Contender to replace Graham Platner as Senate candidate changes mind on ‘genocide’

JTA — When Jordan Wood vied last fall for the Democratic nomination for Maine’s US Senate seat, he avoided accusing Israel of genocide,  citing a link between rising antisemitism and “the language” that people use.

Graham Platner, who went on to overwhelmingly win the nomination, did not stint on using the term. Platner is out after accusations of sexual assault, and Wood is once again running in the abbreviated primary to replace him.

And now the former congressional staffer is changing his tune.

“I believe we can’t continue to fund Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Wood wrote on social media last week. “It’s a moral atrocity. We should be using our taxpayer dollars to fund schools, healthcare, and childcare here at home, not on bombing innocent civilians.”

Last November, Wood said he was concerned the word was so loaded as to be dangerous. He told Democratic commentator Kaivan Shroff that he believed Israel has committed war crimes in Gaza, but stopped short of using the term genocide.

“I’ve hesitated on it because I’m also seeing a real rise in antisemitism in the United States,” Wood said then. “My husband is Jewish, and the acts of violence toward Jewish Americans is very much connected to the language that we use.”

It would be “a huge deal for the United States Congress to designate what’s going on in Gaza as a genocide officially,” Wood said. “There could be consequences to that of US citizens that have served in the IDF,” he added. “Do they get prosecuted?”

Wood’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment on what prompted him to adopt the term.

The Maine Democratic Party has until July 27 to nominate a replacement for Platner, an anti-Israel progressive, in hopes of unseating GOP Sen. Susan Collins.

Wood, along with major candidates Troy Jackson, Nirav Shah and Shenna Bellows have all accused Israel of having committed genocide since launching their campaigns, underscoring the shrinking popularity of Israel among Democratic voters and their representatives in the wake of its war in Gaza – and perhaps noting Platner’s success in making Israel an issue in the race.

In an interview this week with The Advocate, Wood criticized the embattled Platner, while saying that he would “carry on that platform” that had energized Maine voters.

“I separate Graham, the movement, from the person,” Wood said. He pointed to issues like conditioning aid to Israel and rejecting corporate PAC and AIPAC money, as priorities that he shared with Platner.

Wood told Shroff in November that he would not take money from AIPAC, and added that there is a “huge amount of distrust” of the pro-Israel lobbying organization among Democratic voters.

“I believe the only way to truly prove to a voter that you are voting and prioritizing policies in their best interest, and for our country’s best interest, is to remove any perception of corruption or misdealing,” Wood said.

He has also been consistent in saying that he would vote in support of Bernie Sanders’s resolutions to block the sales of certain weapons to Israel, while maintaining that that shouldn’t mean halting the US-Israel relationship altogether.

“The United States should absolutely have a cooperative relationship with Israel, and I want that relationship to work. But a real partnership is not a blank check,” Wood told the Jewish Insider news site last week. “It comes with honesty and accountability. The United States has enormous leverage with the Israeli government, and we’ve been refusing to use it.”

Wood and a number of other candidates participated in a televised debate on CNN Thursday night, ahead of the July 27 nominating convention.