Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
US Vice President Kamala Harris was born to support Palestine. Her parents were both born under British colonial occupation which denied the original population their civil and human rights, like the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Her ancestry may have instilled in her the love of freedom, independence, and social justice.
Being raised by two activists committed to equal rights and social justice, Kamala Harris would have heard her parents’ opinions and been shaped by them. Kamala Harris is the most uniquely qualified person who may choose to champion the Palestinian call for the end of occupation, apartheid, and the creation of a two-state solution.
Kamala Harris’ mother, Shyamala Gopalan was born in 1938 in British India. While the history books focus on the peaceful resistance of Mahatma Gandhi, some may have forgotten the use of violence, and what today would be called terrorism, which resulted in India gaining its independence in 1947 after 89 years of British occupation.
The 1919 Rowlatt Act allowed Indians to be imprisoned without trial and allowed political cases to be tried without juries. In April 1919, British Empire troops opened fire on a crowd of unarmed protesters, killing at least 379 people and galvanizing the call for resistance to colonial occupation. The current situation in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank bears a striking resemblance to colonial India.
According to research by the economic historian Robert C Allen, British colonialism killed 100 million Indians between 1880 and 1920.
In 1958, Shyamala Gopalan was accepted to the master’s program in nutrition and endocrinology at the University of California, Berkeley (UCB), and by 1964 she earned a Ph.D. there.
At a meeting of the Afro-American Association at UCB, in the fall of 1962, she listened to a speaker, Donald J. Harris, a graduate student in economics from Jamaica. Their interests were civil rights, freedom, independence from colonial rule, and social justice. They soon fell in love and were married in July 1963, and their next shared interest was to be their two daughters, Kamala and Maya.
Donald J. Harris was born in Brown’s Town, Jamaica under British colonial occupation. His parents were Afro-Jamaicans, descendants of African slaves brought to work the sugarcane fields for their British owners.
Jamaica became a British colony in 1707 and a Crown colony in 1866. While a colony, most top seats in government were strictly held by the British colonizers.
As Donald J. Harris was growing up, he witnessed and experienced many forms of inequality and, understandably, he chose economics as his life’s work and social activism. Jamaica was granted independence in 1962.
In the fall of 1961, Donald J. Harris arrived at UCB on the Elias A. Issa scholarship to study economics. The Issa scholarship, which continues today, was founded in 1938 at the behest of Issa, who was born in Bethlehem, Palestine in 1876, and had immigrated to Kingston, Jamaica in 1894. Issa became a very successful merchant in Kingston and founded a family dynasty that survives. He valued education and founded the scholarship to support the educational aspirations of Jamaican students.
Donald J. Harris was sent to America by a Palestinian, and in 1966 he earned his Ph.D. at UCB. In 1998, he retired from Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, becoming a professor emeritus, and continued developing public policies to promote economic growth and advance social equality.
The science of economics is political because it deals with governments and how they interact with the society. The civil rights movement Donald J. Harris was passionate about in 1962 dovetails with his professional work.
Shyamala Gopalan and Donald J. Harris divorced in the early 1970’s; however, the children remained connected to their father, and his family in Jamaica, although they were raised by their mother, who died in 2009.
Shyamala Gopalan and Donald J. Harris were involved with the Afro-American Association (AAA) which was founded in 1962 at UCB. The group’s mission was to educate African Americans about their history and took inspiration from the anti-colonial victories throughout Africa. By spring 1962 the group reported 150 members, and by fall the group reported 5,000 members nationwide. Black power was coming to the stage as racial issues and social equality were discussed and debated at UCB. This was the society Kamala Harris’ parents found themselves drawn to.
In 1964, The Free Speech Movement began at UCB after students protested the university’s restrictions on political activities on campus. Sit-ins and protests demanded their constitutional rights on campus. UCB responded by changing policies to ensure free speech and academic freedom.
After students across campuses in the US protested the ongoing genocide in Gaza, some tried to silence the students by claiming the protests for Palestinian human rights, and the end of occupation were anti-Semitic.
56 African-American activists published a statement in 1970 titled “An Appeal by Black Americans Against United States Support for the Zionist Government of Israel” in The New York Times. The group called for “complete solidarity with our Palestinian brothers and sisters, who like us, are struggling for self-determination and an end to racist oppression.”
The struggle Nelson Mandela led to end racial segregation and transform South Africa into a democratic state has been an inspiration to Palestinians, who compare the apartheid of the former South Africa, to the current Israeli apartheid in occupied Palestine.
In 1997, Mandela gave a speech on the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People and said, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.”
The struggle for freedom in South Africa and India was not strictly peaceful, and Mandela said, “Choose peace rather than confrontation. Except in cases where we cannot get, where we cannot proceed, or we cannot move forward. Then if the only alternative is violence, we will use violence.”
African-American support for Palestine was a core value in the Black Panther Party, which was inspired by the AAA which Shyamala Gopalan and Donald J. Harris participated in at UCB.
The Black Lives Matter movement also supports Palestinian human rights. Black-Palestinian solidarity among social activists is viewed as a shared struggle against racism and imperialism, including a rejection of Zionism, which is a racist political ideology held by the Israeli government.
Kamala Harris has been careful to not support Palestinians over Israelis. She is on the fence, trying to balance her position in order to win the election. Whether she wins or not, she might think back to her childhood and her parents’ activism. The core values they were passionate about, and willing to protest for were social justice, equality and human rights.
Kamala Harris rose to political prominence through education and hard work. She worked her way to the top of her field because she had equal rights by law. She could achieve greatness because the American government allowed her to be free and under laws protecting her rights. This is all that the Palestinian people are asking for.
India, Jamaica, and South Africa won their freedom. When will Palestine be free?
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist.
