After declining to call Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza a \u201cgenocide\u201d during their first congressional candidates forum on Wednesday, State Sen. Scott Wiener publicly changed course.\u201cWe all have eyes, and we see the absolute devastation and catastrophic death toll in Gaza,\u201d Wiener said in a 90-second clip posted to X on Sunday. \u201cThe Israeli government has tried to destroy Gaza and to push Palestinians out and that qualifies as genocide.\u201dWiener, who is Jewish, said that he has been hesitant to use the word because of its connection to the Holocaust, where six million Jews were killed.The hot button question came up during last week\u2019s debate as part of the yes-or-no lightning round. Supervisor Connie Chan and former congressional staffer Saikat Chakrabarti both held aloft signs reading \u201cYes,\u201d while Wiener rested his sign in his lap.Wiener drew the night\u2019s heaviest jeers when he declined to answer. Audience members shouted \u201cShame on you,\u201d \u201cSellout,\u201d and \u201cFree Palestine.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0In an interview with reporters afterward, Wiener lamented that there wasn\u2019t time during the forum to describe his position on a complex international conflict, yet did not use the word genocide.\u201cHamas should not be running Gaza,\u201d Wiener added, but the Israeli government\u2019s killing of tens of thousands of Palestinians, including children, is an absolute moral stain and horrifying to me.\u201d\u00a0When asked why he declined to label it genocide, Wiener said, \u201cPeople can label it whatever noun or adjective they want to put on it.\u201dThe Chan and Chakrabarti campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wiener\u2019s change.Ezra Wallach can be reached at [email\u00a0protected]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
After declining to call Israel\u2019s actions in Gaza a \u201cgenocide\u201d during their first congressional candidates forum on Wednesday, State Sen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.demoviewer4.com\/keith-ponder\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}