(Washington Free Beacon) Under pressure to demonstrate she is not as hostile to Israel as some might believe, Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris on Monday named a campaign liaison to the Jewish community.
He is Ilan Goldenberg, who served as an adviser to Harris on the Middle East before transitioning to his new role. Now he will guide the campaign on “issues related to the U.S.-Israel relationship, the war in Gaza, and the broader Middle East,” a campaign aide told Jewish Insider.
So, is it a peace offering? Well, Goldenberg has longstanding ties to the anti-Israel group J Street and served as a foreign policy adviser to Elizabeth Warren’s failed 2020 presidential bid. Throughout his professional career, both in and out of government, he has served as a public defender of the Democratic party’s criticisms of Israel, a critic of the GOP’s efforts to strengthen ties with the Jewish state, and a proponent of deepening diplomatic relations with Iran.
During his tenure as her Middle East adviser, Harris has offered pushback on Biden’s public support for Israel and support for pro-Hamas protesters in the United States. She did not, for example, attend Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to Congress late last month, and has extended sympathy to anti-Israel and anti-Semitic campus agitators, telling the Nation in July that “they are showing exactly what the human emotion should be, as a response to Gaza.” She rebuked the Jewish state in March for sparking a “humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza and called for an immediate Israeli ceasefire.
Before joining the Biden administration in 2021, Goldenberg participated in a briefing organized by the anti-Israel group J Street in which he described President Joe Biden’s historically pro-Israel view as “old school” and said the United States must “publicly criticize the Israelis” in order to pressure them to accept a ceasefire.
During Warren’s failed presidential bid, with Goldenberg by her side, the Massachusetts senator urged the Jewish state to end its “occupation” and create “an independent and sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip living alongside Israel.” Warren skipped AIPAC’s 2019 conference and pledged to do so again, saying, “For America to be a good ally of Israel and of the Palestinians, we need to encourage both parties to get to the negotiating table. And we’re not doing that if we keep standing with one party and saying, ‘We’re on your side.’”
