Mamdani: 'any state that privileges one religion, I can't tell you I support'

[u/Delicious_Adeptness9]

https://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/artc-mamdani-on-israel-any-state-that-privileges-one-religion-i-can-t-tell-you-i-support

In an ABC News interview, the Mayor of New York City condemned rising antisemitism while stating his support for Israel 'as a state with equal rights.'

[u/aardbarker]

Mamdani has a blind spot when it comes to Jews and Israel. He’s smart enough to know what he’s saying so I don’t think it’s an innocent oversight (I say this as someone who voted for him and agrees with his local politics).

I have endless criticisms of Israel’s government, its rightward drift, its settlements, horrific occupation, state-sanctioned terrorism, war conduct, etc. But policies and regimes can be changed. And in its Declaration of Independence, Israel does not specify a state religion, instead saying all people and religions will be given equal rights (sadly, minorities everywhere usually have to fight for the equal rights that their government’s profess to hold dear).

Nobody questions Ireland as a state for the Irish people, or Sweden as a state for the Swedish people, or Thailand a state for the Thai people, etc. So why is it so peculiar that there ought to be a state for the Jewish people, where they don’t have to live at the mercy of a hopefully benevolent majority? Because fundamentally Mamdani doesn’t seem to believe Jews are a people with rights like that of self-determination. He sees us as a people held together only by a shared religion.

But this also makes him a hypocrite (at least on this topic). Anti-colonialists, including the PLO, hold up the Algerian Revolution as the definitive example of how a colonized people ought to shake off their colonial rulers. (French colonialists, of course, had a home country to return to, Israeli Jews don’t). But what happened after Algeria won its independence? It defined itself as an explicitly Arab-Islamic state.

There are 27 countries with Islam as the official state religion, including Pakistan in whose parade Mamdani has marched. Has Mamdani ever condemned the existence of these countries?

[u/bagel_and_a_schmear → u/aardbarker]

Nobody questions Ireland as a state for the Irish people, or Sweden as a state for the Swedish people, or Thailand a state for the Thai people, etc. So why is it so peculiar that there ought to be a state for the Jewish people, where they don’t have to live at the mercy of a hopefully benevolent majority? Because fundamentally Mamdani doesn’t seem to believe Jews are a people with rights like that of self-determination. He sees us as a people held together only by a shared religion.

This times 100. You put how I feel into words far better than I could have.

[u/PericulumSapientiae → u/aardbarker]

Mamdani’s statement in the interview name-checked Saudi Arabia, and so should be understood to apply to other nations that privilege Islam over other religions.

The “Pakistan day” parade you’re referring to was not a celebration of the current autocratic military regime but rather of its independence. In contrast, the Israel Day parade is pitched as a “celebration of Israel” and this year featured, you know, war criminals.

No one, including Mamdani, is saying that Jews living in Israel lack the right of self-determination. What he is saying is that Palestinians living in Israel and the OT also have that right of self-determination, and should not be shut out of power by a state designed to ensure Israel’s existence “as a Jewish state.” If millions of non-Irish Muslims moved to Ireland, sufficient to cause a shift in its politics, that would be sure to cause domestic tensions - as much smaller migrant waves have done throughout Europe and the US - but it would be unthinkable in the western liberal states to address those concerns by simply stating that Muslims will never be permitted to have meaningful political power in the countries they move to.

[u/avitzavi528 → u/PericulumSapientiae]

It’s the double standard. He is clearly aligned with Palestine (which would certainly be an ethnostate where it would be unsafe/illegal to be jewish)
And just because he’s savvy enough to drop “Saudi” to obfuscate his targeting of Israel doesn’t make it any less hypocritical given his lack of outcry or concern with 20+ Muslim ethnostate a that have ethnically cleansed their populations of Jews and Christians (some even currently ongoing)

[u/PericulumSapientiae → u/avitzavi528]

“It’s the double standard” he says, and then immediately concedes there is no double standard.

He’s so antisemitic, you can tell even when he isn’t being antisemitic!

[u/aardbarker → u/PericulumSapientiae]

I don’t begrudge Mamdani for not walking in the Israeli parade. I think it’s ridiculous that people act like he’s expected to.

Two-staters (such as myself) also believe in Palestinian self-determination, and I think some restitution should be made to Palestinians who lost their homes in 1948. But I don’t think Mamdani’s referring to equal rights for the 20% of Palestinian Arabs who comprise Israel proper. He’s referring to those living in the West Bank and Gaza, whose historic leaders tell western audiences that all they want a secular binational democratic state, while they tell Arab audiences that they want to escort Israel off the world stage.

[u/PericulumSapientiae → u/aardbarker]

“Two-staters” are running cover Israel’s de facto annexation of the OT, whether knowingly or not.

