When the governor of Pennsylvania was being considered as a possible vice-presidential pick for the Democratic ticket, Israel-haters, looking to smear him, circulated claims that he had served in the IDF. This turned out not to be quite true: Josh Shapiro merely spent some time as a teenager as a civilian volunteer at an IDF base. Meir Soloveichik examines the denial issued by the Jewish politician’s spokesman, Manuel Bonder, and the cowardice it revealed:

As a form of public relations, Bonder’s statement is, in a way, a mesmerizing, mealy-mouthed masterpiece. First, . . . the statement stresses that Shapiro did not volunteer for the IDF at all and did not consider himself to have done so. Moreover, the statement emphasized that his time on the base had been merely one of a myriad of activities, including work on a “farm and a fishery” in a kibbutz. The IDF base, in other words, was but a blip. And most brilliantly, and perversely, the statement stressed that all of this occurred because, “while in high school,” Shapiro had been “required to do a service project.” The implication is clear: had he not been a minor, devoid of autonomy and burdened by a pesky volunteerism obligation, he might never have gone to Israel in the first place.

Shapiro, Soloveichik writes, may well still be proud that he volunteered in Israel—both for the IDF and for farms and fisheries—but the statement gave no hint that he had anything to be proud of:

Imagine if he had met the moment. Imagine if he had spoken of his memories of the Israeli base, and of the impact that it had on him. Imagine if the Josh Shapiro of the 1990s had suddenly appeared, and the governor spoke of the integrity of the IDF and its compassion for civilian life when contrasted with so many other armies on earth. Such a response would have affected many Jewish Americans for years and earned him a genuine legacy in Jewish history. It might have lost him the nomination for the vice-presidency, but in the end, that loss would have been a win.

Yesterday I saw an unconfirmed report that the Biden administration has offered Israel a massive arms deal in exchange for a promise not to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities. Even if the report is incorrect, there is plenty of other evidence that the White House has been trying to dissuade Jerusalem from mounting such an attack. The thinking behind this pressure is hard to fathom, as there is little Israel could do that would better serve American interests in the Middle East than putting some distance between the ayatollahs and nuclear weapons. Aaron MacLean explains why this is so, in the context of a broader discussion of strategic priorities in the Middle East and elsewhere:

If the Iran issue were satisfactorily adjusted in the direction of the American interest, the question of Israel’s security would become more manageable overnight. If a network of American partners enjoyed security against state predation, the proactive suppression of militarily less serious threats like Islamic State would be more easily organized—and indeed, such partners would be less vulnerable to the manipulation of powers external to the region.

[The Biden administration’s] commitment to escalation avoidance has had the odd effect of making the security situation in the region look a great deal as it would if America had actually withdrawn [from the Middle East].

Alternatively, we could project competence by effectively backing our Middle East partners in their competitions against their enemies, who are also our enemies, by ensuring a favorable overall balance of power in the region by means of our partnership network, and by preventing Iran from achieving nuclear status—even if it courts escalation with Iran in the shorter run.