Progressive Jews as the New Apostles

Posted on August 6, 2025 by First.One.Through

A friend recently attended a Shabbat dinner in New York City and came away shaken by the politics. Somewhere between the challah and the halva, she realized that nearly everyone at the table planned to vote for Zohran Mamdani for mayor. The same Democratic Socialist Mamdani who whitewashes slogans like “Globalize the Intifada,” who supports defunding the police, who has floated ideas about taxing “white neighborhoods” and redistributing wealth based on racial and ideological lines.

She was dumbfounded. How could fellow Jews support someone so openly hostile to the Jewish state, so enamored with radical ideologies, and so completely without experience?

*Poll showing a majority of non-Orthodox and younger Jews supporting Zohran Mamdani*

I pointed her to the recent conversation between Peter Beinart and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show. Two progressive Jews—one secular (Stewart), the other traditional (Beinart)—discussed Beinart’s new book Being Jewish After the Destruction of Gaza: A Reckoning. The 18-minute segment is deeply revealing. The entire interview should be watched here, but allow me to share some essential lessons—before and after viewing—that help explain why so many Jews, especially young urban progressives, are drawn to voices like Mamdani and Beinart.

Lesson 1: Empathy Above All

To understand the progressive worldview, you must begin with its North Star: empathy.

Numerous studies (one in Israel, from Pew Research and the Cato Institute) have shown that liberal parents prioritize teaching their children empathy far more than rules or tradition. In contrast, conservative parents emphasize justice, law, and the preservation of custom (hence more prevalent among Orthodox and older Jews.)

This foundational difference creates radically divergent outlooks on society. A progressive might prefer to risk letting many guilty people roam free than to wrongly incarcerate one innocent person. A conservative accepts that, tragically, some mistakes happen but that a functioning justice system must deliver accountability and deterrence.

That lens helps understand how different people see the Hamas War from Gaza. The progressive Jewish instinct is not to ask how such barbarism could happen on October 7, but to imagine what life must feel like under Israeli rule, or how starvation affects a child in Khan Younis.

So when Hamas raped and tortured Israelis, when they slaughtered entire families and burned babies alive, Stewart and Beinart give it a passing nod… then quickly pivot to the suffering of Palestinians in Gaza, who—in their view—are the true victims, regardless of what many of them supported or elected.

Lesson 2: Virtue Signaling as Moral Currency

Empathy doesn’t just sit as a value; it becomes a performance.

Among progressive Jews, virtue signaling is a sort of social currency. The more you publicly condemn your “privilege,” the more you highlight your efforts to engage the suffering, and the more elevated you become to your audience.

Beinart models this in the interview. He talks about how well his family is doing, how comfortable his life is in New York, and then contrasts that by expressing concern for Gazans. The clear message: Look how aware I am of my privilege, and how much I care about the “Other.” He is not just the model of progressive Jewry, but a self-anointed saint of Tikkun Olam, “repairing the world.”

But this empathy becomes hollow when it’s divorced from context. Where is his concern for the Israeli mothers whose sons are still buried beneath Gaza? Where is the recognition that Gazans elected Hamas and would do so again today? Where is the acknowledgment that Israel lives under constant threat from genocidal neighbors, that Israeli civilians are routinely targeted, and that Hamas has vowed to repeat October 7 “again and again”?

This isn’t empathy—it’s performative pity, practiced in the safety of a Manhattan studio. And it is toxic.

Peter Beinart and Jon Stewart on The Daily Show

The Problem of Projection

Beinart and Stewart approach Israel through the lens of American liberalism. They treat it as if it should behave like the U.S.—a country of immigrants with separation of church and state, with no ethnic identity at its core. A massive country with only two neighbors, each of which is no threat.

But Israel was not created to be an echo of America. It is the reestablished homeland of the Jewish people, in a region dominated by theocratic regimes. It’s not just a democracy—it’s an ethnic democracy, forged out of centuries of persecution and built in response to repeated extermination campaigns. It is a small country surrounded by hostile neighbors with ever-present security threats.

Israel cannot survive if it mimics U.S. norms. It has different rules because IT IS DIFFERENT and faces existential threats the U.S. does not. Yet Beinart and Stewart project their own experiences as comfortable, wealthy New York Jews onto a situation they cannot fully grasp—and then fault Israelis for not aligning with their fantasy of liberalism. It is an impossible liberal standard in the Middle East, and they fault the Jewish State for coming up short.

