The Democratic Governor of Pennsylvania, Josh Shapiro, is currently on the shortlist for presumed presidential nominee Kamala Harris’s Vice President. Shapiro checks the most crucial box involved in a VP pick: he can deliver the State of Pennsylvania where Republican candidate, Donal Trump, maintains an average 2.7% advantage in the polls. With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is the largest swing state, and a Democratic presidential candidate must win it to have a path to the White House.
Now it appears that to be picked for the second most powerful office in the world, the 2024 Josh Shapiro must reject some sensible things the 1993 Josh Shapiro had written. Call it an act of pushing oneself under the bus.
Last Friday, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that when Governor Shapiro, 51, was a lad of 20, he wrote an op-ed titled “Peace not possible,” for the University of Rochester’s Campus Times in which he predicted that “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully. They do not have the capabilities to establish their own homeland and make it successful even with the aid of Israel and the United States. They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own.”
He also wrote that Yasser Arafat was “an egotistical, power-hungry tyrant who is in danger of being assassinated by his fellow belligerent Arabs because he does not represent the majority opinion.”
He wrote his op-ed in September 1993, shortly after the signing of the first Oslo Accord. In his opinion, “the only way a ‘peace plan’ will be successful is if the Palestinians do not ruin it.”
Sounds like the best possible VP to have should Kamala Harris win in November (as far as Israelis and Jews are concerned, of course)? Wait, there’s more.
The 1993 Shapiro also wrote: “I find it impractical to believe that factions of Arabs can miraculously unite in peace as Palestinians, so they can coexist with Israel.”
He concluded: “Despite my skepticism as a Jew and a past volunteer in the Israeli army, I strongly hope and pray that this ‘peace plan’ will be successful. History is not made by diplomatic handshakes between two political leaders but rather when two age-old foes can have the courage to stop hating, begin healing, and exist in peace and tranquility.”
According to the Pittsburgh Gazette, during his university studies, Shapiro spent five months studying in Israel and volunteering for the IDF.
THE ARABS DON’T LIKE
CAIR National tweeted in response: “We are deeply disturbed by the racist, anti-Palestinian views that Governor Josh Shapiro expressed in this article. … We are also concerned by his failure to clearly apologize for those hateful comments, especially given how quickly and harshly he has targeted college students protesting the Gaza genocide for their speech.”
Another Arab source, Amzi, recalled that Josh Shapiro was involved with an anti-BDS bill in 2015, in his role back then as a member of the Montgomery County Board of Commissioners. And in 2022, after Ben & Jerry’s refused to sell in Judea and Samaria, Shapiro tried to punish Unilever, the owner of Ben & Jerry’s.
As protests and encampments spread across state universities, Governor Shapiro took a firm stance against the activists. When footage emerged of the Philly Palestine Coalition demonstrating outside Israeli-owned businesses in Philadelphia, Shapiro denounced it as “blatant antisemitism.”
“This hate and bigotry echoes a dark chapter in history,” he later remarked. He also demanded the dismantling of a student encampment at the University of Pennsylvania. After its removal, he stated it was “past time” for such action, drawing a parallel to “people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia” on campus. Additionally, Shapiro endorsed legislation that would impose penalties on colleges and universities boycotting or financially penalizing Israel.
These uncompromising and, may I say, sane positions have made Shapiro an enemy of progressive Democrats who otherwise support the Harris candidacy. Alan Minsky, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, insisted Shapiro’s comments against the pro-Hamas protests should disqualify him from consideration as a running mate.
“These are typical expressions of the peace movement in the United States,” Minsky told WHYY News, a PBS outlet, noting that Jewish Americans, especially those affiliated with Jewish Voice for Peace, have also been active in the protests. “To broadly condemn them as ‘antisemitic’ and claim they endanger students on university campuses was, I believe, extremely misguided and in stark contrast to other governors named as potential running mates,” said Minsky.
Jewish Voice for Peace for its part tweeted that “Josh Shapiro has a damning history of smearing and attacking Palestinian rights advocates and free speech. … Opposition to choosing him as the VP candidate isn’t about his identity, it’s about his policies and rhetoric over the years.”
SHAPIRO WALKS IT BACK
Shapiro says his views have evolved since that op-ed piece he wrote in college. At a Friday press conference at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the country’s oldest historically Black college, the Governor attempted to address his past comments, saying, “Are you referring to something I wrote at age 20? I was 20 years old then.”
Shapiro emphasized that he had long supported a two-state solution, envisioning “Israelis and Palestinians coexisting peacefully side by side,” well before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on October 7 that ignited the war in Gaza.
“My hope is to see a day when peace prevails in the Middle East,” he stated. “A day when we achieve a two-state solution, and all leaders involved in negotiations respect their counterparts and demonstrate a willingness to make difficult decisions in pursuit of peace.”
As to Shapiro’s revelation that he had volunteered in the IDF, his spokesman issued a statement saying: “While he was in high school, Josh Shapiro was required to do a service project, which he and several classmates completed through a program that took them to a kibbutz in Israel where he worked on a farm and at a fishery. The program also included volunteering on service projects on an Israeli army base. At no time was he engaged in any military activities.”
In Israel, they call it Gadna, a military program that prepares high school students for military service. The program had been established even before there was an IDF and was anchored in law in 1949. Had 20-year-old Josh Shapiro not bragged about “volunteering in the IDF” he could have been spared at least some of his current tsuris.
Should Kamala Harris choose Josh Shapiro to be her running mate, he will become the second Jewish vice-presidential nominee on a major-party ticket. The first was the late Senator Joseph Lieberman (D-Con), who won the popular vote with Al Gore in 2000.
