IT WAS the speech of a candidate ready to continue with Joe Biden’s unconditional arming of Benjamin Netanyahu’s war of extermination.

Any hope that Kamala Harris would condition or suspend arms and funding of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza was killed by her speech to the Democratic National Convention on Thursday.

In front of an excitable crowd chanting “USA, USA, USA,” Harris deployed familiar language: “I will always stand up for Israel’s right to defend itself and I will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself. Because the people of Israel must never again face the horror that the terrorist organisation Hamas caused on October 7. Including unspeakable sexual violence and the massacre of young people at a music festival.”

The reference to sexual violence and massacre has always been reinforced as a way to legitimise Israel’s war on the whole of Gaza that is now nearly a year old. Meanwhile Palestinians are raped in Israeli prisons and Israeli politicians openly say this is justified. Harris, like most US leaders, had nothing to say about it.

She described what has happened in Gaza over the past 10 months as “devastating,” “desperate” and “heartbreaking.” In the lexicon of pro-war liberal politicians, these words express an empty, meaningless facsimile of empathy. 

The words that peace campaigners were looking for were wholly absent: nothing about Israel’s vast catalogue of war crimes, not even a swipe at war criminal in chief Benjamin Netanyahu, who, after all, wants Donald Trump back in the White House. The Israeli leader wins whichever pro-war candidate wins in November. 

When Joe Biden announced that he would not be standing as presidential candidate for the Democrats a month ago, there was a sigh of relief among those who had watched the avowedly zionist president supply Israel with billions in lethal aid from day one of the war. Could a new candidate offer hope of an end to Israel’s campaign that has killed at least 50,000 Palestinians?

The hope was that Harris, despite her history as a pro-Israel centrist Democrat and loyal vice-president to Biden, would change the tenor of US policy on Gaza, and put some kind of pressure on Netanyahu to come to a ceasefire deal. 

The Democratic convention in Chicago has been the scene of many pro-Palestine protests, with participants saying how they could not vote for Harris as long as the Biden-Harris administration continued to supply weapons for Israel’s genocide. 

On Monday, progressive Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given the job to rally the left of the Democrats to support Harris. In her DNC main stage speech she claimed Harris was “working tirelessly to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and bringing the hostages home.” It left many wondering what had happened to the fearless critic of the Democratic Establishment elected in 2018.

Later she Facetimed into a protest of the Uncommitted delegates outside the convention hall, pledging her support. Other progressive congress members, such as Ilhan Omar, had the courage to sit down in solidarity with the pro-Palestine delegates.

She said last week: “If you really wanted a ceasefire, you’d just stop sending the weapons. It is that simple.”

The Uncommitted delegates were modestly calling for the DNC to include a pro-Palestinian speaker on the main stage. The DNC refused. The Uncommitted Movement ended its sit-in on Thursday. However, a group of about 40 delegates and supporters spent the night outside the United Centre on the pavement, and remained for the last day of the DNC, ABC reported.

On Wednesday, parents of US hostage Hersh Goldberg who was seized during the October 7 attack in Israel, spoke on stage, pleading for the release of those held captive in Gaza. No Palestinian speaker was called.

“The least they could do is allow a Palestinian-American, or somebody who is directly affected by this war, to speak from the main stage of the DNC,” Rhode Island delegate June Rose said.

Harris’s speech offered bromides to the US “middle class” — that imprecise category that signals to aspirational and hardworking voters that she is one of them.

“The middle class is where I come from,” she said. “My mother kept a strict budget. We lived within our means. Yet, we wanted for little.”

Signal to the markets: no generous spending for social programmes. No self-respecting neoliberal Democrat ever mentions the unmentionable: the working-class Americans living paycheque to paycheque.

Harris reserved her fire in the speech for her threats against the US’s enemies — Iran, Russia, China, and the delegates loved it.

“As commander-in-chief, I will ensure America always has the strongest, most lethal fighting force in the world,” thundered Harris. “I will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend our forces and our interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists.”

That will be the threat behind the mass of US forces deployed to the Mediterranean in preparation for an Iranian-Hezbollah response to the recent twin Israeli assassinations in Beirut and Tehran.

Harris had something to say about Palestine: the usual warm words that Palestinians have long ago thrown into the dustbin of false promises used by US diplomats. She and Biden were working to ensure that “Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends, and the Palestinian people can realise their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”

It is a cast-iron rule of US policy that the first clause in such sentences will always be “Israel is secure,” which means only one thing for Palestinians: occupation, ethnic cleansing and endless war.

Harris has made it as clear as she can that her presidency, if she wins, will be a continuation of Biden’s. War, war and war.