Jewish Democrats Say Criticisms of Gov. Josh Shapiro Are 'Clearly Anti-Semitic'

Jewish Democrats on Capitol Hill are up in arms over the liberal attacks on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D), saying the potential vice presidential pick has been unfairly maligned merely because he's the leading Jewish figure on Vice President Harris's shortlist.

[...] "Josh's position on Israel is almost identical to everybody else, but he's being held to a different standard. So you have to ask yourself why," Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said.

Moskowitz said his party would never tolerate similar attacks if the potential candidate was, for example, Black, gay or Latino, in which case "we would call that out and it would be deafening."

"But Josh is being held to a double and triple standard," he added, "in an effort to try and kill his chance at becoming the vice president."

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), another prominent Jewish lawmaker, is also racing to Shapiro's defense, saying the critics are dissecting Shapiro's resume in ways the other shortlisted candidates simply haven't had to endure.

"It has been very noticeable that of all of the people that she is carefully considering, that the only Jewish candidate is getting excruciating, very specific scrutiny, particularly around his positions on Israel," Wasserman Schultz said, a dynamic she called "deeply concerning."

[...] The governor — who keeps kosher, attended Jewish day school and proposed to his wife in Jerusalem — has been staunchly pro-Israel amid the war in Gaza, bolstering Tel Aviv's right to defend itself, underscoring the importance of defeating Hamas, and denouncing the pro-Palestinian protests that took over college campuses in the spring, including at the University of Pennsylvania.

[...] "The people I've seen talking about the vice presidential candidates and then singling out Gov. Shapiro for positions that are virtually identical to everyone else who's being considered, and saying his position on Israel and Gaza disqualifies him, the only thing that would be different from anybody else is the fact that he's Jewish, and that by definition falls under the category of antisemitism," said Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), another Jewish lawmaker.

Rep. Brad Sherman (D-Calif.), another veteran Jewish lawmaker, noted that Shapiro's critics are not all of the same mold. Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.), for instance, is also cold to Shapiro's rise to vice president, but "that doesn't have anything to do with antisemitism, and everything to do with Pennsylvania politics," Sherman said.

Still, Sherman minced no words in decrying Shapiro's pro-Hamas critics who "are clearly antisemitic."

"If you go to the Twittersphere, they seem to have noticed that one of the people on the shortlist is Jewish and they are blazing away with every bit of vituperative anger that they're known for," Sherman said. "His positions [on Israel] are the same as everybody else on the shortlist. So yeah, I think it's because he's Jewish.

"They can say he went to Israel. But that's what American Jews do," he continued. "All of my Mexican American friends have been to Mexico. All my French American friends have been to France."