Should Kamala Harris Now Pledge If Elected To Make An Ike Like Visit To Gaza And Israel?

By Donald A. Collins | 18 August 2024
Church and State

(Credit: YouTube / screengrab)

With the DNC in Chicago about to convene on August 19th, there is seemingly unprecedented enthusiasm about the new positivism Harris and Walz bring to the campaign.

The massive crowds, even if denied by Trump as existing only with AI help, have been a phenomenon not seen for many years for Democrats. While some resentment at the DNC may surface from Biden supporters the polls should hearten but not stop the hard united efforts that exist to beat Trump on November 5th.

Every avenue for votes should be addressed and one sore spot exists a short distance from the DNC event where a group of highly dissident Palestinian GAZA activists keep up the drumbeat for recognition and action they feel Biden failed to offer.

Their concerns continue as expressed in Farah Stockman’s August 12th NY Times story entitled “Harris Should Take Divisions Over Gaza Seriously” who writes that this surge (honeymoon?)

can tempt Democrats to focus on style and symbolism over substance. This risk is most evident, and most significant, on the issue of Gaza. There is perhaps no issue that divides the Democratic Party more than the U.S. government’s support for Israel’s retaliation following the brutal attack by Hamas on Oct. 7. If the Harris campaign is unable to address this thorny issue in a way that feels like substance, then Democrats may not get the unity they’ll need to win in November.

Nowhere is this question more salient than Michigan, a must-win state and home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the country. Arab Americans turned away from the Democratic Party in large numbers, outraged that President Biden was spending their tax dollars to buy bombs that were killing their loved ones. To turn this outrage into political power, two Detroit-based Democratic organizers, Abbas Alawieh and Layla Elabed, co-founded a movement in Michigan to convince people to vote “uncommitted” in the Democratic primaries as a way to show their displeasure with President Biden and demonstrate their electoral strength. It quickly grew into a national effort.

More than 100,000 Michigan voters cast “uncommitted” ballots — not enough to change the outcome of the primary, since Mr. Biden had virtually no competition — but enough that the party could not afford to ignore them. Mr. Alawieh says 30 members of the Uncommitted National Movement, including himself, earned delegate spots at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago next week. The group is pushing for the D.N.C. to allow Dr. Tanya Haj-Hassan, a doctor who recently spent two weeks in Gaza, to address the convention, which seems like the least the party can do to show they take the suffering of Palestinians seriously. In Michigan, a state that Donald Trump won by a little more than 10,000 votes in 2016, these voters could be crucial. One of the biggest questions of this election is whether Ms. Harris can win any of them back.

Gaza quotes from article here.

Of course, the Biden Administration’s sale of more arms to Israel keeps the issue hot! U.S. plans to sell $20 billion in weapons to Israel over several years.

“The Biden administration approved a deal to sell F-15s, air-to-air missiles and munitions, but much of it won’t arrive in Israel until 2026 at the earliest.” Read the full Washington Post 8/13/24 story by Kyle Melnick and Karen DeYoung here.

Just how much these certain Arab protests this week will while intrude on the DNC’s enthusiasm remains uncertain.

However, this situation reminded me of the promise Dwight Eisenhower made as he was running for President in 1952 to go if elected to Korea as we learn from the National Archives and Records Administration:

In late October 1952, the polls were looking very promising for the Republican candidate for president, General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Ike, as he was affectionately known, had a commanding lead over Democratic candidate Adlai Stevenson II. Most politicians would not challenge a good thing and would only coast to election day. However, the former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe during World War II was a different type of politician, and coasting was not part of his character.

On October 24, 1952, while campaigning in Detroit, Michigan, Eisenhower announced that he would “forego the diversions of politics and concentrate on the job of ending the Korean War…” He announced to a very attentive audience, “I shall go to Korea.” This was a bold statement, but Eisenhower had made many bold statements in his long and distinguished career.

America’s leading soldier from World War II and the Cold War (as the Supreme Commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization), wanted to see for himself the conditions in a divided Korea. Most Americans liked his announcement and understood that the task of ending the war would be extremely difficult. Unfortunately, President Harry Truman called it a gimmick. If Eisenhower was behind in the polls or was a typical politician, it would be easier to see his statement on Korea as such. But this was not the case with Eisenhower. Having seen war throughout his life, General Eisenhower sought to use his political career to bring about peace. On November 4, 1952, Eisenhower defeated Stevenson in a landslide victory, carrying 442 electoral votes.”

Result: “After being the President for only seven months, Ike delivered an ending to the Korean War. The armistice was signed on July 27, 1953. He held a nationally televised address to the American people explaining the terms of the armistice.

“The high cost of American lives on the Korean Peninsula had ceased. During three years of war, 33,686 Americans gave their lives in the Korean War.” The Palestinians have lost 40,000, many of whom were women and children and habitable places been flattened to rubble! The Hamas attack on October 7th took 250 hostages and killing about 1,200 Israelis.

Read the full story here.

While the parallels here are not precise, my feeling is that giving attention to the obvious conflict between the supporters of the Gaza disaster and the Israeli assault could allow a slight separation of the Biden’s fealty to Israel by giving Harris a chance to broker a settlement if elected. The offer would be genuine and perhaps astonishing to both sides. Ike got it right in 1952! While the only final result for Gaza must be a two-state solution, the process could, if Harris was successful, at least begin. Ike got an armistice which prevails to this day, but not a formal peace treaty.

Former US Navy officer, banker and venture capitalist, Donald A. Collins, a free lance writer living in Washington, DC, has spent over 50 years working for women’s reproductive health as a board member and/or officer of numerous family planning organizations including Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Guttmacher Institute, Family Health International and Ipas. Yale under graduate, NYU MBA. He is the author of “From the Dissident Left: A Collection of Essays 2004-2013”, “Trump Becoming Macbeth: Will our democracy survive?”, “We Humans Overwhelm Our Earth: 11 or 2 Billion by 2100?”, “What Can Be Done Now to Save Habitable Life on Planet Earth?”, “Vote”, “Can Homo Sapiens Survive?”, “Will Choice and Democracy Win?”, “Can Our U.S. Survive 8 Plus Billion of Us”, “Economic Growth: A Cancer on all Earthly Life”, “On the Precipice of Political Disaster in 2024”, “Democracy at Red State Risk” and “Does Trump Go to Jail or to The Oval Office?”.

Kamala Harris says ‘too many’ civilian deaths in Gaza | BBC News

“Incomprehensible”: U.S. Approves $20 Billion in New Arms for Israel as Gaza Death Toll Tops 40,000

Why the Middle East is so important to the US – BBC World Service

‘Donald Trump Is Unfit to Lead’: NYT releases 5,000 word essay warning voters

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