In Brief: Josh Shapiro Shouldn’t Apologize for 30-Year-Old Column. He Was Right.
The Pennsylvania governor was on Kamala Harris’s shortlist for running mate, but a decades-old opinion proved problematic.
Israel’s war in Gaza has split the Democrat Party. The hardcore leftist fringe is expressing anti-Semitic views, causing one to wonder if they would have found common cause with 1930s Germany. Due to this divide, one of Kamala Harris’s top picks for running mate was passed over. American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Michael Rubin weighs in on this unfortunate situation.
The knives are out for Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, rumored to be Vice President Kamala Harris’ pick as running mate. While Shapiro’s home-state popularity spans party and Pennsylvania will be a must-win in any path to the presidency, Shapiro’s original sin is that he is an observant Jew. His foreign policy views fall squarely in the center of the Democratic Party: He supports Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself, but also believes in a two-state solution and is sharply critical of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The problem is an op-ed that Shapiro wrote decades ago.
Enter the opposition researchers. The latest “gotcha”? As a college student 31 years ago, Shapiro penned an op-ed entitled questioning Palestinian commitment to peace. Among his arguments? “Using history as precedent, peace between Arabs and Israelis is virtually impossible and will never come,” and he opined, “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 further described the Arab world as “fractious.”
So, rather than defend his original opinion, which was actually insightful and correct, Shapiro has reversed course.
With the vice presidency on the line, Shapiro backpedaled. His spokesman Manuel Bonder explained, “The Governor greatly values their perspectives and the experiences he has learned… his views on the Middle East have evolved.” That is unfortunate because, three decades on, Shapiro’s views appear positively prescient. Isn’t the Arab world fractious? Arabs in the Middle East would be the first to admit that. Just ask the Arab Quad—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt—that in 2017, launched a multiyear boycott of Qatar for its support for Muslim Brotherhood groups and an alleged coup plot against Abu Dhabi. Or ask Libyans, Yemenis, or Sudanese, though they would need to first agree on which of the various claimants is actually their government.
The fact of the matter is that the Palestinians have repeatedly been offered and have repeatedly rejected the peace deal of a two-state solution. Thus, it would appear that Shapiro’s decades-old assessment has been proven correct.
