cartoon<\/a> depicting Benjamin Netanyahu as a guide dog wearing a Star of David collar, leading a yarmulke-clad President Trump around on a leash.\n<\/p>\n\u201cAmerica should never be led around by any other nation,\u201d Shapiro said. \u201cIt should always be about America\u2019s interests, our national security interests. We should never, ever be bullied, as maybe President Trump was, by any other world leader.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
This was a 21st-century version of an old, deadly idea: that Jews operate as a hidden hand guiding powerful nations, leading them into wars for their own diabolical ends. For a governor who knows the history of the \u201cdual loyalty\u201d charge better than most, demonizing Israel as a manipulative, malign influence on the U.S. can hardly be seen as a momentary lapse in judgment. Rather, this was Shapiro\u2019s signal of appeasement to the antizionist mob; the same self-styled progressives who made sure Kamala Harris rejected him as a running mate because he was a \u201cZionist.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
Leaning further into his party\u2019s strategy of wartime defeatism, Shapiro knocked the Iran war\u2019s logic by pointing to shifting rationales from the Trump administration. He argued that swapping \u201can 80-something-year-old Ayatollah\u201d for a \u201c60-something-year-old Ayatollah\u201d who may be \u201cfar more hardline\u201d is hardly a win.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
His bottom line was fair criticism: \u201cIf you don\u2019t know why you\u2019re going in, you don\u2019t know how the hell to get out.\u201d\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
But Shapiro, not done bending the knee to antizionist identitarians, also seemed to downplay his Jewishness.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t view this issue as a Jewish American,\u201d he said, drawing a boundary the anti-Israel left demands. \u201cI view this issue as an American, and I view this issue in a way of trying to understand what is the best thing for America, which to me is having peace and stability in the Middle East.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
In a landscape where pro-Israel Jews are being purged from institutions and social spaces, Shapiro should have showed some spine and spoken up on behalf of those under pressure to disavow their Zionism. He might have framed his beliefs about the Iran war as a moral, ethical approach that grew out of his own Jewish practice. Instead he tacitly acknowledged his Jewishness as a liability, distancing himself from the world\u2019s only Jewish state.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
The irony wasn\u2019t lost on Jews distressed by revelations that, during vetting for Harris\u2019 2024 presidential campaign, Shapiro faced questions about whether he had ever acted as an \u201cagent\u201d for Israel\u2014a racist dual-loyalty libel.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Shapiro told Harris\u2019 vetting team how offensive that line of questioning was. He lost the spot anyway, amid a pressure campaign from antizionists who did not want a pro-Israel Jew, however moderate, anywhere near the ticket.\n<\/p>\n
Shapiro should know better than to try appeasement. He became a \u00a0target of antizionist mobs after he spoke out against their harassing Jewish college students and Jewish-owned businesses. His home, the governor\u2019s mansion, was set ablaze by an alleged anti-Israel arsonist during Passover last year while he and his family slept inside\u2014a moment that further exposed antizionism as the hate movement it is.\n<\/p>\n
Now, Shapiro is accommodating that movement in the hopes it will benefit his likely 2028 presidential run.\n<\/p>\n
It won\u2019t.\n<\/p>\n
American voters tend to cast ballots for people they see as having core convictions, of being true to their beliefs. Not politicians who wilt when it\u2019s politically expedient.\n<\/p>\n
It is painful to watch Jews on the left like Shapiro scramble to appease a movement that despises them, when no amount of self-flagellation will ever be enough.\n<\/p>\n
Shapiro did at least use the podcast appearance to call out antisemitism in both parties.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have got to be in a place where we universally condemn it,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think what you\u2019re seeing from some folks on the right and some folks on the left is they\u2019ll only call it out if it\u2019s said by a political opponent or someone they disagree with. I frankly respect people on the right like Ted Cruz, who have pulled it out within the Republican Party. I\u2019ve tried to call it out when it rears its ugly head in my party.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
The problem is, you cannot credibly warn about antisemitism while reinforcing a libel that has sustained it for centuries.\n<\/p>\n
Doing so only boosts radical elements like the Democratic Socialists of America, the increasingly influential organization that rejects Israel as a Jewish state. Shapiro\u2019s statements on Israel also cede ground to potential Democratic presidential candidates like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who opposes funding for Israel\u2019s Iron Dome missile defense system.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Jewish American voters see clearly what is happening. The hope that Shapiro might be a worthy source of their pride, a Jewish leader with the backbone to stand up to the wave of antizionist hatred, is all but gone.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
In its place, we see a Democrat degrading himself to fit a landscape in which anti-Israel politics are rewarded, and antizionist libels a part of mainstream discourse.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n
Jewish voters deserve better. And they are taking note.\n\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For a brief, hopeful moment, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro represented something rare in American politics: a pro-Israel Democrat…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1897,11012,85,87,46,155681,43,14143],"class_list":{"0":"post-387261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-israel","8":"tag-american-jewry","9":"tag-anti-zionism","10":"tag-il","11":"tag-iran","12":"tag-israel","13":"tag-israel-at-war","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-us-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}