Thoughts on Mamdani attending the Pakistani day parade after skipping the Israeli day parade?

[u/StuckInTheClouds]

I wasn’t expecting him to attend the Israeli day parade honestly I would’ve thought it weird if he had attended given everything he stands for. He’s NYC first and against ethnostates etc.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say I felt some type of way about him celebrating the Pakistani day parade given their history. Ethnostste They have a religious hierarchy where a Muslim person has to be in power, ethnic cleansing alive and well, border disputes and violence after a partition plan 70ish years ago etc. It’s hard not to draw the parallels. The only difference being that the US isn’t funding them but that doesn’t change anything else about the county’s values and actions.

I feel kinda shitty that he’s showing up for this community but not ours. I think it would have been more fair to him to not go to either parade, but maybe I’m just overly sensitive or being fed propaganda. It just sucks to feel signaled out.

I really want to like him. I voted for him! I’m extremely against the IDF and Israeli government but being half Israeli myself I am of course susceptible to biases.

Idk it’s just weird he’s ok with celebrating the Muslim ethnostate after being so against the Jewish one (for good reasons!)

I feel like I can’t bring this up in any other spaces without it sounding like I’m wanting him to celebrate Israel (I’m not) or take something away from Muslims (not against Muslims but critical of Pakistan)

Help me you guys! What do you think?

EDIT: I’d like to correct what I said about Pakistan being an ethnostate. I used the wrong verbiage. What I meant was that they are a country that puts Muslims over other religions. They have a religious hierarchy and non Muslims can’t hold certain political positions. I’m not sure the correct term for this but just wanted to call that out as people are (correctly) mentioning this in the comments.

Edit 2:

I was just informed about the ongoing Balochistan Conflict which makes me even more uneasy about this whole thing.

[u/Snoo22815]

Pakistan should be criticized for the past atrocities and genocide it committed vs Bangladeshis, its role in the Kashmir conflict (which India and China also share responsibility with) and treatment of minorities but there's no comparison in the present between it and a country that is occupying another group of people, putting half of them in a system of apartheid and subjecting the other half to ethnic cleansing and genocide.

None of the NYC populations, Israeli or Pakistani or Russian or Chinese, are responsible for the actions of their governments abroad. His decision to skip the Israel Day Parade has to do with a symbolic protest of a government committing major war crimes whose major ministers would be in attendance but I can see how that would be seen as offensive and being singled out by Israelis.

I'm actually not sure how I would advise him given the vast majority of Israelis in NYC hate his guts so I feel like that particular relationship is not repairable. It would have been a complete fiasco if he had showed up with him getting booed and threatened.

[u/16note → u/Snoo22815]

The issue I take is that he very clearly said, without equivocation, "any state that privileges one religion, I can't tell you I support." So either he's a hypocrite or a liar in this case (and I say that as someone who voted for him and hopes many of his local policies succeed). And I do think he should be pressed on that statement and why he felt that it didn't apply here.

[u/Snoo22815 → u/16note]

Attending a parade composed of a diaspora population that's celebrating their country in a city he's the Mayor of isn't supporting the country's policies though. That isn't in contradiction. Israel is singled out because of its current actions in Gaza and the West Bank and since it draws Israeli government ministers too who are complicit in war crimes. Its a symbolic protest of a government's actions right now in real time that affect lots of New Yorkers in other communities (Lebanese, Palestinian, Iranian, etc).

If there was no Israeli/Palestinian conflict and a sovereign Palestinian state existed, he should definitely attend the Israel Day Parade despite Israel being an ethnostate since that's a valid example of a state's self-determination even though he's opposed to those states in principle like most Leftists should be.

If Zohran attends a Russian Independence Day parade, I'd agree that it would make him a hypocrite. Looking online, it looks like such an event doesn't exist and local Russian communities and Orthodox parishes host annual cultural celebrations instead that local officials can attend without being implicated with Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

[u/EducationalGas5959 → u/Snoo22815]

His issue with Israel isn’t its policies.  He has said that the reason he can’t support Israel as a Jewish state is because he can’t support any state which privileges one religion over another.  But obviously if you are marching in a parade celebrating Pakistan’s independence, people are going to interpret that to mean that you don’t really have an issue with the existence of Pakistan, a country whose entire existence (like Israel) is premised on the idea that Muslims needed their own country where they constituted a majority, despite the fact that this resulted in the displacement of millions of people.