Israel’s top diplomat declares Kamala Harris won US presidential debate
Katz’s unexpected break from diplomatic norms surprises reporters who asked him the question; he stresses she only won debate, and ‘there’s still a long time’ until the election
Foreign Minister Israel Katz declared on Saturday that US Vice President Kamala Harris won Tuesday’s debate against rival Donald Trump, forgoing the expected neutrality that diplomats tend to adopt on matters pertaining to foreign elections.
Interviewed on Channel 12 news, Katz was asked: “Who won the debate? Did you watch it?”
“Who won it? Kamala Harris,” Katz responded.
“Even he says so,” marveled one of his interviewers, surprised that Katz would be so undiplomatically definitive.
“I watched the debate,” Katz went on, but then hurriedly added that Harris won “in the debate,” but that “there’s still a long time to go” till the elections.
Later in the interview, he was asked about Trump’s assertion during the debate that if Harris were to win the election, Israel would not exist two years from now.
He evaded the question, however, and answered indirectly, saying that “Israel will be and will exist forever.”
Trump “wanted to show his great commitment to the State of Israel,” he added, “and that’s how he presented it.”
Following last week’s debate between the two presidential candidates, about 6 in 10 debate-watchers said Harris outperformed Trump, while about 4 in 10 said Trump did a better job, according to a flash poll conducted by CNN, with Harris exceeding debate-watchers’ expectations. Before the debate, the same voters were evenly split on whether Trump or Harris would win.
The vast majority of interviewed debate-watchers — who do not reflect the views of the full voting public — also said that the event wouldn’t affect their votes in the election. Perceptions of the two candidates remain largely unchanged.
In the same interview Saturday, Katz denied that the government has held discussions related to concerns over a potential Harris election victory, saying that there were no discussions of that nature, “formal or informal.”
“It’s not Israel’s business to deal with that. We’ll await the results of the election,” he said. “The assumption has to be that we don’t intervene there [in the US] and they don’t intervene here.”
While commenting on the US’s domestic politics, and thus appearing to favor one side over the other, is a highly irregular thing for Israel’s politicians to do, it is not unheard of.
In July, far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir endorsed Trump in an interview with Bloomberg and asserted that a win for the Republican candidate would be better for Israel.
He acknowledged at the time that his endorsement may be viewed unfavorably by his colleagues, but claimed that maintaining neutrality was “impossible to do after Biden.”
Before Ben Gvir, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said in April that Biden, then still the presumed Democratic nominee, was projecting weakness and that he would vote for Trump if he could.
