Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign was in damage control mode on Thursday after activists from the Uncommitted National Movement shared an account of a conversation with Harris that they said suggested she would be open to talking to them about an arms embargo on Israel.

At a campaign rally in Detroit on Wednesday, the two founders of the Uncommitted movement — which called on Democrats to vote “uncommitted” rather than supporting President Joe Biden in this year’s primaries to protest his support for Israel — used a brief moment with Harris during a photo opportunity to discuss the war in Gaza. According to the Uncommitted organizers, Harris “shared her sympathies and expressed an openness to a meeting with Uncommitted leaders to discuss an arms embargo.” 

The next day, Harris’ advisors shut down that notion and reiterated her staunch opposition to such a policy, which would be a dramatic reversal of America’s long-standing support for Israel. Harris “has been clear … She does not support an arms embargo on Israel,” her national security advisor, Phil Gordon, said Thursday. 

Still, an aide to Harris stood by Harris’ dialogue with the anti-Israel activists. “She said her campaign will remain in touch, and reiterated her standard positions on the conflict,” the aide told Jewish Insider on Thursday. 

The meeting was not a random chance encounter. While roughly 15,000 people attended her rally in Michigan with her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, only a small fraction of those attendees were invited by the campaign to the “photo line” to briefly meet Harris and pose for a picture with her. One Michigan Democratic official who witnessed Harris’ exchange with the Uncommitted activists told JI that he had received an invitation from the campaign on Wednesday morning to arrive early and meet Harris. 

A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not respond to a request for comment about the invitation to the Uncommitted activists. When Biden was still the Democratic nominee, some prominent Arab American activists spurned invitations from his campaign in protest of his support for Israel since the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks. 

The Democratic official who witnessed Harris’ interaction with the Uncommitted activists called it “frankly false” to say that she expressed any openness to an arms embargo, as the Uncommitted activists suggested. The official added that she did describe a willingness to stay in touch.

“She was being just very respectful and taking it in and listening and saying thank you and asked to continue the conversation. But to suggest that there was an Israeli arms embargo on the table, it’s just, frankly, false,” the official said. “She did promise to continue the conversation with them.” 

In February, more than 100,000 Democratic primary voters in Michigan cast their ballots for “uncommitted,” which won them two delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago later this month. After more than 45,000 Democrats in Minnesota voted “uncommitted” in their state’s March primary, Walz called those activists “civically engaged” and praised their willingness to “ask for change.” 

“Those folks express their opinion. And I’m proud to be part of a party that doesn’t wear the same red hats and bow down and knee to one guy. They’re frustrated by this,” Walz said in July. “I think there’s a golden opportunity to recognize we need a two-state solution, that the atrocities of Oct. 7 are painful and they’re real, and Israel’s right to defend itself is real. But, also, the situation in Gaza is intolerable.” 

Norm Eisen, a former U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic who served as a counsel to House Democrats during the first impeachment of former President Donald Trump, said it would be “political malpractice” for Harris to actively spurn the Uncommitted activists.

“I say this as a strong supporter of Israel and of the two-state solution,” Eisen told JI. “It would be political malpractice for her not to remain in communication with people who have a variety of views on the conflict and to avoid needlessly losing votes by people staying at home.” 

Harris has not addressed the incident herself. Her campaign has not yet hired a staffer to focus on engaging Jewish voters, a position that the Biden campaign had filled by this point in the 2020 election cycle.