So....this has become an ongoing series. Part 1 had me blasting centrists who think he's too extreme, part 2 had me blasting communists who think he's too moderate, and now I'm blasting zionists who think he's "anti semitic."
Yeah...a lot of the time I see people who say they can't vote for El Sayed these days, it always seems to come from zionist types who scream he's "anti semitic." I've also noticed post primary everyone seemed to come around to supporting him, except for some Jewish organizations. Apparently his israel position is enough to piss them off. Well, here's how I see it.
America is a secular democracy. We have freedom of religion, along with constitutional prohibitions on establishing religion in government. What qualifies as 'establishing religion' has been debated over the years, but I tend to go with the interpretation that we should have a separation of church and state, with criteria resembling the Lemon test from lemon v kurtzman. This means laws should have a secular purpose, neither advance nor prohibit religion, and try to keep religion and politics as unentangled as possible.
With that said, Jews have every right to practice their religion, given they don't violate secular laws or harm other people. However, when they do harm other people, or entangle church and state, then that's a problem, and that seems to be what's expected from our government here. It seems like people want us to cater to their religion and its doctrines, to be super pro Israel and show sympathy to their religion, and someone who simply says "no" and that they're not gonna fund a genocide in the middle east is considered "hateful" of their religion.
We're not. If you're an American Jew, I wish you all of the happiness in the world. Go to synagogue, practice shabbat, do your holidays, I don't care. Whatever makes you happy and doesn't harm other people. But that doesn't mean that the government has to have explicit sympathy toward your religion, to the point that we just unquestioningly fund a genocidal apartheid state that is doing harm to others in the middle east on a moral basis that seems straight out of the book of Joshua. Muslims have rights too, and deserve their own happiness too. And while yes, Israel has a right to defend itself...within reason....their current policies do not align with that qualifier. Which is why many on the left have taken harsh stances against Israel.
People need to learn that not enabling a religion's worst impulse to harm others does not equal religious persecution. And honestly, if you can't get behind that, go join the republican party. They're full of Christian nationalists who also have persecution complexes and a weird reverence toward the state of Israel on the basis of their religion that I find creepy as hell. We are the party that wants religious pluralism for all. Not religious domination against all other religions. We do this to protect minority rights, including the rights of Jews. Because everyone deserves to practice their religion without being harmed or persecuted by others.
And btw, that includes Muslims too. I know a lot of the hate toward El Sayed is because he's muslim. It's weird. We seem to expect everyone to default to this judeo-Christian worldview while deeming muslims as "the other.' Meanwhile, Muslims are just people too, and the same rules apply to them. Since El Sayed is following those rules, i have no quarrel with him. I have a quarrel with the people who explicitly wanna inject religion into governmental policy, whether it be domestic policy or foreign policy.
Really, how can you not vote for this man? This is why I have no sympathy here. If you cant vote for him, you should probably join the party of religious extremism and authoritarianism. This is my candidate. These are my values. I apologize for nothing. Listen to what a candidate SAYS, not what other people acting in bad faith SAY about a candidate. It would solve so many problems.
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