The Harris you’re thinking of would say Israel has every right to kill women, children and American journalists unconditionally and that to argue there should be consequences is antisemitic.

Kamala Harris has to walk the political tightrope of not being accused of antisemitism in a nation that has decided speaking ill of Israel’s misdeeds is antisemitic.

She has very specifically not said Israel has every right to kill women, children, and American journalists. She has said that they have every right to defend themselves, which is of course a safe non-answer. It doesn’t condone genocide, which is by definition not self-defense, but it also doesn’t oppose Israel, which would likely be suicidal in a national election as bafflingly close as this one.

Ideally she would stand up for Palestine, but I think that, broadly speaking, Americans are ill-informed about what’s happening in Gaza. I’m guessing her team knows that if she were to speak out vehemently in opposition to what most people don’t realize is a genocide, it would likely lose her more support than it would gain her in key states like Pennsylvania. Yes, she’d get support from many Palestinian-Americans in Michigan, but that may also turn undecided voters (in an election like this one, “undecided voter” means “uninformed voter”) against her. And she desperately needs those undecided voters, because the electoral college means she has an inherent disadvantage in this election.

She and her strategists are banking on people opposed to Israel’s genocide being smart enough to know that Donald Trump would be even worse, and to understand that political realities are complex in a way that is often very distasteful.

We can be disappointed that she isn’t decrying the actions of Israel, but to pretend that Harris is in full-throated support of genocide is disingenuous.

As much as we would like it to be, the world is not simple.