Gov. Shapiro’s Bad Play on Israel Ties

This past weekend, Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania made news after leaking — from this upcoming memoir, probably as a prelude to a presidential run — that Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign team asked him if he harbored loyalty to the state of Israel in their vetting for the vice-presidential slot:

Mr. Shapiro, who is Jewish, details a contentious vetting process in which Ms. Harris’s team focused intensely on his views on Israel — so much so that at one point, he wrote, he was asked if he had ever been an agent of the Israeli government.

 

“Had I been a double agent for Israel?” wrote Mr. Shapiro, describing his incredulous response to a last-minute question from the vetting team. He responded that the question was offensive, he wrote, and was told, “Well, we have to ask.”

 

“Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” the questioner, Dana Remus, a former White House counsel, continued, according to Mr. Shapiro, who recounted, “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”

 

Mr. Shapiro wrote that he understood that Ms. Remus was “just doing her job.” But the fact that he was asked such questions, he wrote, “said a lot about some of the people around the VP.”

Shapiro was not the only potential VP quizzed about foreign ties. The eventual nominee, Gov. Tim Waltz, was asked about his ties to China due to his frequent travel to the country.

It is common for vetting officials to look into foreign ties, as the job is national security-related. It is an obvious and inoffensive line of inquiry, but Shapiro is playing an anachronistic game.

There was a time when even the slightest accusation of antisemitism in relation to Israel was met with credulous belief. Not anymore: the media reaction around Shapiro has revealed that most are not buying Shapiro’s victimhood ploy.

ADC’s Legal Director takes on Shapiro. 

Shapiro has a long-life relationship with Israel, and a hardline one at that. As a college student, he wrote an op-ed opposing a Palestinian state in dehumanizing terms against Arabs, at the start of the 1993 Oslo peace process: “Using history as precedent, peace between Arabs and Israelis is virtually impossible and will never come,” Shapiro wrote, referring to Arabs as “belligerent.”

In that op-ed, Shapiro identified as “a past volunteer in the Israeli army,” although his team has sought to downplay his involvement with the IDF.

Shapiro praised Netanyahu in a 2011 tweet before becoming governor. 

Shapiro has also reportedly worked in the Israeli embassy staff in Washington. Despite Shapiro’s attempt to frame the question due solely to his being Jewish — Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who is also Jewish, was not asked about Israel — it is clearly due to his long-running affiliation and devotion to the country.

(More recently, Shapiro used his role as governor to clamp down on the campus encampments in his state.)

What Shapiro hopes to gain by reminding his own party’s base that he is out of touch with their pro-Palestinian views — along with coming across as whiny and leveling a petty accusation that Harris surrounds herself with suspect antisemites, this of a woman married to a Jewish man — is beyond us.

But, notably, the very people Shapiro would need to win over in a 2028 Democratic presidential primary are not having it, while the only people rallying to his side are, predictably, right-wing Zionists who mainly side with the GOP.

Shapiro is playing to the wrong crowd.