Troy Jackson, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in Maine, said in a Tuesday television interview that it is “unfortunate” that Jewish Mainers don’t call the war in the Gaza Strip a “genocide.”
Jackson, a logger from northern Maine and former president of Maine’s state Senate, is challenging Sen. Susan Collins (R) in a contest critical to Democratic hopes for reclaiming control of the U.S. Senate. Jackson has repeatedly referred to the war as a “genocide” during his campaign and said he opposes American military aid to Israel.
“It’s unfortunate that there are people here in Maine that don’t like to use that term only because, you know, they’re Jewish, and what that means to them with the Holocaust,” Jackson said in the interview with News Center Maine, Portland’s NBC News affiliate.
Jackson also criticized Hamas in the interview.
“You can argue the same thing for Hamas, too,” Jackson said. “There’s people that are wrong on both sides of this issue, but in the end, senseless murders, horrific murders, are happening to both sides.”
Jackson apologized for the remark in a statement to The Washington Post, writing that he understands the word genocide “carries particular weight for many Jewish families given the Holocaust — the genocide of six million Jews.”
“In trying to acknowledge that, I misspoke and made a generalization about Jewish Mainers’ views that doesn’t reflect what I meant to say,” Jackson wrote, adding that he apologized for “the pain that caused.”
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