Choice of Walz Over Shapiro Mollifies the Left but Misses Chance to Reassure Jews

Many Jewish organizations backed Harris’s pick for running mate, but beneath that public sentiment is unease over antisemitism on both the left and the right.

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An Uncommitted rally at the University of Michigan campus ahead of the state’s Democratic primary election in February.

Vice President Kamala Harris faced a difficult choice when it came to Israel and her running mate: Selecting Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania could mollify many Jewish voters and other centrists over a subject that has bedeviled her administration for nearly a year, Israel’s war in Gaza. It could also inflame the left, which has been protesting her administration for months.

Ms. Harris’s selection of Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota likely avoided fueling the Gaza demonstrations. But it could come at the expense of reassuring the center. And it may well have created a new point of friction with Jewish voters leery of a lurch to the left from the Democratic Party.

Was her decision to sidestep Mr. Shapiro, some wonder, overly deferential to progressive activists who many Jews believe have veered past anti-Israel fervor into anti-Jewish bigotry?

Nathan Diament, executive director of public policy for the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, conceded there were “scores of reasons” why the vice president might have chosen someone other than Mr. Shapiro that had nothing to do with the campaign that the pro-Palestinian left had been waging against him.

But, he added, “The extremists who have been waging this campaign are going to declare victory, whether it’s true or not.”

Now, Mr. Diament said, Ms. Harris must “clearly say and demonstrate that those antisemitic campaigns had nothing to do with her choice, that she absolutely repudiates that sentiment.”

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