In a short six-minute address before reporters after meeting privately with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Vice President Kamala Harris, soon-to-be the Democratic nominee for president, reiterated her lifelong support for the Zionist state and its continued ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza.

“So I just had a frank and constructive meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Harris said. “I told him that I will always ensure that Israel is able to defend itself, including from Iran and Iran-backed militias, such as Hamas and Hezbollah.”

She continued:

From when I was a young girl, collecting funds to plant trees for Israel to my time in the United States Senate and now at the White House, I’ve had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the State of Israel, to its security and to the people of Israel.

I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating. Israel has a right to defend itself and how it does so matters.

Repeating Israeli propaganda that was debunked months ago, Harris declared, “Hamas is a brutal terrorist organization. On October 7 Hamas triggered this war when it massacred 1,200 innocent people, including 44 Americans. Hamas has committed horrific acts of sexual violence and took 250 hostages.”

Harris then proceeded to say the names of some of those allegedly taken by Hamas, adding, “I have met with the families of these American hostages multiple times now, I stand with them. Bring them home.”

In her comments, Harris never mentioned the name of a single one of the over 39,000 Palestinians, the vast majority women and children, who have been killed in Gaza with US-supplied weaponry. In fact, she did not give any figures in regards to the number of Palestinians killed, instead only referring obliquely to “images of dead children and desperate hungry people.”

Who or what was responsible for these “dead children” and “desperate hungry people” was purposely omitted.

Harris then thanked President Joe Biden, who will live in infamy as Netanyahu’s top weapons supplier, for his “leadership” in cobbling together a “ceasefire” deal that has gone nowhere for months and will not end Israel’s continued ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians from their homes.

Harris’s public statements are just the latest confirmation that a Democratic administration under her leadership would be no less aggressive than Biden’s in the genocide in Gaza or imperialist war against Iran in the Middle East, Russia in Ukraine or China in Taiwan.

Despite their differences in age and sex, and at this point presumably in mental acuity, there are no fundamental policy differences between “Genocide Joe” and the woman he chose as his vice president, who now cites her long experience as a prosecutor as her political calling card. Both capitalist politicians, and their “Republican colleagues,” are dedicated to enriching the financial oligarchy through imperialist war abroad and social austerity domestically. The standing ovation Netanyahu received in the Capitol on July 24 underscores the bipartisan ruling class support for the frontline US garrison state in the Middle East and its war of conquest.

Notions that Harris would enact the slightest shift in US policy in Gaza were quickly disabused in reports leading up to her meeting with Netanyahu. The Associated Press, citing a “senior administration official,” reported that there is “no daylight between the president and vice president on Israel.” The AP wrote that while the last time Harris met Netanyahu in person prior to today was in March 2021, Harris has “taken part in more than 20 calls between Biden and Netanyahu.”

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, White House National Security spokesman John Kirby said Harris has “been a full partner in our policies in the Middle East, particularly with our policies towards Israel and the war in Gaza.”

Kirby added that she has “been involved in nearly every conversation that the president has had with the prime minister and very much engaged throughout.”

Prior to meeting with the “Butcher of Gaza,” the vice president signaled her fulsome support for using police-state measures to crush domestic dissent to the genocide in Gaza.

In a statement released on X/Twitter concerning the protests held outside the Capitol on Wednesday, Harris condemned anti-genocide protesters for exercising their First Amendment right to peaceably protest a war criminal. Netanyahu is responsible for the deaths of as many as 186,000 Palestinians in the last nine months, according to an estimate by the highly respected The Lancet medical journal.

“Yesterday, at Union Station In Washington D.C. we saw despicable acts by unpatriotic protesters and dangerous hate-fueled rhetoric,” Harris’s statement, issued from the White House, declared.

In a McCarthyite tirade, she condemned “pro-Hamas graffiti and rhetoric,” warning “we must not tolerate it in our nation.”

Harris, who is marketing herself as the “prosecutor” able and willing to take down the “felon” Trump, also condemned “the burning of the America flag,” saying it “should never be desecrated in that way.”

After Harris issued her statement, Democratic Representative Adam Schiff, who is currently running for US Senate in California, similarly slandered anti-genocide protesters, saying, “What happened yesterday in Washington D.C. was the latest, hateful incident in the wave of antisemitism plaguing our country.”

Notably, Harris’s denunciation of protests against the Gaza genocide and her embrace of the war criminal Netanyahu in Washington came after she delivered a speech to a throng of bureaucrats at the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) convention in Houston, Texas. The AFT was the first major union to endorse her candidacy.

Introducing Harris Thursday morning, AFT President Randi Weingarten, an agent of US imperialism for many decades, called on those in attendance to elect “the most pro-labor,” “pro-worker,” “pro-family” and “pro-public education administration in our history.” In reality, the Biden-Harris administration has overseen skyrocketing corporate inflation, strikebreaking, mass layoffs and the decimation of public education through savage cuts imposed after COVID-19 funding was terminated.

In her brief comments, Harris said nothing about the genocide in Gaza but did thank the AFT bureaucrats “for your service to our nation.” As the UAW and President Shawn Fain served as Biden’s “domestic NATO” to suppress the class struggle and divert mass anger back into the dead end of the Democratic Party, Weingarten is offering the AFT and its 1.8 million membership to Harris in the same way.

That these two events took place on the same day is not just a coincidence; it is a prime example of the integration of the trade union bureaucracies with the capitalist state. It underscores the necessity of workers and youth, fighting against genocide and war, to break with both big business parties and the nationalist trade union bureaucracies in a fight for international socialism.