Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign asked Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro if he had ever worked with the Israeli government during his vetting process to be her 2024 running mate, the governor wrote in his upcoming book.
In his memoir, “Where We Keep the Light,” Shapiro wrote that attorney Dana Remus, a senior member of Harris’ vice presidential vetting team, asked if he had been “a double agent for Israel” and if he had “ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel,” multiple outlets reported.
“If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?” the governor wrote in his book, according to the New York Times (NYT).
Shapiro added that the Harris team’s questions regarding Israel left him “wondering whether these questions were being posed to just me, the only Jewish guy in the running, or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way,” the Jerusalem Post reported.
After saying the question was offensive, Shapiro was told by the Harris team, “Well, we have to ask,” according to his book, the NYT reported. This line of questioning “said a lot about some of the people around the VP [Harris],” Shapiro wrote, according to the Jerusalem Post.
According to NYT the governor wrote in his book that Harris herself asked him whether he “would be willing to apologize for the statements I had made,” concerning comments he made on pro-Palestinian protests taking place at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected,” Shapiro wrote, the outlet reported. “But some wasn’t peaceful.”
Harris and Shapiro did not respond to requests for comment by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Pennsylvania Democrat was one of the leading candidates to become Harris’ running mate before she ultimately chose Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who is not Jewish, in August 2024.
Pro-Palestinian activist groups strongly objected to Shapiro as Harris’ potential vice presidential pick due to his support for Israel and criticism of protests following the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas. Shapiro has previously described himself as a Zionist according to the NYT, and wrote that Pennsylvania “stands with Israel against Iran” in an April 2024 post to X following Iranian strikes against Israel.
Shapiro also studied in Israel for five months and volunteered “in the Israeli army,” according to a 1993 essay he wrote for the University of Rochester’s Campus Times. In the essay, the governor wrote that Palestinians were “too-battle minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own,” drawing criticism during the 2024 presidential election from pro-Palestinian organizations.
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