NEW YORK - Kamala Harris’ first event in her multi-city book tour was disrupted by several pro-Palestine protesters Sept. 24, prompting the former vice president to suggest her early position on the Israel-Hamas war was not in lockstep with the Joe Biden administration.

“People in our administration can tell you what my voice was in those rooms – in those closed rooms – in the Oval Office,” Harris said to the packed venue in New York City. “I was not president. I couldn’t make the decisions, but I made my position clear.”

The event was the first stop in Harris’ book tour, to promote her new memoir, “107 Days,” chronicling her run for president in 2024.

At least three protesters interrupted Harris during the first of two on-stage interview events at Town Hall in Manhattan Wednesday night, one screaming she has “blood on her hands” over the Israel-Hamas war. The demonstrators were booed loudly by a crowd of nearly 1,500 and escorted out of the building by security. A group of more than a dozen also congregated outside the venue, drawing an increased law enforcement presence.

Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza has been a central tension point within the Democratic party since the war began with Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack, and continues to beleaguer Harris more than ten months after she lost the election to Donald Trump.

After several interruptions, Harris began to address one of the protesters directly.

“I understand your concern and how you feel,” she said. “I think I do, I think I do. And the reality of it is, where we are right now didn’t have to be this way, in terms of a blank check that this president (Trump) has given.”

Amid one interruption, Harris told the crowd: “I’m not president right now. There’s nothing I can do.”

Harris also spoke of the speech she gave on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 3, 2024, in which she condemned the developing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. She called for an immediate, temporary cease-fire for the first time, after months of pressure from activists and Democrats who wanted more done from the administration to end the war.

“I took a lot of heat from the administration for doing that,” Harris said of the speech, made at an event commemorating Bloody Sunday. “There were a lot of people that did not like that I spoke out so forcefully and candidly about my concern about what was happening in Gaza.”

Harris’ attempts to distance herself from the Biden administration on the Israel-Hamas war echoes the candid tone that early reviewers – and several of the event’s attendees – say dominates her memoir.

In one chapter, the former Democratic nominee rebukes Biden’s team for the way she was treated as vice president, both before and after Biden dropped out of the 2024 campaign. She writes Biden’s staff added “fuel to negative narratives that sprang up” around her and said she had to prove her loyalty “time and time again.”

Though Harris wrote several times about tension between her and the administration, she also came to Biden’s defense, pushing back against allegations involving his mental fitness, and heaping compliments on the former president’s job performance.

Contributing: Francesca Chambers, USA TODAY.

Kathryn Palmer is a politics reporter for USA TODAY. You can reach her at kapalmer@usatoday.com and on X @KathrynPlmr.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Protesters disrupt Kamala Harris' first stop on book tour over Gaza

Reporting by Kathryn Palmer, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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