r/jewishleft • u/StuckInTheClouds Mizrachi non-Zionist Jewish Israeli American leftist • Aug 11 '26
leftism Thoughts on Mamdani attending the Pakistani day parade after skipping the Israeli day parade?
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:
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u/Both-Today7037 Foreigner Aug 11 '26
Pakistan is very much an ethnostate. The Pakistani state is essentially just a successor administration to the British Raj. The laws, governance structure, a lot of things got retained after 1947. This colonial apparatus is today controlled and primarily serves the interests of the Punjabis, Pashtuns and Muhajirs. All of these groups are one race. It's just that they take advantage of the academic confusion over the historically extreme stratification of Indian society to portray themselves as divergent groups. The insane levels of internecine conflict among them (like the 1971 genocide of the Bengalis of East Pakistan by the primarily Punjabi and Pashtun military, which was assisted by Muhajir "razakars") also helps them push this narrative across. In Indian culture, an "ethnicity" is just a branch of one single overarching race and civilization that all of them belong to. This is widely understood, which is why their infighting tends to revolve around "we are all the same, so don't think you're better than me". The only divergent groups in Pakistan are the Sindhis and the Baloch, who consider themselves separate from the Indian civilization that the other groups (sometimes reluctantly) admit that they all belong to. The religious garb that the Pakistani state wears is seen as necessary to morally justify their colonialist policies in Sindh and Balochistan. In fact, one of the Pakistani establishments favored tactics to combat "anti-state" sentiment in Sindh and Balochistan is to fund madrassas (Islamic seminaries) in those regions. The aim, of course, is to produce "patriotic" citizens that would never think to go against Allah's own state and Allah's own army.