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Troy Jackson told media outlets across the country that he was sorry for saying Jewish Mainers “don’t like to” call Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza a genocide, “only because they’re Jewish and what that means to them with the Holocaust.”

Jackson made the initial comments to News Center Maine on Tuesday. He called the three-year war — which began with Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, and has since resulted in the killing of 70,000 Palestinians by Israeli forces in Gaza — a genocide, and continued on to say Jewish Mainers “don’t like to use that term.”

“I apologize for the pain that caused,” Jackson said in a statement. “Mainers hold a range of deeply considered views, and I promise I will always listen and work to approach these conversations with the care and respect they deserve.”

Jackson reiterated his belief that “what’s happening in Gaza is a genocide.”

“In trying to acknowledge that, I misspoke and made a generalization about Jewish Mainers’ views that doesn’t reflect what I meant to say,” his statement continued.

In the News Center Maine interview, Jackson also called Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, a war criminal. The International Criminal Court, to which the U.S. is not a signatory, issued an arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 2024 for starving people in Gaza as a means of war and ordering the killing of civilians.

A United Nations commission first found that Israel was committing a genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza strip in September 2025. More than 64,000 children have been killed or injured in Gaza since October 2023, the UN said in August.

Like his predecessor for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Senate, Graham Platner, Jackson’s use of the word “genocide” to describe Israel’s actions in Gaza is part of a larger call to stop arms funding to Israel. Brown University found that the U.S. sent $21.7 billion in military aid to Israel from October 2023 to September 2025 — for which Republican Sen. Susan Collins, Jackson’s incumbent opponent, has consistently voted.

“I don’t want the United States sending money, a blank check to (Netanyahu) anymore, watching young children, innocent people die,” Jackson told News Center Maine. “I mean, I just disagree with that.”