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.”

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.