What is unusual about this news cycle is not that an ambitious politician with national aspirations sought to put some distance between himself and his party's failed past leaders, or that he would paint himself as having shown toughness and nerve in his own recollections of the incidents at hand. Instead, what is striking is that he would do so on the subject of Israel and anti-Semitism. Shapiro isn't letting them take free shots at the Jews. The Harris team's behavior was atrocious, but they might have expected to get away with it on the assumption that no one wants to draw attention to accusations that they are a double agent or a Manchurian candidate. Shapiro, however, refused to play that game. His response was, essentially, OK let's talk about it. Let's play "Ask the Jew" in front of the whole country. Josh Shapiro wasn't supposed to be confrontational about it. He was supposed to take the hint and know his proper place as a Jew in national politics. He was not supposed to tell them to their faces how offensive their medievalist questioning was, and then to tell the world. There is probably not one campaign operative in a thousand who would tell Shapiro to center his Jewish pride at a moment when so many progressive activists and organizers are out for Jewish blood. It contradicts the conventional wisdom. But conventional wisdom didn't prevent some antiSemitic and anti-Israel lunatic from burning Shapiro's house while his family was inside on Passover. Should he apologize to the man who tried to murder his family, too? Surely the Harris campaign would say yes.
#JoshShapiro and the ‘no free shots’ rule: Shapiro didn’t ask for this fight, but he’s not running from it. Hopefully it stays that way. The next generation of American Jewish activists and politicians are watching. www.commentary.org/seth-mandel/... #antisemitism #RegressiveLeft
