What he said at a debate raises about as much of a problem on the Israel issue. The candidates were asked if Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Mamdani answered with the weasel phrase that Israel has the right to exist as a state with equal rights for all citizens.
It is a weasel phrase because it it is meant to sound reason…
What he said at a debate raises about as much of a problem on the Israel issue. The candidates were asked if Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Mamdani answered with the weasel phrase that Israel has the right to exist as a state with equal rights for all citizens.
It is a weasel phrase because it it is meant to sound reasonable, after all, who can oppose equal rights for everyone, but can hide more nefarious objectives. 1) It tacitly states that individual rights, such as pursuing a livelihood while observing their own religion, are being denied to non-Jewish citizens of Israel. It is true that other groups do not enjoy national rights, such as having their communal holidays being state holidays. However, if you say that that is a denial of civil rights, then you are say that the US denies civil rights to Jews by making Christmas a national holiday but not Yom Kippur. 2) It shows at best a willful blindness to what the Palestinian national movement has indicated it would do if it ever became a majority of the entire southwest Levant.
I have a slightly different take on Mamdani. He is not an anti-semite (someone who hates Jews for being Jews) but he is an anti-Zionist (someone who does not believe Jews have the right to a Jewish majority homeland in the present State of Israel). As I previously said in a different thread: when Mamdani was pressed in the 1st debate on whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, he ducked the question and replied “I believe Israel has the right to exist as a state with equal rights." (Of course Cuomo smelled blood and immediately jumped in by noting “Not as a Jewish state.”). I personally found Mamdani's exchange with Tim regarding "Globalize the Intifada" and the meaning of "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free" to be similarly evasive. Mamdani is too smart not to know what the context is for these chants (i.e., at a minimum the end of the present nation-state of Israel as a Jewish majority state) (I'm not talking about the West Bank or Gaza here), and his evasions struck me as very similar to Rashida Tlaib's disingenuous attempt to characterize "From the River to the Sea . . ." as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.” rather than what it actually was, which at minimum is a call for a "one-state" solution that ends the Jewish majority State of Israel with Jews living as a minority under a Palestinian government, and is viewed by many supporters of Israel as a coded call for the expulsion of Jews from the land currently constituting the State of Israel. Tim should have pressed Mamdani harder on this (I also recall Tim easing up on Mehdi Hasan and Ta-Nehisi Coates when those interviews veered into Israel's right to exist as a Jewish majority state, but to be fair those interviews were not primarily about Israel). But it's all academic at this point.
> It is a weasel phrase because it it is meant to sound reasonable, after all, who can oppose equal rights for everyone, but can hide more nefarious objectives.
Bravo. +1 ( my LIKEs don't work here ) There seems to be a lot of that going around here. The sad thing is that our college students don't seem to be able to suss that out.
What he said at a debate raises about as much of a problem on the Israel issue. The candidates were asked if Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. Mamdani answered with the weasel phrase that Israel has the right to exist as a state with equal rights for all citizens.
It is a weasel phrase because it it is meant to sound reasonable, after all, who can oppose equal rights for everyone, but can hide more nefarious objectives. 1) It tacitly states that individual rights, such as pursuing a livelihood while observing their own religion, are being denied to non-Jewish citizens of Israel. It is true that other groups do not enjoy national rights, such as having their communal holidays being state holidays. However, if you say that that is a denial of civil rights, then you are say that the US denies civil rights to Jews by making Christmas a national holiday but not Yom Kippur. 2) It shows at best a willful blindness to what the Palestinian national movement has indicated it would do if it ever became a majority of the entire southwest Levant.
I have a slightly different take on Mamdani. He is not an anti-semite (someone who hates Jews for being Jews) but he is an anti-Zionist (someone who does not believe Jews have the right to a Jewish majority homeland in the present State of Israel). As I previously said in a different thread: when Mamdani was pressed in the 1st debate on whether Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state, he ducked the question and replied “I believe Israel has the right to exist as a state with equal rights." (Of course Cuomo smelled blood and immediately jumped in by noting “Not as a Jewish state.”). I personally found Mamdani's exchange with Tim regarding "Globalize the Intifada" and the meaning of "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be Free" to be similarly evasive. Mamdani is too smart not to know what the context is for these chants (i.e., at a minimum the end of the present nation-state of Israel as a Jewish majority state) (I'm not talking about the West Bank or Gaza here), and his evasions struck me as very similar to Rashida Tlaib's disingenuous attempt to characterize "From the River to the Sea . . ." as “an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate.” rather than what it actually was, which at minimum is a call for a "one-state" solution that ends the Jewish majority State of Israel with Jews living as a minority under a Palestinian government, and is viewed by many supporters of Israel as a coded call for the expulsion of Jews from the land currently constituting the State of Israel. Tim should have pressed Mamdani harder on this (I also recall Tim easing up on Mehdi Hasan and Ta-Nehisi Coates when those interviews veered into Israel's right to exist as a Jewish majority state, but to be fair those interviews were not primarily about Israel). But it's all academic at this point.
> It is a weasel phrase because it it is meant to sound reasonable, after all, who can oppose equal rights for everyone, but can hide more nefarious objectives.
Bravo. +1 ( my LIKEs don't work here ) There seems to be a lot of that going around here. The sad thing is that our college students don't seem to be able to suss that out.