The Jewish Angle with Phoebe Maltz Bovy premieres this week—a conversation with The Forward columnist and Bad Jews author Emily Tamkin about issues covered in this column and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
If a governor’s mansion burns in the forest and nobody notices, did it really happen?
The biggest Jewish story in North America at the moment is, to my mind, the rather gruesome attempted assassination on April 13 of Pennsylvania governor (and recent Democratic vice-presidential hopeful) Josh Shapiro. I know, this is a Canadian publication, but we will just have to stamp a red maple leaf on my column another week, as a man allegedly breaking into a Jewish politician’s residence to set it aflame strikes me as of enough concern that Jewish Canadians might see fit to cast a metaphorical glance across Lake Erie.
It’s a big story generally, or so you’d think. It took a few days for details about the case to become clear. But the more details emerged, the more of a nothingburger it got treated as. By mid-week, it was a smaller story for The New York Times homepage than Google going on trial, or tariffs disrupting the global economy, fine, although I’d like to think it could hold its own against “Our 17 Most Lemony Recipes.” Social media is bored of this story and well into other news cycles.
What’s notable is both the story itself—the horrific attack—and its reception. Why did such a symbolically-charged act of political violence just sort of come and go, without much notice? How does one square it with the refrain, no Jews, no news? A household-name politician was nearly incinerated alive with family right after his Seder.
Also: why is it being received the way it is, by the few who’ve noticed it? Two separate questions, which I will address separately.
First, the ignored bit. The story is not being outright ignored, but is getting buried all the same, because it doesn’t fit into anyone’s narratives. Above all, it isn’t a story about Donald Trump.
When it was first reported that a Jewish Democrat had been harmed in this way, it seemed like a real look what we have here moment for people wishing to accuse the Trump administration of hypocrisy on fighting antisemitism. It felt somehow Trumpy—a white man attacking Jews and Democrats in an atmosphere of xenophobia and extreme partisanship. But much as it offends my priors, the whodunit here is not pointing Trumpwards.
It’s not that the incident makes Trump look good. Most obviously, it happened during the Trump administration. It’s notable that there’s a regime hyper-focused on ridding America of antisemitism but sort of shrugging at a Jewish politician being attacked (and on Passover! Not that there are days when political violence is acceptable, nor when it would be enjoyable to be burned alive). Might any of this have anything to do with Shapiro being a Democrat? Your guess is as good as mine.
The New York Times coverage gets some snark in at the administration’s tepid response: “U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said she had spoken to Mr. Shapiro and offered assistance to local investigators. But speaking to reporters on Wednesday, she stopped short of calling the arson an act of domestic terrorism—after repeatedly using that label to describe attacks on Tesla cars.”
Jewish lives matter, but not quite as much as Muskmobiles.
Yet the specific and truly horrifying act of a man allegedly breaking into Josh Shapiro’s residence and setting fire to significant chunks of it and nearly killing him and his family does not appear to be a case of Trumpism enabling or inspiring an antisemitic attack. It isn’t about Trumpian (or Vance-ian) isolationism, nor a Republican party cozying up to the European far-right. Per CNN, based on PennLive reporting, Cory Balmer, the accused, “told 911 operators he targeted the governor in part because of his views on the war in Gaza” Balmer simply cares so much about “‘the Palestinian people’” that he felt moved to act. To act, that is, by attacking an American politician who is by no means the most rah-rah Israel of his cohort. Rather, he is one of the highest-profile overtly Jewish ones.
So that’s part of why it’s not news—it doesn’t fit in the latest-bad-thing-Trump-did narrative. The other piece is that it doesn’t fit in the right-wing anti-antisemitism narrative of the moment, either. Balmer is a white guy, a generic American, not a Palestinian student on a visa. There’s nowhere to deport him to (not at this stage of Trumpism, anyhow), and he can’t be cited as an example of those foreigners importing antisemitism. My hunch is that if Balmer had a different name, different complexion, and, perhaps, a different national origin, we’d be hearing the word “terrorist” more than we are. Anyway.
How coherent of an ideology Balmer has is its own question. Trump’s assessment of him as a “whack job” was indelicately put—were we expecting Donald Trump to use language about persons suffering from mental illness?—but gestures at a central part of the story. Part, but not all—would we even be having this conversation if the accused was of Arab or Muslim origin and happened to have a history of mental illness?
But whatever Balmer’s psychological state, disapproval of Shapiro for being too pro-Israel is itself a widely-reported-on political stance, one that may have cost him his chance of being vice presidential candidate on the Kamala Harris ticket. Even if you chalk up the fire-setting to one man not being in his right mind, you have to look at how the incident is being received.
If you put the search terms “Shapiro” and “Gaza” into X or Bluesky and filter for most recent, what you see is rather a lot of seemingly level-headed people (or bots?) arguing that we shouldn’t shed a tear over what’s happened in Pennsylvania because Shapiro is behind Israel’s treatment of Palestinians. For some mysterious reason I cannot put my finger on, they suggest he’s more to blame for the tragedy in Gaza than are actual pro-Netanyahu politicians.
The apparent political motivations of the alleged arsonist if anything validate the idea that left antisemitism is a real, material problem—dangerous for Jews and harmful to American democracy. Now, they don’t validate the approach the administration has taken to (what they describe as) fighting antisemitism—disappearing dissenters and defunding higher ed. Nor do they make me, personally, any less cynical about whether the Republicans’ ‘fighting antisemitism’ project has all that much to do with keeping Jews safe. But they’re a reminder—by no means the first—that post-Oct. 7 antisemitism isn’t just about North American Jews having feelings when we see Free Palestine flyers. (Except for the Jews among those who are putting up the flyers; the Jewish people contains multitudes.)
And for what it’s worth, I have no idea whether the and on Passover angle is what’s relevant here, antisemitism-wise. How attuned are hateful arsonists—alleged—to the ins and outs of the Jewish calendar? (Do they get notifications when it’s Shemini Atzeret?) No, it’s in being furious about Gaza and going not for the most pro-Israel politician but rather the Jewiest one.
The Jewish Angle with Phoebe Maltz Bovy premieres this week—a conversation with The Forward columnist and Bad Jews author Emily Tamkin about issues covered in this column and more. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
The CJN’s opinion editor Phoebe Maltz Bovy can be reached at [email protected], not to mention @phoebebovy on Bluesky, and @bovymaltz on X.
