Josh Shapiro’s Israel position, explained

Shapiro is a strong critic of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, and also a strong critic of the recent campus protests

EEUU-ELECCIONES-HARRIS-VP (AP)

If Vice President Kamala Harris selects Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running-mate — and if she succeeds in defeating Donald Trump in the November general election to become the 47th president — Shapiro will be in a position to wield significant influence over a wide range of issues, including foreign policy.

The prospect of his selection as Harris’ vice presidential pick has alarmed pro-Palestinian groups — seemingly because of Shapiro’s Jewish heritage and because of an op-ed he penned for his college newspaper at age 20 in which he wrote that peace would “never come” to the Middle East. In that op-ed, he described Palestinians as “too battle-minded” to succeed in forming a lasting peace with Israel.

Shapiro has since made a point of repudiating the views he expressed in that article, which was first surfaced by the Philadelphia Inquirer late last week. He told reporters that he no longer feels that way and stressed his young age at the time he authored the opinion piece.

“I was 20,” he said. “I have said for years, years before October 7, that I favor a two-state solution — Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully side-by-side, being able to determine their own futures and their own destiny.”

A spokesperson for the governor, Manuel Bonder, said in a statement that Shapiro’s views have changed in the intervening decades and noted his support for a two-state solution to the long-standing conflict.

“Governor Shapiro has built close, meaningful, informative relationships with many Muslim-American, Arab-American, Palestinian Christian, and Jewish community leaders all across Pennsylvania,” Bonder said. “The governor greatly values their perspectives and the experiences he has learned from over the years — and as a result, as with many issues, his views on the Middle East have evolved into the position he holds today.”

Yet the explanations offered by Shapiro and his spokesperson have not prevented pro-Palestinian or anti-Israel activists from making an issue of his current views on the conflict. Some activists even attempted to brand him as “Genocide Josh” during a social media campaign aimed at dissuading Harris from selecting him as her running-mate.

Despite his now-repudiated youthful views on the conflict, Shapiro’s positions on Israel and Gaza are in line with the mainstream of the Democratic Party and match those of most American Jews.

Shapiro is a strong critic of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Likud-led coalition government.

He has called the far-right leader “a dangerous and destructive force” and “one of the worst leaders of all time.”

Even as he has criticized Netanyahu, he has at the same time maintained that Israel’s war in Gaza is a just expression of the country’s right to self-defense after the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas. Yet Shapiro has also condemned the wanton destruction wrought by the war and criticized the civilian death toll.

“We can’t forget the genesis of this, but we also can’t ignore the death and the destruction that’s occurred in Gaza,” Shapiro told the Washington Post in March.

The Pennsylvania governor has also pushed back on the boisterous and sometimes antisemitic protests that have erupted on college campuses since the October 7 terror attacks by Hamas.

In May, he called on administrators at the University of Pennsylvania — a private school that is separate from the state-run Pennsylvania State University — to remove a protest encampment that had been erected on the Ivy League school’s Philadelphia campus.

In a speech delivered on May 9, he said it was “past time” to dismantle the makeshift camp and said administrators have a “moral responsibility and a legal responsibility to keep their students safe and free from discrimination”. He added that Penn students have a “legal right” to feel safe on campus.

“The University of Pennsylvania has an obligation to their safety,” he said. “It is past time for the university to act, to address this, to disband the encampment, and to restore order and safety on campus.”