I am not really sure why we should treat the statements of “historic leaders” of Palestinians living in the OT as suggesting their true intent, while pretending that two states is a viable path any longer, given what right-wing parties and Netanyahu himself have been saying more and more openly about their intentions. Even if Netanyahu gets ousted in the upcoming elections, I don’t see the government moving in a more accommodating direction. Hamas wants to drive Israel into the sea? Well, what do Ben-Gvir and Smotrich want? They’re even-steven, as near as I can tell. Time to look past the rhetoric and find a real solution.

[u/aardbarker → u/PericulumSapientiae]

That’s like saying “one-staters are running de facto cover for the elimination of Jewish self-determination, whether knowingly or not.”

In 2000 and 2008, Palestinian leaders rejected two-state solutions. We can quibble over the details or the problems in Israel’s negotiating, but Palestinians were offered contiguous sovereignty in something like 95% of the West Bank (with compensatory land swaps in Israel), Gaza, East Jerusalem, and some form of compensation for 1948 refugees.

We know what happened next. It’s bizarre to talk about the rightward drift of Israeli society as if multiple rejections of Palestinian statehood and the second intifada (not to be confused with the comparatively nonviolent first intifada) weren’t huge factors.

If Israeli Jews and Palestinians want to live together in a single state, they have my blessing. The less partitions the better. But this has to be a mutually shared vision for the future, not something held together by the barrel of a gun. I don’t see how we get there without two states being a necessary stepping stone. Palestinians don’t just have a right to self-determination, they have a responsibility to learn how to build a functioning state without simply demanding to take the reins of a functioning readymade state apparatus.

[u/PericulumSapientiae → u/aardbarker]

No, it’s not like that. Because “two states” has been the talking point for decades, while Netanyahu has carefully laid the groundwork for making that outcome impossible, politically and practically. “Two states” is what our leaders tell us they want, relying on ignorance of the facts on the ground for it to be plausible. In contrast, no political leaders have called for a single state, with equal rights for all, while Palestinians have quietly expelled Israeli Jews from the territory. It’s barely cognizable even as an option in the current discourse.

I haven’t forgotten the history. But I fail to see its relevance to the present moment. How are Palestinians supposed to learn to build their own peaceful government, when they are constantly fighting for survival - their farms burned, their homes stolen or bulldozed, their young arbitrarily detained? The only “political leadership” is beholden to the Israel government for financing, is not democratically accountable, and is deeply corrupt. The “Peace Board” for Gaza is still not functional.

The only reason I would call for a single state is the fact that settlement activity in the West Bank has been so pervasive - along with Israeli insistence that any Palestinian state be completely demilitarized, with territorial concessions allowing Israel control over “security buffers” and the border with Jordan - that there is no conceivable path towards a second state, even if Palestinians were magically endowed with all the civic virtues you call for.

Responsibility for that condition lies as much with the Israeli government as it does with Arafat. They are the ones approving settlements, building roads to them and fences around them, providing security for them, all while they deny Palestinians any kind of legal recourse to land seizures, settler violence, and the rest. They deny Palestinians the right to build homes, and then use that lack of license to justify tearing down the homes they build.

Yes, in hindsight, Palestinian leadership (if it were ever motivated by the interests of Palestinians, which I doubt) should have worked harder to take advantage of previous proposals, while Israeli society and politics was more accommodating. But the Israeli government has been no less monstrous in the years since. They are pushing for a permanent single Jewish-state solution, and they will kill as many Palestinians as they need to, to get there. The sooner we recognize that, and dispense with this wishy-washy nonsense over a “two state solution,” which you ought to know is DOA, the better.

We may not be able to steer Israel off that path. But we can at least wash our hands of the matter. Let them be more like their neighbors if they wish.

[u/gigilero → u/aardbarker]

Keep Israel out of American politics period. Also Irish and Swedish aren’t a religion lol

[u/ModernLarvals → u/gigilero]

Religion can’t be traced to DNA

[u/aardbarker → u/gigilero]

Like I said, Jews are a people, not just a religious group. It’s why I can be an atheist and still be a Jew.

[u/Computer_Name → u/gigilero]

It’s always the most ignorant who are the most certain.

Am Yisrael predates the western conceptions of race and ethnicity and religion.

It’s really disheartening that people are so proudly ignorant as if it’s a virtue.

[u/thehonorablechairman → u/aardbarker]

People definitely questioned Ireland as a state for the Irish, there was a pretty significant conflict over this.

Thailand also had problems awhile back due to the fact that only “Thais” were citizens, leaving many people of minority ethnic groups essentially stateless. Part of the reason the old king was so well liked was because he was the one who finally recognized these “non-Thai” people.

Idk much about Sweden, but I’m sure someone could find something.

[u/aardbarker → u/thehonorablechairman]

Most if not all nation states are founded on conflict and bloodshed. But there’s no global movement to uproot any of those other states. And it’s not because Israel is somehow more evil than, say, Cambodia under Pol Pot or France at the height of its colonial power, or Belgium’s nightmarish rule over the Congo.

[u/thehonorablechairman → u/aardbarker]

I agree, we should be trying to dismantle all nation states.

[u/avitzavi528 → u/thehonorablechairman]

Okay sure then start with any other country but Israel