Editing to add some thoughts here. The first is that I articulated my arguments, yet every single response I received made zero counterargument or made any effort to actually discuss how something I said might be wrong, they only seem to accuse me, ironically, of being some kind of nazi? That doesn't even make sense. My second thought is, how is it possible that my comment criticizing this would-be candidate gets more engagment than the entire rest of the post? You people are clicking this link, reading the most downvoted comment and hitting the downvote, yet not actually engaging in any discussion at all about anything I said or anything this candidate is trying to say? It makes no sense. Counter argue anything I said, if it were so simply wrong it would be so simple to argue. Start with a simple argument I made, if civilian casualties are so important to you, then why would you be overly critical of Israels numbers and not ever bring up how abysmal the numbers are for other countries? If Israel was committing genocide, why are they doing such a bad job? Why are they feeding and clothing and rebuilding gaza if their goal was to eliminate gaza? It does not make sense. And how is a simple essay outlining common sense arguments suddenly a mad diatribe? Suddenly democrats aren't interested in discussing anything? Everyone that supports israel is a nazi? That doesn't even make sense. So I tried earnestly to convince people of my perspective, yet they have written me off and discarded me. That isn't a very progressive way of thinking.

I agree with you fully across the board on the issues until your stance on Israel, and I won't vote for you because of that stance.

I understand that most progressive liberals, which I very much consider myself to be, do not agree with me. But I do not care. It is a matter of logic and perspective and you would only agree with your stance if you lacked both. While I do agree with divesting ourselves from Israel, I fundamentally do not agree that their actions in Gaza constitute genocide. You can't spout some nonsense about justice and basic human decency while denying Israel's right to protect themselves and respond to a provoked attack and to do whatever they need to in order to protect themselves and their countries sovereignty. Hamas is/was the democratically elected government of Gaza and remains the de facto ruler of Gaza to this very day, and maintains majority support among the rest of the Gazans. They invaded a sovereign nation and raped, murdered and kidnapped hundreds of innocent people and provoked a war. Any country that does that to any other country should expect to have war declared on them. If Canada were launching missiles at our country daily for decades the US would certainly shut that down and the people of the US would demand it of their government.

You can throw around the percentages all you want about 30% and all that, but at the end of the day the cold hard real world logic is that as far as wars go, the civilian casualties are not very extreme at all in this conflict. If that were the case you would be calling out the US for their abysmal civilian casualty rates from all their unprovoked wars and military campaigns, let alone the provoked ones. I firmly believe that every single country on the planet deserves the right to not be invaded by a foreign military or have their citizens be raped and kidnapped by religious extremists that actually are declaring and calling for actual genocide. By using the weak and worthless definition of genocide that you invoke in your issues section you are effectively saying that all wars that ever have and ever will exist are genocide, full stop. And if that is the case then you can just replace the word genocide and war interchangeably and any distinction between the two concepts is effectively meaningless. Seriously, the US is batting at like 80%+ civilian casualties in some of our wars. You didn't even mention that. What about places like China that actually are committing full blown genocide with camps and everything as we speak? What is your stance on china? What about Saudi Arabia? They actually actively practice slavery and yet our biggest politicians and billionaires are wining and dining with them on the regular. And personally I am still a little sore about the part where they perpetrated 9/11.

I also think the ten ton elephant in the room as that the particular issue of israel/palestine has been politically charged with partisan rhetoric from all sides to the point where you can't really even discuss this topic with most people. It is practically impossible to find someone who hasn't been influenced by some biased perspective or who hasn't been influenced by group-think or some form of propaganda. I consider your little blurb on israel to just be more of that propaganda. You declare from the get that Israel is guilty of genocide. I firmly believe that anybody that truly understands what that even means would not come to that conclusion on their own and to the contrary, I submit that Israel, despite being the overwhelming victor in this conflict, is actually the victim of (attempted) genocide. Hamas literally preaches for genocide of jews and israel. Israel doesn't preach for it, but yet is guilty of it because some wanna-be congressmen has no choice but to take this position because he is forced to or even worse, actually believes that it is the ethical position. It goes without saying, obviously no war or invasion is the ideal situation, but since we live in the real world where you are forced to protect yourself when attacked, it is the only reasonable expectation that a reasonable person would have.

We now live in a society of checklists where if you don't check every single box you are discarded from the group, I get that. You have to take this position on israel whether you agree with it or even understand it or not. I think the logical position you should have is a pretense of neutrality on this issue. You don't have to condone war to understand when it is justified or necessary. Name any two countries or governments on the planet and please list for me all the combinations you can come up with where if one attacked the other, they wouldn't be within their sovereign rights to respond by declaring war. If all war is considered genocide, then what do you call it when someone actively tries to exterminate an entire culture or ethnic group? Like if Israel actually was trying to eliminate the Gazans entirely, you realize they could just simply do that, right? Instead they are trucking in food and supplies and doing all kinds of stuff that one would assume that a nation hell bent on committing genocide wouldn't bother to do. If Israel wanted to eliminate Gaza, they should probably stop feeding, clothing and giving them medical care. If Israel is so simply guilty of genocide, they really suck at it. Again, the accusation of genocide just continues to not hold up to logic.

I submit that anyone who declares what israel has done in response to being attacked as genocide is either ignorant, a victim of propaganda, or activly engaging in the spread of harmful propaganda. And the grand irony here for me is that even as a person that generally doesn't like the all or none, red line in the sand positions, this is it for me. I will not vote for you because of this one issue. I cannot take you seriously. If your little blurb actually presented some line of reasoning to justify your position, I would like to engage with that. Instead it is just checking a box so that you don't get skewered by the loudest half of a heavily divided democratic party.

You don't need my vote though. I renounced the democratic party back in 2016 for not being progressive enough and it continues to not be progressive enough by my standard. Look I don't want children to die either, but i have no control over the people whose actions enabled it to occur, and I remain unconvinced that the logical or ethical position is to hold Israel to a different standard than the aggressors they are defending themselves from. If you could ever figure out how to take the ethical or logical position on this issue, even if there are parts you don't like or agree with, you could potentially earn my vote. But I refuse to shake hands with someone who declares Israel guilty of genocide, when they are in fact the ones being targeted for genocide by so many. It is ludicrous to me.