Progressive Jews Are Winning the Narrative—But At What Cost?

Beinart wants to be the prophet of the next generation of Jews—disillusioned, skeptical of Israel, obsessed with universal empathy. He’s the aspiring Grand Rebbe of Tikkun Olam. Stewart plays the court jester to the progressive tribe on his popular show, delivering cathartic lines that avoid hard truths.

Together, they are shaping a Jewish worldview in which Israel is an embarrassment to be shunned, and October 7 is a short footnote to be ignored. The primary directive is to lead with empathy, which is always directed away from oneself, and towards those perceived as underdogs. Whether those weaker individuals intend to do harm can ideally be rationalized. Better still, the AsAJew credentials provide a get-out-of-jail free card, absolving the sin and sinner by the highest authorities. If Hamas cannot or will not change, then Jewish victims must forgive the wicked party, grant their wishes, and risk their lives again as the pathway towards peace and coexistence. They are modern-day Jesuses delivering the sermon on the Mount – via cable TV.

That’s why voting for someone like Mamdani doesn’t feel like a betrayal—it feels like moral progress ensconced in a Jewish-like religion. Accept abuse as the toxic cleanse of particularism and embrace the abuser in the spiritual bath of universalism.

In the name of empathy, they abandon solidarity. In the name of justice, they ignore murder. In the name of virtue, they vote for those who vilify their own.

That’s not progressive. That’s perverse.

Final Thoughts

People should have empathy for children suffering. Every child is inherently innocent, born and raised as a product of their environment. But understand that for twenty-five years – a generation – two-thirds of Gazans have wanted to see Jewish civilians in Israel murdered. Gaza’s children have been victims for a long time, of a perverse society.

“Being Jewish after Gaza,” for progressives is a swamp of guilt, seeing Gaza as a killing field by right-wing Israeli Islamophobes. For conservatives, “after Gaza” means freedom, recognizing Gaza as a terrorist enclave steeped in a profound moral “deformity.” Both may have elements of truth, but neither side can imagine the validity of the other.

In the Middle East, progressive like Peter Beinart see Jews as supremacists. In New York, progressives like teacher union boss Randi Weingarten see city Jews as the “ownership class,” and WESPAC’s Howard Horowitz visualizes Jewish Zionists as racists. These progressives portray Jews around the world as rich, capitalist victimizers who cannot claim the mantle of victimhood, even after the October 7 massacre.

They are teaching young, progressive and non-Orthodox Jews to lead with select and projected empathy. In New York City, they can create a manifest destiny with votes for the alt-left, far more tangible than prancing with placards about something thousands of miles away.

Young New York Jews are picking up the “intifada” chant – Arabic for “shaking off” – of the Jewish State and pro-Israel Jews. At this moment, they may not recognize the jihad they have joined. Time will tell whether they will care when it inevitably turns violent on the most persecuted minority-minority.

And that’s how the show is supposed to end anyway, right? Jesus on the cross. But the epilogue has a pivot, seeking empathy-squared: Jesus was a Jew. Now the Jews are Jesus.

The grand rebbes of Tikkun Olam are the new apostles for Zohran Mamdani.

The Empathy Swamp (January 2024)

Anti-Semites Don’t Ride In Cattle Cars (September 2022)

When Only Republicans Trust the Police (July 2018)

The United Nations’ Adoption of Palestinians, Enables It to Only Find Fault With Israel (March 2016)

Jamaal Bowman’s “Good Trouble” Is All Out War With Zionists In Israel and America

Posted on January 28, 2024 by First.One.Through

Rep. Jamaal Bowman, the two term far-left extremist now serving New York’s 16th Congressional District touts himself as pushing for “good trouble.” As he launched his reelection campaign this week, he made very clear that it means war with supporters of Israel.

