Probably not. I just got this text message from the re-election campaign of my local state senator, Andrew Zwicker et al., a Democrat in New Jersey Legislative District 16. He asked for my vote. I made a modest counter-offer.

Background and petition from Jews from Palestinian Right of Return. Background from Al Jazeera. From Middle East Eye. From Mondoweiss. From Lara Friedman, Foundation for Middle East Peace (see database linked in page). From Moshe Behar, “The IHRA’s Careless Conflations on Antisemitism (and a Few Alternatives),” University of Notre Dame. From Susan Lanser, from the Reconstructing Judaism website. From Wikipedia.

Senate Joint Resolution 113, co-sponsored by Senator Zwicker.

Just a little PS to the liberal Democrats in New Jersey who “count on my vote” because I’m a registered Democrat, and “a failure to vote for the Democrats gives a vote to the Republicans.” I don’t accept that inference, and more importantly, don’t vote for people whose idea of a response to the Israeli occupation is to blame the victims and spit in the faces of their advocates. Sorry.

If New Jersey’s Democrats are so eager to get my vote, maybe they should be taking action to pre-empt the legislative defamation of people like me. Convince Senator Zwicker, and my vote is yours. But as long as politicians like Zwicker dishonestly and opportunistically equate anti-Zionist views like mine with anti-Semitism–saying absolutely nothing about the injustice of the Israeli occupation–my plan is to get my mail-in ballot, tear it up, and send the pieces to his office with a copy of this post as explanation. If he likes, I can offer to explain the issue to him in greater detail in person. But as things stand, a vote for him is out of the question–unless he promises to vote against the legislation he sponsored, and follows through.

PS, April 29, 2023

They don’t give up, but neither do I. And my name isn’t “Justin.”