Isn’t it remarkable what you can get away with if you’re a Social Democrat? At the time of writing, the party is refusing to comment publicly on the claims of one of its former candidates, Orli Degani, that she was essentially ditched from the Social Democrat ticket on account of her being a part-Israeli Jew who doesn’t necessarily toe the party line on the rights and wrongs of the war in Gaza. Degani’s version of the story thus remains publicly undisputed: That she sought to raise concerns about some of the tone of the party’s statements internally, and constructively, and, in her words “could not have expected what happened next”.
It is worth pausing here to consider the background: No doubt, the presence on their party ticket of somebody who doesn’t absolutely condemn Israel was uncomfortable for some of the more rabid SocDem activists, but does that excuse treating a candidate like this? I’m trying to imagine here what would happen were this in another party: Peadar Toibin and Aontú, for example, have copped some flack recently from a sector of the “patriot” right on social media for running some (legal) immigrant candidates of their own. Imagine if, following those concerns, one or more such candidates were unceremoniously dropped, without explanation, by Aontú.
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