Bowman yelled to his crowd about the pro-Israel lobbying group that “AIPAC is one of the most powerful lobbies in America. Well you know what we have got to say to AIPAC? Bring it on, y’all. AIPAC, bring it on, y’all! We are not scared of none of that! I’m from the streets of New York…. I was a middle school principal. Taught kids in the South Bronx. Hey y’all, this is New York. AIPAC, we’re ready for all of that. If you wanna support a corporate career corrupt pay-to-play politician, you go ahead and do that…. Our movement is much more powerful than they can even imagine!“

The reelection event included a handful of other speakers including Nada Khader, Executive Director of the WESPAC Foundation, a highly controversial organization. The Anti Defamation League has flagged WESPAC for funding a range of antisemitic and anti-Israel organizations including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Palestinian Youth Movement, US Palestinian Community Network, and Within Our Lifetime. Those organizations have become infamous for many violent incidents since the October 7 Hamas massacres.

Immediately after the October 7 atrocities, USPCN issued a statement which called the brutal massacre “self-defense operations,” and that “today’s attacks from the Palestinian Resistance should be understood as a legitimate response to unending violence from Israel’s extreme right-wing, racist, white supremacist, zionist government and settler movement.” According to ADL, “At a USPCN rally on October 18, a protester held a sign with paraglider imagery, reading, ‘We will redeem you, oh Palestine.’ Paraglider imagery has been popular because some of the Hamas terrorists used paragliders to invade Israel. At the same rally, another prominent sign was seen reading ‘Zionism racism,’ with an image of blood and dollar bills in the shape of a snake.”

ADL adds that “Within Our Lifetime-United for Palestine (WOL) is a radical New York-based anti-Israel organization led by Nerdeen Kiswani that routinely expresses support for violence against Israel. Kiswani has called for all “Zionists” to be vilified and expelled from community spaces, and both she and WOL explicitly call for the complete eradication of Israel, including for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” After the October 7 massacre, WOL posted “We must defend the Palestinian right to resist zionist [sic] settler violence and support Palestinian resistance in all its forms. By any means necessary. With no exceptions and no fine print.”

Palestinian Youth Movement has long plastered posters of a Palestinian takeover of Israel through the blood of “martyrs.” At a protest after the October 7 slaughter, one member of PYM suggested that the Israel-Hamas war will come to New York, “We want to show the world that when Palestine rises up in resistance, the diaspora rises with it.”

*Members of WESPAC-backed PYM affix billboards of “Glory to Our Martyrs” poster covering the entirety of Israel in New York.*

The theme of threatening Jews in Israel and the diaspora echoed at the Bowman event.

Khader said to a roaring crowd and an applauding Bowman (29:10) “You [Israeli Jews] get safety when Palestinians are free. You get safety when Palestinians have equality. You get safety when Palestinians have self-determination. And we have the right of return to our homeland!” In other words, Hamas’s actions in Israel on October 7 were justified because even though Gazans have self-determination, they still live in Gaza, and as long as they don’t get to move into Israeli towns where grandparents lived decades ago, they will continue to hunt down, rape, burn and brutalize Jews.

*Nada Khader of WESPAC threatening Jews with more attacks if Palestinians do not get to move into Israel, with Rep. Jamaal Bowman cheering “Free Palestine”*

This event was not an outlier.

Just a few nights earlier, Bowman spoke at a rally with noted anti-Zionist Norman Finkelstein who had said “Israel has no legal right to use any kind of force in Gaza — under any circumstances.” Bowman said he watched Finkelstein all of the time on YouTube and was “a bit starstruck” to be with him.

While Bowman continues to rail against AIPAC and aligns himself with a host of people who believe that all Zionists should be subject to attack, he claims that he’s for love and peace in a weak attempt to shield him from charges of antisemitism. He contemporaneously falsely claims that AIPAC is racist and targets people of color, as the best defensive is a good offense. Fellow squad member Alexandria Ocasio Cortes echoes her socialist comrade and said that AIPAC is “more racist and bigoted PACs in Congress as well, who disproportionately target members of color.” It’s a complete lie and attempt to divert attention from an extremist member of congress who was censured in a bipartisan vote.

The truth is that AIPAC backs many people of color including Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY15) in the neighboring district and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY8). Many others include Gabe Amo (D-RI1), Nanette Barragán (D-CA44), Joyce Beatty (D-OH3) and Shontel Brown (D-OH11) to name a few.

Bowman’s anti-Israel vitriol and associations have become so aggressive that even far left-wing group J Street has pulled its endorsement of him after saying it would not do so a few weeks ago.

