On Tuesday, Kamala Harris is expected to announce her running mate in Philadelphia, further feeding speculation that it will be Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro. As a popular governor in a swing state, he seems like a natural, and politically savvy, choice. His far-left opponents, however, have been agitating against his nomination, nicknaming him “Genocide Josh” and claiming that his support for Israel and criticism of lawless anti-Israel protests will alienate Arab Americans and young people. Seth Mandel comments:

Back in the real world . . . the Arab-American vote in Michigan will not cost Harris the state even if many of these voters are upset with the administration’s opposition to Hamas. . . . But progressives want to make a stand and demand some sort of buy-in, and this is the issue they’ve chosen. Anti-Zionism is the left flank’s litmus test.

And in fact, Shapiro’s stance on anti-Semitic riots will help, not hurt, Harris. . . . The pro-Hamas protests are replete with violence, threats of more violence, and anti-American propaganda—which makes sense, considering Iran’s purported role in them, according to the administration’s intelligence agencies. They are not “about Israel”; they are about whether the administration is content to put the public at the mercy of a movement bent on street violence and supported by America’s enemies abroad. The idea that Shapiro’s opposition to mob rule will hurt the ticket more than it will help the ticket is patently absurd, and relies on a startlingly low opinion of Americans.

Harris is being tested by her party’s anti-Zionists right out of the gate.

Yair Rosenberg, observes something more sinister still, noting that Roy Cooper, Tim Waltz, and Mark Kelly—reportedly considered by Harris as possible running-mates alongside Shapiro—have also expressed support for Israel and opposition to violent protests, sometimes more forcefully than Shapiro:

And yet, activists have not organized in force to discredit any of the non-Jewish contenders for vice-president on these grounds. There are no viral memes against “Killer Kelly” or “War-Crimes Walz.” Either the activists involved are extraordinarily lazy and never thought to investigate the other VP possibilities, or they think that Jews are uniquely untrustworthy. Seen in context, the “Genocide Josh” campaign and its tendentious reading of Shapiro’s record look less like a legitimate political critique than a rigged litmus test imposed on the Jewish lawmaker alone.

Rosenberg also points out that, paradoxically, Israel’s friends should worry about Shapiro becoming vice-president, since, inevitably, he would be “trotted out to defend Harris . . . and to insulate the boss from charges of anti-Semitism.”

Examining the effects of Iran’s decision to launch nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel on October 1, Benny Morris takes stock of the Jewish state’s strategic situation:

The massive Iranian attack has turned what began as a local war in and around the Gaza Strip and then expanded into a Hamas–Hizballah–Houthi–Israeli war [into] a regional war with wide and possibly calamitous international repercussions.

Before the Iranians launched their attack, Washington warned Tehran to desist (“don’t,” in President Biden’s phrase), and Israel itself had reportedly cautioned the Iranians secretly that such an attack would trigger a devastating Israeli counterstrike. But a much-humiliated Iran went ahead, nonetheless.

For Israel, the way forward seems to lie in an expansion of the war—in the north or south or both—until the country attains some sort of victory, or a diplomatic settlement is reached. A “victory” would mean forcing Hizballah to cease fire in exchange, say, for a cessation of the IDF bombing campaign and withdrawal to the international border, or forcing Iran, after suffering real pain from IDF attacks, to cease its attacks and rein in its proxies: Hizballah, Hamas, and the Houthis.

At the same time, writes Morris, a victory along such lines would still have its limits:

An IDF withdrawal from southern Lebanon and a cessation of Israeli air-force bombing would result in Hizballah’s resurgence and its re-investment of southern Lebanon down to the border. Neither the Americans nor the French nor the UN nor the Lebanese army—many of whose troops are Shiites who support Hizballah—would fight them.