Jewish Progressive Leaders Push Back Against “Lie” That Opposition to Shapiro for VP Is Antisemitic

“Opposition to putting Josh Shapiro on the ticket is not about his religion, it’s about his political positions,” Jewish leaders of RootsAction.org said today. The leaders of the group, which has 1.2 million supporters online, labeled as “an emerging lie” the claim that opposition to Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro becoming the Democratic vice-presidential nominee is a manifestation of antisemitism.

RootsAction co-founder Jeff Cohen, national director Norman Solomon and political director Sam Rosenthal – all three of them Jewish – cited Shapiro’s notable record of antagonism toward protesters urging a ceasefire in Gaza. They also noted positions he has staked out that are out of sync with the party’s mainstream and Kamala Harris herself, including supporting tax subsidies for private schools and major tax cuts for corporations.

Alan Minksy, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America, who is also Jewish, said this: “I vehemently oppose all forms of antisemitism anywhere it appears anywhere in the world. It has absolutely nothing to do with why I oppose Shapiro as the vice-presidential nominee of the Democratic Party.”

Yet some advocates for Shapiro are trying to paint criticism of the prospective vice-presidential nominee as antisemitism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Objections to Shapiro are principled and rooted in his past record. Among the candidates reportedly in contention for the VP spot, Shapiro stands alone in his hostility toward those who’ve protested against Israel’s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in Gaza. (Details below.)

Simply put, Shapiro is the pick most likely to shatter the momentum and unity the Democratic Party is currently enjoying with Harris as the new nominee. The goal of defeating Trump will require the get-out-the-vote efforts of large numbers of young activists, racial justice organizers, and Arab American and Muslim leaders. It is Shapiro’s record, not his religion, that could leave many activists on the sidelines:

In 2021, after Ben & Jerry’s (a company founded and led by Jewish Americans) refused to sell its products in Israel’s illegal settlements, then-Attorney General Josh Shapiro threatened the company by urging Pennsylvania state agencies to enforce a constitutionally suspect law targeting advocates of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel over its discriminatory policies. Shapiro smeared such advocates by claiming that “BDS is rooted in antisemitism” – although the effort has wide support globally, including from many Jews, as a thoroughly nonviolent tactic in advancing Palestinian rights.

After the horrific Hamas attack of October 7, several dozen Pennsylvania-based Muslim groups wrote a letter protesting Governor Shapiro’s one-sided comments: “Not only did you fail to recognize the structural root causes of the conflict, you chose to intentionally ignore the civilian loss of life in Gaza.” Responding to the letter after Israeli bombs and missiles had killed more civilians in Gaza than had been killed by Hamas in Israel on October 7, the governor’s spokesman said: “We all must speak with moral clarity and support Israel’s right to defend itself.”

Last December, after he amplified the Capitol Hill demagoguery of MAGA Congresswoman Elise Stefanik, Gov. Shapiro contributed to the firing of the University of Pennsylvania president. Referring to UPenn’s president, Shapiro said: “I thought her comments were absolutely shameful. It should not be hard to condemn genocide.” By then, after two months of Israeli bombing, more than 17,000 Gazans had been killed, mostly women and children – and later that month, Israel was charged with violations of the Genocide Convention in South Africa’s filing at the International Court of Justice.

In early April, after Democratic governors in other states had called for a ceasefire in Gaza, Muslim leaders in Philadelphia criticized Gov. Shapiro for his refusal to do so.

Beginning in late April, Gov. Shapiro and his office repeatedly prodded campuses to “restore order” and take action against student encampments, including the University of Pennsylvania Gaza Solidarity Encampment which called on the college administration to provide greater transparency on university investments, divest from Israel, and reinstate the banned student group Penn Students Against the Occupation. On May 9, Shapiro invoked student “safety” in demanding the encampment be shut down. Police shut it down the next day, arresting 33. In two different interviews, Shapiro seemed to compare campus ceasefire activists, many of whom are Jewish or students of color, to “white supremacists” and “people dressed up in KKK outfits or KKK regalia making comments about people who’re African American.”

In May, as activism continued to grow over Israel’s lethal violence against civilians in Gaza, Gov. Shapiro issued an order aimed at Israel’s critics that revised his administration’s code of conduct to bar state employees from “scandalous or disgraceful” conduct – a vague and subjective directive criticized by the legal director of Pennsylvania’s ACLU as a possible violation of free speech protections.