To be clear, this not just about Israel and AIPAC. Bowman has repeatedly voted against resolutions condemning antisemitism such as H. Resolution 894. Meanwhile, his opponent, Westchester County Executive George Latimer endorsed the IHRA definition of antisemitism.

Bowman’s rants have made the Jewish constituents fearful. Just hours after his challenge to brawl with AIPAC, someone defaced two Jewish stores in Scarsdale, including an ice cream store frequented by teenagers. Latimer showed up to a rally at the store a few hours later. He came to the Westchester Jewish Council dinner a few days later, standing before a diverse multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-religious assembly of local politicians and told the audience over and again “you are not alone.”

*County Executive George Latimer before a diverse group of politicians at the Westchester Jewish Council dinner, January 2024 (photo: First One Through)*

Bowman did not attend the rally confronting the vandalism. He did not attend the WJC dinner.

New York’s Congressional District 16 has many Jews and Israel supporters who are angry and frightened by Bowman’s bellicosity. There are dozens of reasons and tens of thousands of people who want Bowman out of congress and hope to achieve that in the 2024 Democratic primary by backing George Latimer.

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The Re-Introduction of the ‘Powerful’ Jew Smear (March 2021)

Antisemitic Wind Chill, Now In Westchester

The Normalization Deformity: No To Zionism and Peace; Yes To Massacres and Terrorism In a Global Intifada

Jamaal Bowman Parrots Iran That American Exceptionalism Is A Lie Based In Racism

WESPAC, The Charitable Terrorist Supporters In Your Backyard

Extreme Leftists Lie That This Is AIPAC vs. Bowman

Jamaal Bowman Is Unfit To Serve In Congress

Palestinian Authority “Martyrs Fund” May Soon Fund Killing Jews in the US and UK (August 2023)

Don’t Let AOC Buy Another Squad Seat

An Open Letter To Progressive Diaspora Jews

Posted on October 22, 2023 by First.One.Through

Dear Progressive Diaspora Jews,

I feel for you.

First you broke with your religious friends. You decided that Orthodox Jews were homophobic and against the broad LGBT+ community. In Israel, they were portrayed as sucking off the system and not paying taxes, while in the US they did much the same, while denying young children a proper education.

Then you purged your right-of-center family to gain alliances. You and your comrades labeled the right-wing “racists,” and refused to have them to your house or dine with them anymore.

You gave up your Jewish homeland, buying into the narrative that Israel is some version of “European settler colonialism.” You joined calls to boycott the Jewish state, its institutions and people.

In doing so, you unwittingly gave up your heritage and history. You absorbed the narrative that Jews have no place on “Arab land” and don’t belong in the region.

The embrace of all of those approaches was summed up in supporting the ban of Jews from living in the heart of the biblical homeland. You even supported blocking Jews from visiting the holiest place on the Temple Mount, and to pray there, upset that Muslims found it offensive.

Having shunned former friends and family, history and heritage, religion and rights of Jews, you joined your left-wing brothers in all of their causes. Having passed the indoctrination ritual of shedding any particularism and “privilege”, you thought you had clearly earned the right to be called a Socialist comrade.

You even joined anti-Israel groups like J Street and New Israel Fund which pour millions of dollars into campaigns to make Israel appear racist, and successfully got minorities and LGBT people into positions of power.

You even excused your intersectional brothers who called you out as the “enemy” despite your support. You internalized that if minorities were still calling you an enemy after everything you had done, it was evidence that you needed to do more.

But now, after the October 7 Hamas massacre, they have asked you to forsake your humanity. To excuse the beheading of children and burning families alive. To ignore the rape of women and killing of old people. To turn a blind eye to the torture of innocent people and abduction of hostages.

*New York Times on October 21, 2023 about Progressives bemoaning the treatment by their intersectional allies after the brutal massacre of 1,400 people in Israel*

As your “allies” celebrate the most vicious cruelty to Jewish men, women and children, you pause to think that despite shedding almost every Jew and Zionist from your life, your intersectional brothers still see you as a Jew unless you can join them in cheering the slaughter of Jews and destruction of the Jewish State.

You watch as some fellow Jews like members of Jewish Voice for Peace jump that challenge and cozy to the jihadists. But you pause. Isn’t this obviously morally repugnant you ask yourself?

