Vice President Kamala Harris might have been trying to act tough, but she was really tipping the Biden administration’s hand.
In an interview that aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Harris was clearly aiming to up the pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to stay Israel’s hand on a pending military operation in its war against the terrorist group Hamas.
But in the process, she blurted out the real truth about the Israel-Hamas war that the Biden administration and the establishment media are ignoring.
The foot-in-mouth vice president was discussing the prospect of an Israeli invasion of Rafah, a city at the southern tip of the Gaza Strip where Hamas terrorists remain holed up.
Harris, like President Joe Biden, claimed an operation against Hamas will lead to Palestinian civilian casualties, which they consider unacceptable. (It would be nice if Hamas considered casualties among Palestinian civilians, women and children, as something to be avoided.)
“We have been clear … in every way,” Harris told ABC’s Rachel Scott, “that any major military operation in Rafah would be a huge mistake.
“Let me tell you something. I have studied the maps,” Harris said. “There’s nowhere for those folks to go.”
In this case, studying the maps might have shown here that there is, in fact, somewhere “for those folks to go.” It’s that large land mass just to the west — called “Egypt.” (Maybe the vice president has heard of it in a briefing here or there?)
But the fact of the matter is, Egypt, like Jordan to the east, wants no part of a Palestinian immigration influx. (Those Egyptians are touchier about their border sovereignty than the Biden administration, clearly.)
That’s because the Egyptian government knows all too well how dangerous Islamist terrorist organizations are. It’s a government that’s fighting its own brand of Islamist extremism, as Business Insider reported in October.
“Since 2011, the Egyptian military and police have battled ISIS-affiliated militants. The fear is that incoming Hamas militants could bring further instability to the region,” the article noted.
It explained that Egyptian strongman/President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi “views Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, suspiciously, with Cairo considering it a potential security threat.”
Would Kamala Harris be a worse president than Joe Biden?
It’s also because the “human rights” that are part of the Western world’s way of thinking don’t have the same cachet when it comes to Arab governments — unless it’s a cudgel to bash Israel.
(As an unidentified Egyptian official told an unidentified European diplomat in October, according to the Financial Times, “You want us to take 1 million people? Well, I am going to send them to Europe. You care about human rights so much — well you take them.”)
But the Biden administration doesn’t make a show of pressuring Egypt to take on the role of assisting Palestinian refugees. Obsessed with the domestic political problem that terrorist-supporting Democrats will endanger his chances of re-election, President Joe Biden reserves his public fury, his insulting “come-to-Jesus”-style comments, for Netanyahu alone.
So Vice President Harris can study maps of the area surrounding Rafah all she wants, but that huge area on the left side of the map, with a country that starts with an “E,” apparently won’t penetrate her brain.
Because if it did, the Biden administration might have to start talking and acting like Israel is the only real victim of unprovoked violence in this war, and that its neighbors also have a responsibility to see that civilian Palestinians have a safe refuge from Israel’s more-than-justified military attack on Hamas.
That won’t fit the leftist worldview that dominates the Democratic Party in 2024, and it doesn’t suit the hopes of Biden and Harris to remain in the White House after January 2025, but it’s the truth that’s driving American foreign policy.
Naturally, there were plenty of social media users commenting on Harris’ “studied the maps” remark.
And they weren’t favorable.
KAMALA HARRIS warns against an Israeli offensive in Rafah: “I have studied the maps.”
She is then unable to articulate anything substantive beyond her left-wing talking points. pic.twitter.com/XBDhkU2XG3
— RNC Research (@RNCResearch) March 24, 2024
“There’s nowhere for them to go” why is there nowhere for them to go Kamala? WHY? Falling right into the trap. Rewarding Hamas and its ilk for setting up the population this way. Why can’t she just ask the president of Mexico I mean Egypt to let them pass through?
— Becca (@BeccaBsarro) March 24, 2024
She’s a military advisor now? She can read a topographical map???
— StevenA54 NY JETS! (@DemczykSteven) March 25, 2024
Can she even find Israel on a map?
— Brett (@Thee_G_spot_) March 24, 2024
“I have studied the maps” will live in infamy!@VP
— Barbara P (@barbarapagem) March 24, 2024
It’s sad, but it’s the reality of a United States that has Joe Biden in the White House and Kamala Harris as vice president that the leftist fringe of Democratic Party politics is actually steering American foreign policy.
It’s sadder that the foreign policy is being confronted with a clear choice between the evil of murderous terrorists against the good of a democratic ally, and the Biden administration is making the wrong decision based purely on its misguided — if not deranged — voting base.
And maybe the saddest part of all is that it’s an administration that can tell the truth — only by accident.
