Gov. Josh Shapiro, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote in his college newspaper three decades ago that Palestinians were “too battle-minded” to achieve a two-state solution in the Middle East, prompting criticism as Vice President Kamala Harris considers him to be her running mate.
Mr. Shapiro, 51, has embraced his Jewish identity and been one of the Democratic Party’s staunchest defenders of Israel at a moment when the party is splintered over the war in Gaza.
But he says his views have evolved since publishing an opinion essay as a college student at the University of Rochester in New York, when he wrote that Palestinians were incapable of establishing their own homeland and making it successful, even with help from Israel and the United States.
“They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own,” he wrote in the essay, published in the Sept. 23, 1993, edition of The Campus Times, the student newspaper. “They will grow tired of fighting amongst themselves and will turn outside against Israel.”
Mr. Shapiro, who was 20 at the time, noted in his essay that he had spent five months studying in Israel and had volunteered in the Israeli army.
“The only way the ‘peace plan’ will be successful is if the Palestinians do not ruin it,” Mr. Shapiro wrote, adding, “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully.
During a news conference on Friday at Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, the nation’s first historically Black college or university, Mr. Shapiro tried to distance himself from those remarks, which were first reported by The Philadelphia Inquirer.
“Something I wrote when I was 20, is that what you’re talking about?” Mr. Shapiro told a reporter who asked him about it. “I was 20.”
Mr. Shapiro said he had been in favor of a two-state solution, with “Israelis and Palestinians living peacefully side by side” long before the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7 that started the war in Gaza.
“It is my hope that we can see a day where peace will reign in the Middle East,” he said, “where there will be a two-state solution, where all leaders involved in the conversations will respect the other side and show a willingness to make the hard choices to find peace.”
Mr. Shapiro’s explanation did not satisfy the Philadelphia chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which later on Friday called on him to apologize.
“We are deeply disturbed by the racist, anti-Palestinian views that Governor Shapiro expressed in this article,” Ahmet Tekelioglu, the group’s executive director said in a statement. “We are also concerned by his failure to clearly apologize for those hateful comments, especially given how quickly and harshly he has targeted college students protesting the Gaza genocide for their speech.”
Mr. Shapiro has been one of the most vocal party leaders to condemn the documented rise of antisemitism since the Hamas-led attack on Israel. When he was previously asked if he considered himself a Zionist, he said that he did.
He has also not shied away from criticizing college administrators over their response to campus antisemitism, including at the University of Pennsylvania.
If Ms. Harris chooses Mr. Shapiro to be her running mate, he will become only the second Jewish vice-presidential nominee on a major-party ticket. The first was Joseph I. Lieberman, the former Connecticut senator who died in March. He ran with Al Gore in 2000.
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