Vice President Kamla Harris ran a new digital ad that appeared to be aimed at garnering support from Arab American voters in her presidential campaign, a Tuesday NBC News report showed.
The ad emphasized that Harris “will not be silent on the suffering in Gaza.” According to the report, it targeted nine ZIP codes around Detroit, including the city of Dearborn, which has a high concentration of people of Middle Eastern and North African descent who tend to have views supporting Palestine.
The footage used in the ad’s clip has text at the end stating that it was “paid for by Harris for President.”
This new ad proves @kamalaharris understands the suffering of the people in Gaza and the need for a ceasefire. #HarrisWalz2024 #Ceasefire #MuslimsforHarris pic.twitter.com/Y9g5OiUCp3
— Muslims for Harris (@Muslims_Harris) September 18, 2024
The ad began running on Snapchat and Google platforms, and the beginning of the clip was taken from Harris’s statements after she met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in July.
The clip begins with Harris’s declaration that “she will not be silent about the scale of human suffering in Gaza, including the death of far too many innocent civilians.”
In the full clip of Harris’s statement in July following her meeting with Netanyahu, she also mentioned that since she was a young girl, she “has had an unwavering commitment to the existence of the State of Israel, to its security, and to the people of Israel…Israel has a right to defend itself, and how it does so matters.”
The ad does not include mention of Israel
However, these statements were not included in the presidential campaign ad clip. Furthermore, the Harris campaign did not comment on its ad strategy, according to the report.
Towards the end of the clip, the footage shifts to Harris’s March address, in which she concludes about the situation in Gaza that, “our common humanity compels us to act.”
Additionally, the report noted that the majority of the nine ZIP codes where the ad targeted are currently represented in Congress by Democratic Representative Rashida Tlaib, who openly supports a Palestinian state.
During Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress back in July, Tlaib attended while holding up a sign directed at Netanyahu that read “war criminal.”
