Responding to Walz pick, the Right resorts to antisemitism-baiting
Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus, Michigan. Photo by Getty Images
Contributing Columnist Jay Michaelson August 8, 2024
America’s public discourse around antisemitism is a tragic blend of trauma, delusion and exploitation.
For the last ten months, American Jews, justifiably traumatized by the murderous attacks of Oct. 7, and now waiting in dread for Iranian missiles to rain down on Israel, have been incited, manipulated and emotionally terrorized by people who claim to have our best interests at heart. Some may be acting in good faith; others definitely are not. But this divisive rhetoric is hurting us and our children.
The latest, though hardly the first, example: the Right’s response to Vice President Kamala Harris choosing Tim Walz over Josh Shapiro to be her running mate.
The actual reasons for this decision have now been well-documented, including in two detailed, heavily sourced reports by the The New York Times and CNN. While both Walz and Shapiro would have made excellent candidates, Walz and Harris hit it off on a personal level. Walz was deferential, and, according to sources, said he would follow Harris’ lead in both the campaign and a future administration.
Shapiro’s personality, according to the reports, was different. He had more questions, wanted to set out a more active role as candidate and vice president, and didn’t connect as well with Harris. As The Atlantic noted, Shapiro is also more like Harris: another so-called “coastal Elite,” in contrast to Walz’s Minnesota Nice persona. There wasn’t as much balance or chemistry. And so, Harris went with her gut and chose Walz.
None of this was apparently nasty or divisive. Shapiro remains one of the Democratic Party’s MVPs. Arguably, his political future may be brighter as Pennsylvania’s #1 rather than Harris’ #2.
That’s not what you hear in the right-wing media universe, however. According to them, Shapiro was passed over because he was Jewish.
“No Jews allowed at the top of the Democratic Party,” blared Erick Erickson on the Trump-promoting platform X.
Shapiro “had to run from his Jewish heritage because of what the Democrats are saying about him,” said Senator JD Vance, claiming that “the vice presidential race, on the Democratic side, became… focused on his ethnicity.”
This is, on its face, preposterous. Kamala Harris’ husband and stepchildren are Jewish. President Biden’s Secretaries of State, Treasury, and Homeland Security are Jewish, as is his Attorney General. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer put it best, responding to Erickson with the simple retort, “News to me.”
Incidentally, only two Republican congressional members identify as Jewish, compared with 31 Democratic ones. Nor has Harris held a private dinner with antisemites like Nick Fuentes and Kanye West.
Anyway, if the Harris team had it in for Shapiro because he was Jewish, how did he make it to the final two candidates anyway? Did they just discover this fact on Aug. 5?
Now, it is true that, as I wrote about in these pages a few days ago, some on the Far Left did single out Shapiro because he was Jewish. Though there is no difference between Shapiro’s and Walz’s positions on Israel — Walz has a 100 rating from AIPAC — only Shapiro was tagged with the name “Genocide Josh” and attacked by the Democratic Socialists of America (who, it is important to note, came late to the Palestine solidarity movement but has since co-opted much of it).
This was, and remains, antisemitic. But it is hardly the position of the Democratic Party. On the contrary, the hard left is now chanting “Kamala, Kamala, you can’t hide, we won’t vote for genocide” at Harris rallies.
If choosing Governor Walz were really an attempt to pander to the leftmost fringe of the party — “Hamas Harris bent the knee to antisemitic, anti-Israel radicals on the left by leapfrogging Shapiro,” in the words of one unnamed Trump advisor — it certainly failed.
That same article, by the way, was referenced (and misinterpreted) by Alan Dershowitz on his podcast, wherein I was described as saying “Thank God a Jew wasn’t selected to be Vice President, because if a Jew was selected, it would bring out all the antisemites and it would make the country even more antisemitic. That’s not how you fight antisemitism. You fight it by fighting it, not by giving into it.”
I, of course, agree with combating antisemitism. My point was that the antisemitism a Shapiro candidacy would invite — overwhelmingly from the Right, not the Left — would be a distraction for the Harris campaign and yet another burden for American Jews to carry in this challenging year. Not, of course, that Harris was “giving into” antisemitism, or that American Jews should.
At least I’m in good company in being misinterpreted. Rabbi David Wolpe likewise criticized the campaign against Shapiro, stating, “If Walz and Shapiro have the same attitude toward Israel and there is a concerted and successful effort to torpedo Shapiro, it is either because PA doesn’t matter or because he’s Jewish. Feel free to choose either way.” This remark was then widely circulated as criticizing Harris herself (to the consternation of liberals and delight of conservatives) causing Wolpe to clarify what he meant: “I do not know why Kamala Harris made her decision; the existence of the campaign itself, fueled by the ideology I fought last year at Harvard, augurs ill.”
Unlike Donald Trump, Kamala Harris does not pander to the extremist fringe of her party — which is why the extremists are now cat-calling her at rallies.
All this exploitation of antisemitism is deeply harmful.
First, it cheapens the term, rendering it almost meaningless. When the Anti-Defamation League redefines the term ‘antisemitism’ to include any anti-Zionist protest, its own data — which used to be the authoritative reference for tracking this noxious bigotry — now becomes unreliable. When the word is used any time someone says or does something that an Israeli nationalist dislikes, it becomes just another meaningless political term, like ‘woke’ — or, in some liberal misuses of the term, ‘fascist.’
More importantly, and I’ll have more to say about this in a future column, political opportunists and even some well-meaning Jewish leaders are traumatizing our community. I don’t use the word lightly (‘trauma’ is another word whose meaning is being diluted of late). I have met with numerous rabbis and Jewish leaders who are counseling terrified teens and college students, who are told that antisemitism is everywhere and ubiquitous, and who, when they encounter it themselves, are ill-prepared to confront it. I have met with parents who have a wildly distorted view of college campuses, where, in fact, the protests were a lot smaller and students a lot less radical than some media coverage and communal discourse made them out to be.
And now, we are told, the Democratic party has been overrun by antisemites, as if a tiny sliver of the far-left fringe — again, explicitly rejected by leadership — represents the party with which most Jews affiliate. (Ironically, of course, the Republican party has been overrun by Christian Nationalists.)
As I stated at the outset, many of those spreading this fear are doing so in good faith, because they, themselves, are afraid. To them I would say: please, pause before repeating a rumor; please, check in to see how you’re feeling before commenting; please, consider the effects that spreading fear has on other people.
But many others are exploiting us for their purposes, from Rep. Elise Stefanik in December to Senator Vance this week. They are weaponizing our grief to attack higher education. They are conflating real antisemitism with political disagreement. And at a moment when the Jewish state is under threat of imminent attack by its enemies, they are stoking our fears to win an election. And to them, I would say: shame on you.
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