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Former Vice President Kamala Harris has claimed in a new book that former President Joe Biden failed to show adequate empathy for Palestinian civilians during the Gaza war.
Getting into it: In her book 107 Days, former Vice President Kamala Harris critiqued how President Joe Biden handled the Gaza war, accusing him of failing to show sufficient empathy for Palestinian civilians. “I had pleaded with Joe, when he spoke publicly on this issue, to extend the same empathy he showed to the suffering of Ukrainians to the suffering of innocent Gazan civilians,” Harris writes. “But he couldn’t do it: While he could passionately state, ‘I am a Zionist,’ his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced.” According to Harris, this disconnect in Biden’s tone revealed a deeper issue within the administration’s response, a failure to acknowledge the humanitarian cost of the war with the same moral clarity applied elsewhere.
Harris also recounts being reprimanded by Biden’s aides after a March 3, 2024, speech in Alabama, where she described the situation in Gaza as a “humanitarian crisis” and called for an immediate ceasefire. The speech went viral, drawing widespread praise and criticism, but internally, it sparked backlash from the West Wing. “I was castigated for, apparently, delivering it too well,” she writes. According to Harris, Biden’s inner circle was more concerned with controlling messaging than confronting the mounting death toll and public frustration over the US response.
In addition to criticizing Biden, Harris is critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, claiming he had no real interest in Biden’s support and was openly hoping for Donald Trump’s return to the White House. “He wanted Trump in the seat opposite him. Not Joe, not me,” she writes, adding that Netanyahu dismissed Biden’s loyalty and instead pushed “very extreme proposals” for Gaza’s future. Harris describes a July 2024 meeting with Netanyahu as especially frustrating, calling his demeanor “disengaged” and accusing him of stonewalling efforts toward a permanent ceasefire.
This all comes as Harris attributes part of her loss to voter backlash over the Biden administration’s handling of the Gaza war. She points specifically to a January 2025 YouGov poll that showed 29% of Biden 2020 voters who chose not to support her in 2024 cited “ending Israel’s violence in Gaza” as their primary reason.
