KAMALA HARRIS’S first show on the world stage as the Democrats’ presumptive new presidential nominee is a disappearing act: on July 24th she absented herself from an address by Binyamin “Bibi” Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, to a joint meeting of Congress. As vice-president, and president of the Senate, Ms Harris would normally have overseen the event alongside Mike Johnson, speaker of the House. Instead she attended a previously scheduled event in Indianapolis to talk to Zeta Phi Beta, a historically black sorority. Republicans, who have come to embrace Israel with ardour, denounced her no-show as “outrageous”.

Whatever her reasons, it marks a generational transition. Mr Biden is probably the last Democratic president to call himself a “Zionist”. He is of a generation that remembers the first 30 years of Israel’s existence, as an underdog democracy fighting for survival against Arab enemies, notes Ivo Daalder of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, a think-tank. “Kamala Harris’s formative view is the last 30 years—of Israel as the dominant power in the Middle East that keeps Palestinians under occupation.”