Gov. Shapiro Refuses to Discuss Pro-Palestinian Motive for Attack

“I choose not to participate in that”

A man firebombed the Pennsylvania governor’s residence while Gov. Josh Shapiro and his family were inside. The man in question had a hammer and planned to assault him with it. His motive was that
Shapiro “needs to know that he ‘will not take part in his plans for what he wants to do to the Palestinian people.’”

Rather than clearly speak out about what happened, Gov. Shapiro instead launched into a strange word salad.

“I know that there are people out there who want to ascribe their own viewpoints as to what happened here and why. I know there are people out there who want to adopt their own political viewpoints, or their own worldview as to what happened and why. I choose not to participate in that,” he said at a press conference.

Then he boldly took a stand and condemned ‘violence’. In general. On all sides.

“I said after the assassination attempt on the president in Butler, I said in Altoona after we captured the individual who shot and killed a U.S. health care CEO, and I said on Sunday that this kind of violence has no place in our society, regardless of what motivates it.”

“This is not how we resolve our differences. This kind of violence has no place in our society — and it must be condemned by everyone, from both political parties.”

There’s nothing wrong with denouncing violence in general, but Shapiro is being deliberately evasive here. He’s not condemning violence in general, he’s trying not to deal with the stated motives of the man who tried to kill him because those motives have a good deal of popularity within his own political party. So instead he’s reduced to ‘bothsidesing’ his own attempted murder to avoid calling attention to the motive.

The closest Gov. Shapiro came to addressing what the motive was saying that no one would intimidate him from practicing his faith. But much of this came down to Shapiro issuing general condemnations not grounded in anything.

“This kind of violence is becoming far too common in our society, and I don’t give a damn if it’s coming from one particular side or the other, directed at one particular party or another, or one particular person or another. It is not OK, and it has to stop. We have to be better than this.”

Weirdly, it fell to Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, who has his own iffy history with antisemitism, to actually issue a specific condemnation. “Political violence of any kind is never acceptable, and it is especially unconscionable to attack a Jewish family during the first night of Passover.”

Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, who has recently been advocating for campus Hamas supporters, bizarrely attacked Trump over the assault.

“Nearly four days after Gov. Shapiro was targeted in an act of political violence — reportedly due to his position on Israel — Trump hasn’t clearly condemned it,” Soifer complained.

The thing is that Gov. Shapiro still hasn’t condemned it.

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