an approval rating in single digits!

Donald Trump, on the other hand, was beloved in Israel because he withdrew from Obama’s ridiculous nuclear pact with Iran, droned the mullahs’ terror honcho Qasem Soleimani and moved the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, something previous presidents pledged to do but never did.

Trump also recognized Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and fostered the Abraham Accords, which saw four Muslim nations, three of them Arab, recognize Israel.

Any other president would have won the Nobel Peace Prize for that achievement alone.

The importance of America to Israel cannot be overstated.

The US was the first country to recognize it, with President Harry Truman issuing a statement just minutes after Israelis declared their independence in 1948.

Although there have been differences over the years, the relationship has endured because it is in the best interest of both nations.

In addition to trade, technology and intelligence-sharing, Israel’s military might has made it an important regional ally in America’s battle against radical Islamists.

One result is that Israeli officials, whatever their domestic disagreements, have always united around the belief that their nation’s relationship with the United States is the most important one it has.

To keep that relationship intact, generations of Israelis and their US supporters stressed that the fundamental alliance should not depend on the political party in power in either nation.

That understanding is now in jeopardy as more and more Dems become harsh critics of the Jewish state and other Dems, including Jewish ones who fear leftist blowback, remain silent.

GOP’s show of force

Meanwhile, the recent GOP convention in Milwaukee is seen by some as the most pro-Jewish, pro-Israeli convention in American political history.

Biden, of course, took office aiming to undo everything Trump did, and that included the Mideast.

He repeated Obama’s disastrous courtship of Iran, and, after his feckless withdrawal from Afghanistan, our adversaries saw his presidency as an opportunity to attack our allies.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s menacing of Taiwan are two examples.

A third is the Hamas attack, which took some 1,200 Israeli lives, most of them civilians, the largest single-day loss of Jewish lives since the Holocaust.

Among his many mistakes, Biden was derelict in not focusing enough on the Israeli hostages, including eight with dual-American citizenship, three of whom are confirmed dead.

Trump is taking the opposite approach, demanding their release in his acceptance speech, declaring: “We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.”

Harris’ elevation adds another wrinkle to the crisis.

Assuming Biden finishes his term, he will likely recede into the shadows, making her the de facto president on major policies.

In that sense, her decision to skip Netanyahu’s speech is a very bad sign of things to come.