Kamala Harris declines to attend Netanyahu address to Congress

Vice President Kamala Harris will not attend Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress.

The move is likely an attempt to distance herself from the Biden administration’s stance on the war in Gaza, which has rattled the Democratic Party. By distancing herself from the heavily pro-Israel stance of President Joe Biden, she could help neuter attacks from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party.

Dozens of progressive Democrats are boycotting Netanyahu’s speech as well.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Ben Cardin (D-MD) will preside over Netanyahu’s speech in Harris’s stead. He is retiring at the end of the year. Cardin is also the special representative on antisemitism, racism, and intolerance for the 57-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe Parliamentary Assembly.

Harris will instead meet with Netanyahu at another more private point during the Israeli leader’s stay, according to multiple reports. Biden is expected to meet with him as well.

While supporting Biden’s stance toward Israel, Harris has, like Biden, offered some limited criticism of Israel’s tactics.

“As Israel defends itself, it matters how,” she said in December. “Too many innocent Palestinians have been killed. Frankly, the scale of civilian suffering and the images and videos coming from Gaza are devastating.”

However, Harris has firmly tied herself to the Biden administration, and people familiar with the matter hold that she and Biden are in “lockstep” on Israel.

“She and President Biden are in lockstep when it comes to Israel. There is no daylight between them to be found,” Halie Soifer, who was Harris’s national security adviser when she was a senator, told Politico.

Much like Biden has faced divisions in the United States over his handling of the war in Gaza, Netanyahu has faced fractures among his populace as well.