By Philip Klein
Tuesday, August 06, 2024
As I watched the selection process for Vice President
Kamala Harris’s running mate play out, I was worried that anti-Israel activists
would wise up and realize that the best possible scenario for them would be
that she would pick Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro. Luckily, they weren’t
that smart.
While the activists lobbied to take out Shapiro because
he is Jewish and criticized pro-Hamas protesters, in reality, his selection
would have made it a lot easier for Harris to more aggressively pursue
anti-Israel policies. As VP, Shapiro wouldn’t be setting policies toward
Israel. But he would have provided useful cover for whatever Harris wanted to
do. We’d be told that picking Shapiro was her “Sister Souljah moment” to the
pro-Hamas leftists. No matter how much hostility she exhibited toward Israel,
she would dispatch Shapiro to dutifully spin the policies to Jewish and
pro-Israel audiences. She would let pro-Hamas mobs run amok in cities and on
college campuses, and Democrats would trot out social-media posts — of the
Shapiro family seder, of their Purim costumes, or of a sukkah on the grounds of
the vice president’s residence. Pro-Israel Jews would have gotten symbolism
while anti-Israel Democrats would have gotten policy victories.
But, instead of going with the popular governor of the
most important swing state, Harris caved to the antisemitic Left who scared her
into thinking that picking a Jew would be too
risky. If elected, Harris would still steer U.S. policy in a more hostile
direction against Israel, but without Shapiro as her token Jew, it will be much
harder to paper over what she is doing.
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