TALKING DOWN ISRAEL, PLAYING UP UKRAINE

US Vice-President Kamala Harris spent four years following in lockstep with the deeply questionable foreign policy of President Joe Biden.

- KAJAL BASU

But, with her coming into her own as the Democratic presidential hopeful, the signs are that she might step out. Harris recognises, perhaps more than Biden or Republican nominee Donald Trump, that domestic voting intent is being increasingly impacted by foreign policy.

According to Richard Beck in New Left Review, Biden's legacy has "cemented popular regional hatred against Israel for at least another generation", ensured that a Palestinian state will not be established even after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu leaves office, and felled US acceptance around the world.

The writing was on the wall this week. Harris, having refused to attend Netanyahu's self-condoning harangue in Congress, met him later-and issued a bombshell press briefing. "What has happened in Gaza over the past 9 months is devastating. The images of dead children and desperate, hungry people fleeing for safety, sometimes displaced for the second, third or fourth time. We cannot look away in the face of these tragedies. We cannot allow ourselves to become numb to the suffering, and I will not be silent."