Harris fails by trying to please both sides - opinion

• Published date: 05 October 2021
• Author: GIL TROY
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

This award singles out the democratic leader who most confuses right and wrong, truth and lies, good and evil. You get extra points for coining a memorable phrase that further sends us into a moral abyss.

Harris earned her prize by validating a George Mason University student who objected to America funding Israel's Iron Dome missiles, "because it's an ethnic genocide and a displacement of people – the same that happened in America...."

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America's vice president could have defended America and Israel.

Harris could have cautioned against slinging words around so sloppily – "genocide" means systematically mass-murdering a people, yet the Palestinian population has quintupled since 1967.

She could have said, "you can always criticize what Israel or America does, without so exaggerating that you repudiate what Israel – or America – is."

And she could have rejected false equations comparing imperfect democracies like America and Israel with perfectly awful regimes that brutally commit genocide.

Instead, relativizing truth, forgetting that a lie unrefuted often becomes a "truth" believed, Harris "I'm-okay-you're-okayed," saying: "your voice, your perspective, your experience, your truth, should not be suppressed and it must be heard...."

Thank you, Vice President Harris, for this declaration of independence – from morality and reality. Jesus may have preached "the truth shall set you free," but "your truth should not be suppressed" really sets us free.

I wanted to demand zero-tolerance for violence on both sides and condemn the Israeli hooligans who bullied Palestinians in the South Hebron Hills. But I now understand those rock-throwers may have their own truth, which "should not be suppressed."

I wanted to criticize the Republicans spinning the January 6 Capitol riot as "peaceful." But those partisans undoubtedly have their own truth, which "should not be suppressed."

Harris's spokeswoman Symone Sanders did later declare: "The vice president strongly disagrees with the student's characterization of Israel." That weak backpedaling sidesteps the alarming fact that the student's "genocide" libel did not alarm the vice president. Harris's silence suggests that such rhetoric passes smoothly in her circles as normative.

Jew-hatred is the most plastic of hatreds – durable, flexible, artificial and toxic. Form-fitted to serve Left...