Lipstadt condemns questioning of Josh Shapiro’s Israel ties as ‘classic antisemitism’

Former US president Joe Biden’s antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt, and her deputy, Aaron Keyak, issue separate statements condemning former vice president Kamala Harris’s campaign team after Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro revealed in his new memoir that they asked him if he was an Israeli agent while vetting him as Harris’s running mate.

“The more I read about [Shapiro’s] treatment in the vetting process, the more disturbed I become. The questions to him, I repeat, are why they needed a Special Envoy on antisemitism. These questions were classic antisemitism,” Lipstadt tweets.

“This report is extremely distressing. When vetted by the White House for my position as special envoy, I was not asked anything akin to this. Had I been, I would have responded that the question is an example of why an envoy is necessary. It is classic antisemitism,” she adds in a separate post.

In his own statement, Keyak writes that “the minimum demand of Jews in the United States and our allies — even those in public service — is to simply be treated like any other American, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or race. That Governor Josh Shapiro wrote that he was asked if he was a double agent of the world’s only Jewish state is an antisemitic inquiry.”

“While we can safely assume that asking all potential vice presidential picks if they are an Israeli double agent is not included on the standard list, the obvious question is why it was Governor Shapiro who was targeted by the staff of the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, in particular,” Keyak continues. “The truth is, we almost certainly know why.”

“Unfortunately, this is not the first time the US government or a presidential campaign has applied a double standard to American Jews during the vetting process for a wide range of officials. I have heard from too many being asked similar questions over many years and I can speak from personal experience,” he continues.

“During my vetting process I faced questions in a classified setting that my fellow non-Jewish political appointees did not. These sort of antisemitic questions are anti-American and do not represent the best that the Democratic Party offers. Now and especially during the next Presidential campaign we must demand better,” Keyak adds.