By FrumNews.com 

Pennsylvania’s Jewish Governor, Josh Shapiro, who was a frontrunner to be the running mate for Kamala Harris, was apparently asked, “Have you ever been an agent of the Israeli government?” — along with other related inquiries as he was being vetted to be the Vice Presidential pick for the 2024 Democratic ticket, a role that went to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz. 

The question allegedly came from President Joe Biden’s former White House counsel, Dana Remus, who was a key member of Harris’s VP search team, according to Shapiro’s upcoming book.

Shapiro says he took umbrage at the question. Shapiro wrote, “Had I been a double agent for Israel? Was she kidding? I told her how offensive the question was.”

“These sessions were completely professional and businesslike,” Mr. Shapiro asserts, according to The New York Times. “But I just had a knot in my stomach through all of it.”

He was pressed on other questions about Israel, according to the Times. “I wondered whether these questions were being posed to just me — the only Jewish guy in the running — or if everyone who had not held a federal office was being grilled about Israel in the same way.”

The Atlantic reported that the interaction became even more tense, he writes, when Remus asked whether Shapiro had ever spoken with an undercover Israeli agent. The questions left Governor Shapiro feeling uneasy about the prospect of being Harris’s VP pick. 

After Harris and Walz lost to Donald Trump, numerous Democrats were critical of her decision to skip over Shapiro, the popular governor of the nation’s largest — and most crucial — swing state. 

In the forthcoming book, Shapiro says that the decision may not have been fully hers; he says he had “a knot in my stomach” throughout a vetting process that was more combative than he had expected. Shapiro wrote that he decided to withdraw his name from consideration after a one-on-one meeting with Harris that featured more clashes, including over Israel.

At the time, the Harris campaign called the claim that Governor Shapiro wasn’t picked because he was Jewish, or because of Israel, “absurd” and “absolutely ridiculous and offensive,” according to The Forward.

Now, as the political fortunes of Tim Waltz have ended (after a number of scandals), and Shapiro looks forward to a 2028 run for President — even as the Democratic Party becomes more socialist and anti-Semitic — a bit ironic. 

Aaron Keyak, Biden’s former Deputy Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism in the U.S. Department of State, slammed the former Harris campaign and the Democratic Party’s vetting system, over the line of questioning — calling it “an antisemitic inquiry,” and that “now and especially during the next Presidential campaign, we must demand better.”

“The minimum demand of Jews in the United States and our allies—even those in public service—is to simply be treated like any other American, regardless of religion, ethnicity, or race. That Governor Josh Shapiro wrote that he was asked if he was a double agent of the world’s only Jewish state is an antisemitic inquiry,” Aaron Keyak said in a statement. “While we can safely assume that asking all potential Vice Presidential picks if they are an Israeli double agent is not included on the standard list, the obvious question is why it was Governor Shapiro who was targeted by the staff of the presumptive Democratic Presidential Nominee, Kamala Harris, in particular.”

“The truth is, we almost certainly know why,” Keyak added. “Unfortunately, this is not the first time the U.S. government or a presidential campaign has applied a double standard to American Jews during the vetting process for a wide range of officials. I have heard from too many [people] being asked similar questions over many years and I can speak from personal experience. During my vetting process, I faced questions in a classified setting that my fellow non-Jewish political appointees did not. These sort of antisemitic questions are anti-American and do not represent the best that the Democratic Party offers. Now and especially during the next Presidential campaign, we must demand better.”