Pennsylvania Supreme Court justice leaves Democratic Party over antisemitism concerns

[Dulcinea]

(Politico) A Pennsylvania state Supreme Court justice said Monday he is leaving the Democratic Party over what he sees as a rise in antisemitism from mainstream party figures.

Justice David Wecht, who was elected to the court as a Democrat in 2015, said in a statement he is switching his party affiliation to independent due to an "acquiescence to Jew-hatred” becoming “disturbingly common among activists, leaders and even many elected officials in the Democratic Party.”

“I can no longer abide this. So, I won’t,” Wecht said. “I am no longer registered within any political party.”

In his statement, Wecht said he’s long felt antisemitism was most potent on the fringes of the right — especially after the 2018 shooting at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, where Wecht was married and is a former board member. But he said that since 2018, “that same hatred has grown on the left.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/pennsylvania-supreme-court-justice-leaves-201543587.html

[bucolic_frolic]

1. The State of PA elected the Justice, and a Jewish Governor, as Democrats

What is it I'm not understanding here?

[58Sunliner]

2. Does criticism of Israel and govt policy equal antisemitism to this man?

[31st Street Bridge]

3. Again, any elected person who switches parties must stand for re-election immediately

Wecht is full of shit. Democrats and Republicans and Independents alike decry the slaughter in Gaza.
Perhaps he should go serve Netanyahoo in the Knesset. But leave all the public $$$$ the Wecht family has pocketed over the decades!

[GiqueCee]

4. Equating condemnation of Netanyahu's war crimes...

... with antisemitism is a shopworn deflection to excuse unconscionable behavior by a raging sociopath.

[Eko]

5. More info

Wecht has been active in Jewish affairs since childhood, when he was a member of the ZOA’s youth group, called Masada. He has been to Israel 11 times, and was the chair of the pro-Israel group Yale Friends of Israel when he was an undergrad at the Ivy League school. Wecht also graduated from the Yale Law School. He was an active member of AIPAC until he took the bench in 2003 on the Court of Common Pleas, where he sat for nearly nine years before his election to the Superior Court.
https://jewishchronicle.timesofisrael.com/jewish-community-represented-on-judicial-ballots/