Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro wrote in a new book that during his vetting by Kamala Harris’s team as a potential vice presidential candidate for the 2024 US election, he was asked by her team whether he had at any time “been a double agent for Israel.”

Excerpts from Shapiro’s book “Where We Keep the Light” were reported on by The New York Times and The Atlantic on Sunday. The book will be released on January 27.

Shapiro, who is Jewish, recalled being highly offended by the question by former White House counsel Dana Remus (“Was she kidding?”) and intensely uneasy with the general process, which included more questions regarding his positions that have been generally supportive of Israel, according to the book.

“Have you ever communicated with an undercover agent of Israel?” Remus asked, according to Shapiro. “If they were undercover, I responded, how the hell would I know?”

Additionally, Shapiro said he was asked if he would apologize for comments criticizing antisemitism at anti-Israel protests on university campuses that had erupted that year due to the war in Gaza.

“I believe in free speech, and I’ll defend it with all I’ve got,” Shapiro said. “Most of the speech on campus, even that which I disagreed with, was peaceful and constitutionally protected. But some wasn’t peaceful.”

He wrote that the fact he was asked these questions “said a lot about some of the people around [Harris].”

“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 book read.

“These sessions were completely professional and businesslike,” Shapiro wrote. “But I just had a knot in my stomach through all of it.”

Former US president Joe Biden’s antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt and her deputy Aaron Keyak issued separate........

© The Times of Israel