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I was recently massively downvoted on Reddit because I mentioned I didn’t really care about candidates stances either way on Israel/Palestine as it regards to a city-level election. I certainly have opinions and understand why folks have principles either way, but we can’t make every issue the issue we spend our energy on, and this doesn’t meet the bar for me for a city official.

Sometimes online and election media discourse can feel like we’re supposed to be single issue voters on 1000 issues at once.

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Israel Palestine single-voterism is particularly frustrating to me because of the weird way it has to infect completely irrelevant topics. As a particularly crazy example, I remember people arguing about Israel Palestine in the context of the Australian Aboriginal Voice to Parliament debate, a debate about an internal representation mechanism for Australian Aboriginal people, incredibly few of which have any ties to either Israel or Palestine, and a group which I considerably doubt represent a single soldier on either side.

That’s a feature, not a bug.

Historically that tactic is used by ‘revolutionary’ and ‘liberation’ and reactionary groups to overwhelm and exclude honest debate. It’s a destabilization technique, aimed at gathering critical mass for revolt with no clear second phase. Occupy, overthrow, liberate, replace…

Taken at face value, honest protest, it’s a hate crime against the victims and participants in the actual situation: these chaos agitators steal the cause for noise and invest in perpetual purity and polemic campaigns, it only hurts the victims, but enables eternal grievance politics for the agitators.

Spray painting Nazi slogans on American universities isn’t helping diplomacy half the world away. Flotillas without aide aren’t aide.

The propagandists involved are not dumb, they are funding very tactically. The point is not convincing or helping anyone, it’s establishing political dominance and orthodoxy. Mob rule.

> Flotillas without aide aren't aide.

Is this referring to the flotilla full of food sailing towards Gaza that was invaded and kidnapped by Israeli pirates inside the national waters of Greece?

I think it's used as a stalking horse by outsiders who are really just trying to put across the idea 'candidate X sucks and you should shun them like they're poison'. I don't think that topic is treated like it's authentic at all. It's used just to make people mad by influencers who don't give a rat's ass about Palestine really.

Given the shift in attitudes among the public and especially the Democratic voter base, a candidate’s willingness to go against Israel is a superb proxy for whether they will prioritize voters over donor interests.

It’s also effectively a referendum on the current Iran mess, gas prices, assaults on free speech by the administration, and the Democratic establishment in general (AIPAC is the #1 single-issue lobby by far).

We have the same problem in the UK. Local councils went all in on the Palestine thing when their job is basically collecting trash, roadworks, planning and education.

I can’t realistically vote a candidate in who doesn’t talk about trash collection but does talk about Middle Eastern politics.

Sounds like all the noise in Texas right now about sharia law. Muslims are a tiny proportion of the people there, what are the politician all worked up about?

Yeah we have that too. The right wing are using it to leverage voters here.

In my ideal world, explaining this stance would be a part of democracy.

It’s an uphill battle vs a tribal mentality, though.

If I lived in 1930 I would definitely care about a city candidate's stances on Germany/Judaism. Even though that candidate couldn't do anything to affect the Germany/Judaism situation, it would still tell me a lot about that candidate.

theres some reason to care - non-federal entities still make and enforce anti-bds laws, and put support for israel into contracts for working with them.

if you want to be able to have say, cheaper government, you need to be elect local officials on the palestine side, so that folks other than just the pro-israel ones can bid

That’s assuming that the antisemites are cheaper.

But a company boycotting others for political/religious agendas is not going to be able to provide the cheapest/best service, it’s therefore not optimal to go with companies that practice BDS.

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