"Pressure is building in Congress for Biden to do more to halt Israel's assault on Gaza," he was asked in a 2021 interview as fighting raged to stop Hamas assaults on Israel.
"Hopefully he can use it as leverage to get the Israelis to stop," Ilan Goldenberg, Kamala's future Middle East advisor and new "liaison" to the Jewish community, answered.
Could a Harris administration be any worse for the Jews than the Obama administration?
An early answer arrived with the announcement that the Harris-Walz campaign has picked Goldenberg as its "liaison" to the Jewish community. Freedom Center Investigates had previously profiled Goldenberg when he was serving as Harris's Middle East advisor.
A member of John Kerry's team under President Barack Obama, whose biased attacks on Israel and support for Iran and Islamic terrorists in Israel helped lead to the current regional crisis, Goldenberg had spent the years leading up to October 7, 2023 doing everything possible to make the Hamas attack happen.
And the time afterward serving as a Harris adviser and imposing sanctions on Israelis.
Goldenberg had previously advocated for a deal in which "Hamas would retain some of its military capabilities" and argued:
"I think half the root causes are Israeli actions, in terms of — especially just focusing on Gaza, on the blockade. And the other half is Hamas' choice to use violence and arm itself in response."
He had urged that more money should go into the Hamas territory and argued that Israel should allow in workers from Gaza. "You used to have 25,000, 100,000 Gazans working inside Israel. That needs to happen again." That led to Oct 7.
Harris's new Jewish "liaison" opposed every single pro-Israel move by both Republicans and Democrats, whether it was moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, or even cutting off aid to the "pay-for-slay" program of the Palestinian Authority. Instead, he urged anti-Israel moves, including a unilateral recognition of a "Palestinian" state on Israel's territory.
Goldenberg had been a vocal proponent of the Iran nuclear deal, and attended an event by National Iranian American Council (NIAC): the Iran lobby. He had argued that, "In the aftermath of a successful nuclear deal, U.S. relations with Iran should shift from that of an adversary to that of a competitor."
And Goldenberg had been part of the team that was responsible for and had defended the Obama administration's opposition to Israel at the UN.
A recent Tablet article by Michael Doran of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East had described Goldenberg as playing a "very enthusiastic role" in the Biden administration's program to sanction Jews in Israel. So far those sanctions have targeted an Israeli goat farm, an Israeli baker who shot a terrorist, and an Israeli mother of 8 who works with survivors of sexual assault and led protests against Biden administration policies that rewarded Hamas.
Rather than being associated with the Jewish community, Goldenberg was tied to anti-Israel groups including J Street, Americans for Peace Now and the Israel Policy Forum: which hailed the pick. Goldenberg had a scant history with Jewish groups, but he had attended an event for NIAC, the Iran lobby, and had been a vigorous champion of the deal that empowered Iran's terrorism.
But all of that may not even be the most disturbing part of the move by Vice President Kamala Harris.
Previous Jewish liaisons were usually involved with Jewish communal life and could speak to a variety of issues. Goldenberg is simply an anti-Israel activist whose only issues are empowering Iran and Hamas. Harris just reduced the Jewish community to support for her anti-Israel program without even any acknowledgement that there are American Jews.
A Harris aide stated that Goldenberg would be "the campaign's main liaison with Jewish community leaders and stakeholders and advise the campaign on issues related to the U.S.-Israel relationship, the war in Gaza and the broader Middle East."
There's no mention of anything American Jews might be interested in inside America.
American Jews are not the Israeli government or an arm of it. And yet to Harris, that is all they are. Harris's aide couldn't think of American Jews except in terms of foreign policy.
Harris's mouthpieces in the Jewish community claimed that because her husband is of Jewish ancestry, that she understands Jews. If anything, American Jews are apparently alien to her.
Instead of selecting someone from the Jewish community or any of her political aides, Harris chose someone whose sole function will be to justify her anti-Israel policies to the Jewish community, and who will filter any efforts by the Jewish community to push back against them.
What can American Jews expect from Goldenberg and by extension from Harris?
During the 2021 battles with Hamas, Goldenberg explained why Biden was only pretending to support Israel:
"What Biden has decided to do for the moment is privately tell the Israelis to stop or to stop soon while publicly continuing to support them. This helps him build political support... but when there does come a moment, hopefully soon... where Biden says, 'OK, enough is enough, you must stop or our public position is going to start to shift. Our position at the UN Security Council where we've been defending you is going to start to shift. You need to make this end.'
"But if he had just started by publicly criticizing, I think that the belief, at least in the Biden administration, is that it might have actually been a moment for Prime Minister Netanyahu to stand up to the United States and say 'we don't take our orders from the United States. We have to do what's best in our security,' and kind of use the disagreement with the U.S. as a political rallying cry for himself at home. And so I think this is one of the reasons why the Biden administration chose to, at least at the beginning, publicly support Israel."
Lies, deceit and manipulation with the aim of empowering Hamas and destroying Israel.
Every single "rabbi" featured on the "Jewish Americans for Kamala Harris" virtually rally organized by Haile Sofer, Harris's former adviser, and her Jewish Democratic Council of America (JDCA), was an anti-Israel activist. Sofer and the JDCA, who had formerly hailed Senator Chuck Schumer's demand that Israel stop fighting Hamas, celebrated Goldenberg's appointment.
Harris's campaign and her political allies are leading a fundamental break with Israel, even before the election, while disguising it with happy talk for the benefit of some of their donors.
The appointment of one of the most persistently hostile foreign policy figures as a "liaison" to the Jewish community sends a powerful message that a Harris administration will be as anti-Israel as Goldenberg and that Harris will reconfigure her relationship with American Jews around her anti-Israel policies. Not even Obama went that far. What does it say that Harris is already doing it now?
Daniel Greenfield is a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. This article previously appeared at the Center's Front Page Magazine.
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