The protesters repeatedly disrupted Harris’s book event in New York City
Former vice president Kamala Harris’s book tour got off to a chaotic start Wednesday when anti-Israel agitators repeatedly disrupted her New York City event, prompting her to tell them she had no way to help their cause.
“I’m not president right now,” she said. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
The anti-Israel outbursts interrupted Harris’s first stop on her tour promoting her book, 107 Days. Early on, a masked protester stood up and shouted “the blood of the Palestinians is on your hands.” The crowd began yelling and drowned out the agitator before security removed him. Harris tried to calm the crowd, then offered a rambling response.
“I actually also write about this. Okay? Which is about what I know about how and why you are saying what you are saying now and how I felt about it,” Harris began before the crowd erupted again. “You’re not letting me talk. You know what, I respect your right to speak, but you’re not letting me speak.”
Harris sat in silence for about 30 seconds as audience members shouted over one another. She eventually urged the crowd to “turn the temperature down, unlike the current president of the United States,” which unified the audience in cheers.
“I understand what’s happening right now in Gaza,” she said. “What is happening to the Palestinian people is outrageous, and it breaks my heart. I get it.”
Harris also claimed in 107 Days that she was powerless even when she was in the White House.
“I had pleaded with Joe, when he spoke publicly on this issue, to extend the same empathy he showed to the suffering of Ukrainians to the suffering of innocent Gazan civilians,” she wrote. “But he couldn’t do it: While he could passionately state, ‘I am a Zionist,’ his remarks about innocent Palestinians came off as inadequate and forced.”
107 Days hit shelves Tuesday and has been condemned by some Democrats as “unhelpful and divisive” gossip. In it, Harris notes that she passed over Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, a Jewish Democrat and an Israel supporter, in part because of his stance on the war in Gaza. Yet Harris still struggled to pacify anti-Israel protesters on the presidential campaign trail. At the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, anti-Israel activists assembled at an official panel and warned Harris that she would lose the November election if she didn’t satisfy their demands. Outside the convention, anti-Israel protests turned chaotic, with agitators tearing down security fences, leading to a standoff with police.
