The Jewish Antisemitism Factory

AIPAC, ADL, Netanyahu, Israel Firsters etc etc

Zohran Mamdani is an antidote to antisemitism rather than some kind of instigator of it. Neither are any of the politicians and activists AIPAC and ADL lie about and try to drive out of public life and/or their jobs. It’s not the Squad or the left. (In fact, almost all real antisemitism emanates from the racist right—Trumpland—as it always has, but that is for another column.)

So what is the leading driver of antisemitism today?

It's the actions of the government of Israel and its uncritical supporters in the diaspora.

Antisemitism surged after Israel began carpet bombing Gaza in October 2023, and mainstream Jewish organizations—led by AIPAC and the ADL—rushed to endorse the onslaught, long after it was clear this was not “self-defense” but collective punishment on a genocidal scale.

Is it wrong when a handful of pro-Palestinian protesters direct their rage at Jews simply for being Jewish? Yes. It's vile and unjustifiable. But is it surprising? Not when nearly every mainstream Jewish institution loudly proclaims support for Israel's war crimes, framing them as Jewish values and communal interests. “We are one” with Israel, they scream, which is not true if it ever was. (With 70% of non-Orthodox Jews marrying non-Jews, we are not a homogenous group even in our homes.)

What about Hamas? Weren’t they responsible for October 7?

Yes. The massacre that day was barbaric,1200 war crimes. But they are not responsible for the wave of antisemitism that followed.

That wave came because Israel’s leaders didn’t respond to the massacre by targeting the perpetrators. Netanyahu responded by unleashing wholesale slaughter on Gaza. Had he chosen a proportionate, focused military response, the world would have rallied around Israel more than against it. Instead, he seized the moment to commit mass atrocities, and the result has been global outrage, including among Jews. Antisemitic incidents rose not because of October 7—but because of what began on October 8.

As usual, Israel and its diehard defenders abroad helped build the antisemitism they claim to oppose. It’s morally perverse. It’s politically reckless. And yes, it endangers Jews—here and in Israel.

But it shouldn’t be surprising. After 9/11, Muslims in the U.S. faced a wave of hate, even though their community leaders condemned the attacks unequivocally. By contrast, our mainstream Jewish institutions not only stood by Israel’s destruction of Gaza—they smeared and tried to silence those, especially young people and students, who dared to speak out against it.

Which brings us back to Bernie and Zohran.

Bernie Sanders—America’s most prominent Jew—became a powerful antidote to antisemitism precisely because he opposed the Gaza war so forcefully. He reminded the world that Jews are not monolithic. That most of us are not war apologists. That real Jewish identity is built on the deep progressive (prophetic) tradition that fueled the huge Jewish presence in the anti-genocide protests.

Zohran Mamdani’s campaign was another expression of that Jewish tradition. He was backed by Jewish activists in all five boroughs. Brad Lander, New York’s highest-ranking Jewish elected official, endorsed him and made his win in the first round possible. Jewish elders and young volunteers alike knocked on tens of thousands of doors for him. He won despite a coordinated campaign to smear him as antisemitic simply because he refused to parrot AIPAC and ADL talking points.

Bernie Jews. Mamdani Jews. Progressive Jews. They don’t just reject antisemitism—they help inoculate us against it.

It’s the Israeli government—and the “Israel First” crowd in Congress, in media, and in our community institutions—that fuels antisemitism by insisting that Jewishness and genocidal violence go hand in hand.

Wouldn’t Herzl be horrified to discover that the Jewish state he envisioned would become less of a Jewish refuge and more of an antisemitism factory?

Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani

June 27, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET by Michelle Goldberg

In 2023, a branch of the Palestinian restaurant Ayat opened in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, not far from where I live. The eatery trumpets its politics; the seafood section on the menu is headed “From the River to the Sea,” which I found clever but some of its Jewish neighbors considered threatening. An uproar grew, especially online, so Ayat made a peace offering.

In early 2024, it hosted a free Shabbat dinner, writing on social media, “Let’s create a space where differences unite us, where conversations flow freely, and where bonds are forged.” Over 1,300 people showed up. To serve them all, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, Ayat used 15 lambs, 700 pounds of chicken and 100 branzino fish. There were also sandwiches from a glatt kosher caterer, a six-foot-long challah and a klezmer band.

The event captured something miraculous about New York City, which is, for all its tensions and aggravations and occasional bursts of violence, a place where Jews and Muslims live in remarkable harmony. In Lawrence Wright’s recent novel set in the West Bank, “The Human Scale,” a Palestinian American man tries to explain it to his Palestinian cousin: “It’s not like here. Arabs and Jews are more like each other than they are like a lot of other Americans. You’ll see them in the same grocery stores and restaurants because of the halal food.”

Eating side-by-side does not, of course, obviate fierce and sometimes ugly disagreements. But while outsiders like to paint New York as a roiling hellhole, there’s an everyday multicultural amity in this city that’s low-key magical.

