Actor Hill Harper, who left “The Good Doctor” to run as a Democrat for a Michigan Senate seat, said more Democrats should call for a ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas.
“I’m very proud to be a Democrat, but our party is off track.” Harper said in an interview with Politico.
“Seventy-one percent of Michigan Democrats support a ceasefire. But very few of our establishment members want a ceasefire,” he said of the ongoing war in Gaza. “My Senate race opponent is not like that.”
Mr. Harper announced his candidacy in November and will face U.S. Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan in the Democratic primary.
In an interview, Harper said he recently met with 14 Arab and Muslim leaders in Michigan. He urged people to vote for President Biden because if he didn’t, he would be “literally supporting Trump.” He reported that many people told him that people in their culture “feel like they’ve been stabbed in the back by the Democratic Party.”
The actor said he would not “uniformly” support aid sent to Israel for the war against Hamas because the United States does not want to be “in the business of financing violence.”
“So if further funding for foreign wars creates more deaths, I’m not interested in that right now,” he said. “But I’m interested in supporting democracies like Israel.”
“We’re allowing people to confuse the idea that anyone who advocates a ceasefire is anti-Israel or anti-Semitic. That’s not true. Two things can be true at the same time.” continued Mr. Harper.
When Harper announced his candidacy, he was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and owned a coffee shop in Detroit, making him “the only U.S. senator who is currently a dues-paying, card-carrying member.” He said it would be. If elected, he will be “one of the few small business owners” in the Senate.
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