President Joe Biden's stunning decision to step aside and forgo a second term, throwing his support behind the candidacy of Vice President Kamala Harris is unlikely to dramatically change U.S. policy towards Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza, according to former diplomat and senior Haaretz columnist Alon Pinkas, who reacted to the bombshell news from Washington on the Haaretz Podcast this week.

Biden is planning to remain president until his successor takes office in January 2025, so presumably till then, says Pinkas, all policy regarding Israel and the war - in Gaza and beyond - will be coordinated "vis a vis Joe Biden, not Kamala Harris. In fact, Harris is probably not going to deal with foreign policy because she will be preoccupied and very hectically busy running for president in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Nevada, Georgia and other places. And so she's not going to want to deal with foreign policy, certainly not thorny issues like the Middle East."

To U.S. supporters of Israel - and Israelis - whose concerns about Harris might lead them to consider backing Republican nominee Donald Trump, Pinkas warns against what he views as "plain idiocy."

Pinkas assesses Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's trip to Washington this week as "a Seinfeld visit about nothing that wasn't meant to be about anything except a vanity tour that Mr. Netanyahu thought he would sell to his electoral base." With war raging in Israel and hostages in Gaza, Pinkas calls the decision to travel to Washington "recklessness of the highest order."

Also on the podcast, family members of hostages, who traveled to Washington, explain why they felt the need to make their voices heard during Netanyahu's visit, and pressure U.S. leaders to push Netanyahu in the direction of a deal that would end the war and free their loved ones from Hamas captivity.

"We're here send a message that (Netanyahu) cannot just go to America and get a standing ovation in Congress as if he won this war and freed the hostages," says Zahiro Shachar Mor, the nephew of 79-year-old hostage Avraham Mundar. "We are here to show the world that… the voice of Netanyahu is not the voice of Israel."

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