New York City is likely to elect a socialist à la Bernie Sanders as its next mayor. The defining feature of Democrat candidate Zohran Mamdani is that he is critical of capitalism and wants to give people “free” stuff. However, other aspects of his profile are equally disturbing.
Mamdani is reportedly a Muslim of the same doctrinal beliefs (Shia) as the ayatollahs in Iran. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that he stands against the Jewish state in the Israel-Hamas war. As for what has shaped that particular worldview, Mamdani’s father is an anti-Israel Columbia University professor. Columbia is one of the worst universities for anti-Semitism.
While many have pointed out that being anti-Israel isn’t technically the same as being anti-Semitic, supporting Hamas invariably meets that threshold. Iran sponsors Hamas, which is a bona fide terrorist group that was elected to govern the Gaza Strip. And frankly, most of the Palestinian people believe that the Jews must be eradicated. Even the “less radical” leader of the West Bank, Mahmoud Abbas — whom former President Joe Biden would have tapped to take over Gaza after the Israel-Hamas war ends — has stated that the Jews brought the Holocaust on themselves because of usury.
Mamdani has been a longtime supporter of so-called Palestine and was even a cofounder of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at his alma mater, Bowdoin College. SJP was behind the worst anti-Semitic protests at Harvard, and there is even reason to believe that SJP was given advance notice of the October 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel.
Because of his stance on the Israel-Hamas war, Mamdani has been asked again and again about his anti-Semitism and how his views on the war would affect his mayorship of New York City, which has the largest population of Jews in the United States. Each time, Mamdani has expressed hurt at being accused of anti-Semitism while immediately twisting it as an anti-Islam attack against him.
It’s a typical political answer, but more insight into his views was gleaned during an interview this past Sunday on NBC News’s “Meet the Press.” Mamdani was given a chance to denounce “globalize the intifada” — a bloodthirsty cry to wipe out all the Jews, not just those in Israel. Mamdani obfuscated and danced around the phrase without condemning it, even though the host gave him three chances to denounce it.
“I thought it was a terrible mistake for Mamdani to try to justify the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ on a podcast [last] month,” says Michelle Goldberg, an opinion columnist for The New York Times and a Jewish New Yorker. She adds, “Mamdani should understand why many Jews find the words threatening, particularly after the murder of two Israeli Embassy staff workers in Washington and the firebombing, just this month, of people in Colorado demonstrating for the release of Israeli hostages.”
Goldberg was otherwise defensive of Mamdani. Sadly, she wasn’t the only Jewish columnist at the Times to defend him, either. M. Gessen also feels the attacks against Mamdani have gone too far, and he reminds readers that there is a difference between being anti-Israel and being anti-Semitic.
These voices of secular American Jews are part of a phenomenon that we have pointed out before. A few years ago, our Thomas Gallatin, when writing on the subject of Jews possibly voting for Republicans because the Democrats had gone all in against Israel, asked and answered:
Will this sudden shock of reality open the eyes of American Jews to finally ditch their commitment to the Democrat Party? Will they finally see that the party most responsible for and with the longest history of promulgating racism, including anti-Semitism, is the Democrat Party?
Unfortunately, for most of these Jewish Democrats, the answer is likely no. While they have been dismayed by the anti-Semitism on display across the country, the deeper problem is that the leftism undergirding the Democrat Party’s increasing embrace of Marxism is what many Jews themselves believe. Marxism is perhaps the inevitable result of embracing radical secularism.
Mamdani is also anti-police. As The Wall Street Journal editorial board astutely points out, “Both Mamdanis [father and son] side with the Columbia protest encampment, whose leadership cheered Oct. 7. The candidate says he wouldn’t send police to respond to new encampments. Then again, where would he send police? The NYPD says 62% of hate crimes in New York target Jews, who make up 12% of the city. Mr. Mamdani, who spent 2020 calling to ‘defund the police,’ isn’t likely to make Orthodox Jews any safer on the streets of Brooklyn.”
Electing an anti-Semite as the mayor of America’s largest city is Exhibit A in how far gone the Left is. But it would be pure madness for the nation’s largest Jewish population to elect a man who started a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter on his college campus and cannot denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
