In a campaign stop on Sunday, Vice President Kamala Harris called for a six-week pause — which she called a “ceasefire” — in Israel’s attacks in Gaza, co-opting the phrasing that pro-Palestine advocates have been using for months to instead promote what advocates say would simply amount to a “pause to the genocide."
Many news outlets — including ones with a demonstrated pro-Israel bias — simply reported that Harris called for a ceasefire in headlines and social media posts, with The Washington Post going as far as to call Harris’s words a “tonal shift.” However, without the context of it being a temporary ceasefire, or something that other officials have called a “humanitarian pause,” the headlines make it seem as though Harris made a stronger call than she really did, advocates have pointed out.
In a speech in front of the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, Harris paused after calling for “an immediate ceasefire,” allowing the crowd to cheer before continuing on, “for at least the next six weeks, which is what is currently on the table.” She blamed Palestinian leaders for not wanting the deal, though reports say that the negotiations are still ongoing, with Hamas forces unwilling to release all Israeli hostages until Israel agrees to withdraw its troops altogether and release some of the thousands of Palestinian hostages it has taken in recent months.
Harris’s refusal to call for a permanent ceasefire comes as Israel’s genocidal military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 30,000 Palestinians and injured 70,000, with thousands of people still missing under the rubble.
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