I saw some of that magic reflected in Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, and especially in the Muslim candidate’s alliance with New York’s Jewish comptroller, Brad Lander. They cross-endorsed, urging their followers to list the other second in the city’s ranked-choice voting system. The two campaigned together and made a joint appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,” and Lander was beside Mamdani when he delivered his victory speech.

Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian politics have sparked enormous alarm among some New York Jews, but he’s also won considerable Jewish support. In a poll of likely Jewish voters done by the Honan Strategy Group in May, Andrew Cuomo came in first, with 31 percent of the vote, but Mamdani was second, with 20 percent. On Tuesday, he won most of Park Slope, a neighborhood full of progressive Jews, and held his own on the similarly Jewish Upper West Side.

“His campaign has attracted Jewish New Yorkers of all types,” wrote Jay Michaelson, a columnist at the Jewish newspaper The Forward. The rabbi who runs my son’s Hebrew school put Mamdani on his ballot, though he didn’t rank him first. And while Mamdani undoubtedly did best among left-leaning and largely secular Jews, he made a point of reaching out to others. After he gave an interview to Der Blatt, an ultra-Orthodox Yiddish newspaper, Rabbi Moishe Indig, the leader of a faction of Hasidic Jews, told The New York Times, “As mayor, we wouldn’t have a problem with him.” (Though Indig considered adding Mamdani to his endorsement slate, he ultimately decided against it.)

So it has been maddening to see people claim that Mamdani’s win was a victory for antisemitism. A Republican running for local office in Long Island posted on X that Mamdani will try to shut down “every single synagogue” and Jewish nonprofit in the city. “Evacuate NYC immediately,” wrote the Republican Jewish Coalition, a political group.

Some on the right have responded to his triumph with anti-Muslim hysteria. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene posted a picture of the Statue of Liberty in a burqa, as if Mamdani, a man who campaigned with drag queens and promised public funding for trans health care, wants to impose Shariah law. Her House colleague Andy Ogles called for him to be denaturalized and deported.

I can certainly understand why Jews who see anti-Zionism and antisemitism as synonymous find Mamdani’s rise alarming. There’s no question that he sympathizes with the Palestinians over the Israelis. New York’s past mayors — even the left-leaning Bill de Blasio — supported Israel reflexively. After the International Criminal Court issued a warrant for the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on war crimes charges, Cuomo joined his defense team. Mamdani, by contrast, has said he’d enforce the warrant if Netanyahu ever comes to New York.

One needn’t even be an ardent backer of Israel to have reservations about Mamdani. I’m worried about his inexperience, and I suspect he won people over by making economic promises that he can’t keep. Even though my own stance on Israel’s prime minister is closer to Mamdani’s than to Cuomo’s, I thought it was a terrible mistake for Mamdani to try to justify the phrase “globalize the intifada” on a podcast this month. He’s right, of course, that the literal meaning of intifada is simply “struggle,” but context matters. Mamdani should understand why many Jews find the words threatening, particularly after the murder of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington and the firebombing, just this month, of people in Colorado demonstrating for the release of Israeli hostages.

He has consistently denounced antisemitism, and has spoken movingly about Jewish fear, including on the podcast that tripped him up. But Mamdani shouldn’t give the nervous people he aspires to represent any reason to doubt that he’ll protect them. He struck the right tone on the night of the primary, when he promised that while he won’t “abandon my beliefs or my commitments, grounded in a demand for equality,” he would also “reach further, to understand the perspectives of those with whom I disagree, and to wrestle deeply with those disagreements.”

Ultimately, though, New York’s Democratic primary wasn’t about Israel, no matter how much Cuomo wanted it to be. Mamdani won because of his relentless focus on affordability and our quality of life, and his ebullience, optimism and authenticity. At a time when the Democratic Party is ossifying into a gerontocracy, its leaders dependent on focus-grouped talking points, he’s young and energetic and comfortable speaking extemporaneously. In a cynical and despairing time, he gave people hope.

He benefited, too, from being underestimated. No one is underestimating him now. In the general election, he’ll be facing the disgraced mayor Eric Adams, running as an independent, and possibly an independent Cuomo as well. The attacks on Mamdani during the primary were brutal, but now that he’s a national figure, those coming his way will be worse. His foes will try to leverage Jewish anxieties to smash the Democratic coalition. Adams is even planning to appear on the ballot line of a fake political party called “EndAntisemitism.”

Mamdani’s opponents will try to reduce him to a caricature, some mutant offspring of Jeremy Corbyn and Yahya Sinwar. They will say they’re doing it for the Jews, and plenty of Jews will believe them. But don’t forget that the vision of this city at the heart of Mamdani’s campaign — a city that embraces immigrants and hates autocrats, that’s at once earthy and cosmopolitan — is one that many Jews, myself included, find inspiring. He won in part because he is so obviously a product of the New York we love.