Ex-Biden Staffer Who Quit over Gaza Says Kamala Harris Must “Chart a New Path” on Israel-Palestine

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency.” I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.

As we continue to look at Vice President Kamala Harris’s run for the White House, we’re joined by Lily Greenberg Call. She worked on Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign in 2019. Lily Greenberg Call went on to join the Biden administration but resigned from her position in the Interior Department to protest Biden’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza. She was the first Jewish political appointee to resign over Biden’s policies on Gaza, in May. She had been working as special assistant to the chief of staff at the Interior Department. She just wrote an article for The Guardian headlined “I worked to elect Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden on Israel and Palestine.”

Welcome back to Democracy Now!, Lily. Explain exactly what your demand is.

LILY GREENBERG CALL: So, President Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza has been widely unpopular with Americans writ large, with Democrats, again, with American voters across the board, and even within the American Jewish community. So, Vice President Harris now has an opportunity to chart a new path, and not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because it’s actually both the popular and politically savvy thing for her to do.

At this moment, she needs to support an arms embargo to Israel. She needs to reject AIPAC’s right-wing agenda. And she needs to use all of the U.S.’s leverage to broker a lasting ceasefire, a hostage exchange and a meaningful status quo change in Israel-Palestine that means safety and a thriving future for all Palestinians and Israelis.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what is your sense that she would be willing to make that break from Biden policies, especially in the midst of a very shortened presidential campaign?

LILY GREENBERG CALL: Well, you know, when I was in the administration, actually, I heard reports that she was pushing the president to pursue a more humane policy that complied with international law. You know, she was the first administration official to actually use the word “ceasefire,” albeit calling for a six-week one. But there were actually some reports that that was an effort by the president’s staff to kind of water down her speech in Selma, when she first called for a six-week ceasefire. So, you know, it’s really disappointing to think that potentially the president and the president’s staff were not only not listening to the majority of the American people and voters, but to his own vice president.

I believe that she would be, you know, more amenable to doing — to breaking with Biden on Israel and Gaza. And again, I also think she has to, right? You know, over 700,000 Democrats voted “uncommitted” in the primary, which was a protest of President Biden’s unconditional support for Israel’s assault on Gaza. Those voters are really important. They’re progressives. They’re young people. They’re Arab Americans. They’re part of the coalition that the vice president needs to win in key swing states like Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia. And if she wants to actually defeat Donald Trump, she has to not just reject authoritarianism here at home, but also reject it abroad. And that means rejecting the Israeli government.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Lily Greenberg Call, will you be participating in protests at the Democratic convention? Or, if you’re not going to be there, do you support those kinds of protests?

LILY GREENBERG CALL: You know, I think voters have the right to hold our electeds and folks seeking elected office accountable. And I do think that — you know, I’m glad to see that people are rallying around Kamala. I think it’s important that we unite the party in this moment and we do everything that we can to defeat Donald Trump. But I also think that this is a moment to hold her accountable. Again, you know, President Biden was weak by the end of his term. You know, he was — the party was divided, and he became a political liability for Democrats in large part due to his support for the war in Gaza. And so, I think the vice president needs to know that she needs to do something different.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The administration obviously has taken a lot of criticism for its pursuit of support of Israel in the war on Gaza. But the Trump administration has — I mean, or, Trump, as a candidate, has received very little questioning from the media about what his policies would be, other than to say, as he said at the convention, that the Hamas attack would never have happened if he’s president. But there’s no specifics about how Trump would deal with the situation and Israel’s continuing attack on Gaza. What’s your sense of the media’s role in this?

LILY GREENBERG CALL: I mean, I think it’s very clear that a Trump presidency would be disastrous, a second-term presidency, not just for Americans, but for Palestinians, for Israelis, for people around the world. You know, I do think that I would say, in general, I don’t know that the media has done a good job in the last — you know, in the last eight years, in the last 10 years of holding Trump accountable and showing him for what he really is, which is a fascist and a threat to our liberties and our freedoms here.

But what I’ll say is, you know, I mean, for the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians who have been massacred in the last nine months, the Biden administration has been just as disastrous. You know, we are — the Palestinian people in Gaza are experiencing a genocide. And for them, that is the most disastrous thing that we could have. So I think we need to remember that this has been happening under a Democratic administration, as well.

And that’s why this moment is so important and, you know, could — has so much potential for an actual sea change. And I hope that the vice president and her staff are paying attention to what voters want, what the majority of American voters want, majority of Democrats. And even the majority of people in my own community, the American Jewish community, support a cutting off of offensive weapons to Israel and want a ceasefire.

AMY GOODMAN: Lily, I wanted to go back like seven years, to 2017, when then-California Senator Kamala Harris pledged unconditional military support to Israel at the AIPAC conference then.

SEN. KAMALA HARRIS: Our defense relationship is critical to both nations, which is why I support the United States’ commitment to provide Israel with $38 billion in military assistance over the next decade.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that was when Kamala Harris was senator. Again, it was seven years ago. This week, Netanyahu has already arrived in the United States. He’ll be addressing a joint session of Congress on Wednesday. She will not be presiding over that session. She’ll be elsewhere, in Indianapolis, which I think is a statement in itself, although she will be privately meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu. Can you talk about what you understand her trajectory has been and, even in these 10 months of Israel’s assault on Gaza, how she has changed?

LILY GREENBERG CALL: I think, you know, the fact that she — I mean, again, Vice President Harris is not perfect by any means, right? Her record as a prosecutor was harmful. She has continued to maintain ties with AIPAC, you know, as evidenced in that speech. And I think those are all things that we need to hold her accountable for.

And I think compared to other people within the administration, she has shown that she’s more amenable to a status quo change in U.S.-Israel policy. And she has even just — you know, unfortunately, this is the status of American politics, but she has expressed empathy for and, you know, humanity for Palestinians who are experiencing massacre and forced starvation and torture. And that, in itself — unfortunately, again, it is devastating that that is the state of our politics, but that is a break from the status quo. And so, I think, you know, this is not an opportunity to let go of the momentum that has built.

Also, you know, 2024 and 2017 is — we are in a very different place now, especially how the American public views what’s happening in Israel-Palestine. We’ve had massive student protests across the country. You know, people are watching, through social media, a genocide being live-streamed, and they’re realizing that it’s their tax dollars and American weapons being used to kill children, and they’re not OK with it. And even within Israel-Palestine, you know, the movement to bring the hostages home, there are hostage families, family members of people still being held hostage by Hamas in Gaza, who came to Washington, D.C., who are here to protest Bibi Netanyahu’s speech to Congress. You know, there is something changing right now. And again, it is imperative that the vice president charts a new path on Israel-Palestine, if she wants to not only win the election and unite the country, but reject authoritarianism here and abroad.

AMY GOODMAN: Lily Greenberg Call, we want to thank you for being with us. Lily became the first known Jewish political appointee to resign over President Biden’s policies on Gaza in May. She had been working as special assistant to the chief of staff at the Interior Department. We’ll link to her piece in The Guardian headlined “I worked to elect Kamala Harris. She must break with Biden on Israel and Palestine.”

Next up, we get an update on Bangladesh, where more than 170 people have been killed during mass student protests. The government has arrested over 2,500 protesters in a sweeping crackdown. Plus, we go to Israel, where a group of public health professors are calling for an immediate ceasefire to prevent a polio outbreak after the highly infectious virus was detected in sewage in Gaza. Back in 20 seconds.