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.

The former Israeli chief justice Aharon Barak recently warned that the country could be headed toward civil war due to Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to fire the head of the Shin Bet, and the opposition thereto. To Amichai Attali, such comments are both “out of touch with reality” and irresponsible—as are those of Barak’s political opponents:

Yes, there is tension and stress, but there is also the unique Israeli sense of solidarity. Who exactly would fight in this so-called civil war? Try finding a single battalion or military unit willing to go out and kill their own brothers and sisters—you won’t. They don’t exist. About 7 percent of the population represents the extremes of the political spectrum, making the most noise. But if we don’t come to our senses, that number might grow.

And what about you, leader of [the leftwing party] The Democrats and former deputy IDF chief, Yair Golan? You wrote that the soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza are pawns in Netanyahu’s political survival game. Really? Is that what the tens of thousands of soldiers on the front lines need to hear? Or their mothers back home? Do you honestly believe Netanyahu would sacrifice hostages just to stay in power? Is that what the families of those hostages need right now?

Israeli democracy will not collapse if Netanyahu fires the head of the Shin Bet—so long as it’s done legally. Nor will it fall because demonstrators fill the streets to protest. They are not destroying democracy, nor are they terrorists working for Hamas.