Was the Assault on Judaism a factor in choosing a Vice-President candidate?
The long-awaited announcement of Kamala Harris’ Vice President choice took place in a festive rally in Philadelphia last night.
The signs in the arena flashed Kamala, but much of the focus was on somebody who was not there: Donald Trump.
“We are not going back!” was the slogan of the evening, louded by Harris, her Vice President pick, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and mostly in the loud chants of the crowd.
While Harris and Walz received the warmth and applause of the audience in the packed arena, the star of the evening was no doubt Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who energized the crowd in his warm-up speech.
As of last Friday, Democrat party insiders, journalists and politicians were in tandem in their view that Harris is picking Shapiro as her Vice President candidate. The popular mayor of Philadelphia, Cherelle Parker, even seems to have leaked the news on Friday, posting a video on X about Shapiro as Harris running mate a few days too soon - that video was reportedly only meant to go out on Monday.
But Shapiro was not picked, and some amongst the journalists and the crowd in the rally questioned what happened in the last few days that landed Shapiro the warm-up speaker spot, and Waltz the Vice President candidacy?
Many say it was Shapiro’s pro-Israel stance and being Jewish. Some speculated that intense pressure was put on the Harris campaign over the weekend to drop Shapiro, summarized by the slogan, “choose Josh, lose Michigan.”
However, Shapiro’s positions on Israel are not much different from Walz’s and other Democrat politicians, which places more and more focus on him being Jewish.
The aftermath of October 7th underscored that whether they like it or not, Jews are increasingly defined through Israel. Students on college campuses, harassed due to their Jewish last name, were drawn into their Judaism through Zionism, and so were Jews around the world who suddenly felt an angry finger pointing at them by their peers, merely due their passive affiliation with the Jewish state. This perhaps is why Josh Shapiro, a Jew, was the one to get the title “Genocide Josh”, while non-Jewish supporters of Israel did not.
“This is not a time for a Jewish person on the ticket”, a prominent Democratic politician told me privately, while others echoed similar sentiments: Having a Jewish Vice President candidate is just not palatable in the current environment.
Here lies the irony of history:
When Biden was choosing a running mate four years ago in the summer of 2020, racial protests around America broke out in response to the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer. Top Vice President contented Amy Klobuchar called Biden to urge him not to pick herself, but a woman of color as his running mate, reflecting the public and media sentiment of the time. He did - and four years later, that woman, Kamala Harris, was the one choosing her own running-mate.
If the speculations are true, than just as Harris was chosen for being a woman of color, Shapiro was not chosen for being Jewish.
This is something the Republicans captured. A short while before the Harris rally, Republican Vice President candidate JD Vance held his own event, a short distance away in Philadelphia, saying openly, what some in the crowd suggested in hints: "I genuinely feel bad that for days maybe even weeks the guy actually had to run away from his Jewish heritage because of what the Democrats are saying about him,” Vance told journalists. “I think that's scandalous and disgraceful. it's insulting to Americans whatever background you're from.”
In his speech at the rally, Shapiro perhaps responded to Vance when he proclaimed: "I lean on my family, and I rely on my faith”. He wanted to share some Jewish teachings, prefacing “I don’t want to preach”, but was interrupted with the loud chants of the crowd: “Preach! Preach!”
Inside the energized arena there were no Palestinian flags, nobody that I seen with a Kaffiah or pro-Palestinian T-shirts, hats or banners. Outside the arena, a Pro-Palestinian demonstration included 6 people, two megaphones, and more flags than people.
The election for President of the United States will unfold in the coming weeks alongside the expanding and intensified assault on Judaism: the physical assault coming from Iran and its proxies, and the ideological assault coming from the West.
The relationship between those two events will be telling.
Gol Kalev is the author of Judaism 3.0: Judaism's Transformation to Zionism (Judaism-Zionism.com), for his geopolitical articles: EuropeAndJerusalem.com