Harris: Biden couldn’t show empathy to Gazans, his perceived ‘blank check’ to Netanyahu harmed my election chances

Former US vice president Kamala Harris writes in her upcoming book that she believed former president Joe Biden could not show enough empathy toward Gazans.

“I had pleaded with Joe, when he spoke publicly on this issue, to extend the same empathy he showed to the suffering of Ukrainians to the suffering of innocent Gazan civilians,” Harris writes in her book “107 Days,” out later today, according to excerpts published by Axios.

“But he couldn’t do it: While he could passionately state, ‘I am a Zionist,’ his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced,” she writes.

According to the excerpts, Harris believes one of the reasons she didn’t win the 2024 election was the US president’s “perceived blank check to Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza.”

Harris additionally charges that Netanyahu felt no loyalty toward Biden: “He wanted Trump in the seat opposite him. Not Joe, not me.”

Axios notes that the book seems to refute claims at the time during the Biden administration that there was “no daylight” between the US president and his deputy on the issue of the war in Gaza.

Harris also writes that protests against Israel’s war in Gaza played a role in her pick for a running mate.

She describes a meeting with Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish.

“We talked about how to handle the attacks he’d confronted on Gaza and what effect it might have on the enthusiasm we were trying to build. Big protests at the convention were a major concern,” she writes. Harris later picked Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

Harris went on to lose to Republican Donald Trump after running the shortest presidential campaign in modern US history, lasting just over three months — the “107 days” in the title of her memoir.