Your socialist and radical Islamic brothers have killed more than your left-wing friends at the Israeli dance festival and beheaded more than just innocent children in their homes.

They destroyed your faith in a manner more cruel perhaps, than Nazis burning Jews in the town synagogue. Those European Jews had community and faith when they perished. But you, you stand alone and naked as they butcher everyone you know.

I do not gloat. I am not telling you I told you so after I’ve shown you what THEY say and believe for years.

I know that you and your friends painted the “right wing” as irredeemable monsters long ago. But we never abandoned you.

Please come back. Mourn with us. Help identify our dead.

You need to sit shiva too.

Politicians In Their Own Words: Why We Don’t Support Defending Jews

The DSA Is Systematically Coming For Zionist Jews

The Root of Left-Wing Anti-Zionism in Congress is Left-Wing Jews

Jihadi Coexistence

Abbas’s Speech and the Window into Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism

The Center Of Intersectionality Sounds Like Adolf Hitler

The Great Jew Replacement

Is Intersectionality Anti-Semitic?

B.D.S. Is Not A Social Mission Action

Will You Finally Show J Street and Its Backers the Door?

The Joy of Lecturing Jews

Rudoren Unhinged

Posted on January 26, 2023 by First.One.Through

Jodi Rudoren became known to many people during her years as the Jerusalem bureau chief for the New York Times. From that perch, she attempted to educate the paper’s liberal and international readers of the evil ways of the Jewish State which infect Palestinian society. She left the Times in July 2019 and became the editor-in-chief of the far-left Jewish paper, ‘The Forward’.

Who could have imagined that her invective could become worse?

On January 20, Rudoren published an interview she had with an affable Jewish actor named Joshua Malina, about his career on ‘The West Wing’ and other shows. One would imagine something light-hearted.

Ha.

She opened her Malina piece with some personal comments about The West Wing‘s fictional White House pondering Middle East Peace compared to reality today:

“Of course Netanyahu’s far-right and racist partners would not even consider the proposals for refugee resettlement and international control of parts of Jerusalem…. It is difficult to fathom these extremists even sitting for Shabbat dinner while their Palestinian counterparts pray outside.“

There was no such observation about the anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying, Palestinian Arab terrorist neighbors.

After feeding (choking) the witness, Malina responded that while he was a “lefty” in politics, he had to contend with co-stars who were “super lefty.” These alt-left Jews (very much like Rudoren) were extremely aggressive, “particularly the Jews, the liberal Jews behind the scenes and in the cast, had a hard time finding space for the Israeli perspective. I remember trying to be a proponent of nuance.“

Perhaps sensing the rebuke, Rudoren responded “I, too, am a committed proponent of nuance.“

What a joke.

And sickness.

*Jodi Rudoren, editor-in-chief of the Forward. Photo: David Packard*

Two things struck me in reading the article.

First, however bad The New York Times was (and is) about portraying Israelis as racist, sinister invaders and murderers, and simultaneously absolving the Palestinians of even the most-heinous crimes and blatant anti-Semitism, the paper is actually BETTER than how liberal non-Orthodox Jews discuss Israel among themselves.

The second observation was that the woke believe they are nuanced. To imagine otherwise would presumably not be open-minded, a feature ascribed to the opposition. They believe that they have honestly assessed the situation and correctly concluded that religious people (only Jews and Christians mind you) are racists and close-minded at their core, embedded in right-wing extremism and nationalism. Progressives are not the counterpoint to people on the right reaching the opposite conclusion, but the only thinking party on the issues.

The righteous smugness and blindness of it all.

Progressive anti-Zionism has become common in politics, college campuses and mainstream media. Each is being fed the lines of the alt-right “Jews will not replace us,” by super-lefty non-Orthodox Jews like Jodi Rudoren and her counterpart at Haaretz, prepackaged and sanitized with the false banner of “nuance”.

Pitchforks and tiki torches are passé, and don’t burn into minds of the masses the way that the woke intelligentsia’s propaganda drip permeates society.

The Jewish anti-Zionist vanguard has given people a fast track to popularity and highbrow society, with easy anti-Semitic slurs which can be openly uttered in public. ‘The Forward’ is the Jewish fortune cookie which is unfortunately not read quietly, scoffed at and tossed, but read allowed, enjoyed by friends, and taped to a wall for posterity.