Shapiro’s College-Era Criticism of Palestinians Draws Fresh Scrutiny

The Pennsylvania governor, a top contender to be Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, wrote in his college newspaper that Palestinians were “too battle-minded.”

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Gov. Josh Shapiro in Horsham, Pa., on Tuesday. Mr. Shapiro has said his views have evolved in the years since writing an opinion essay critical of Palestinians when he was a college student.

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.”

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