Zohran Mamdani and his chorus of activists claim that the answer to the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is simple: one state in which everyone has “full and equal rights.” They pound the table with righteous fury, insisting that borders, ethnic divisions, and national identities melt away in a utopian civic democracy.
Fine. Let’s take them at their word.
If you truly believe in a one-state solution, then you must believe that Jews, like Arabs, have the right to live anywhere in that state. Hebron, Shiloh, Beit El, Jerusalem’s Old City, Ramallah, Nablus, everywhere. That’s how equal rights work. So why do the same people who chant “one state” turn around and scream “illegal settlers!” when Jews live or pray in places those protestors dislike?
They protested outside Park East Synagogue but deny Jews the right to live in Judea and Samaria, the Jewish homeland for 3,000 years. Either everyone gets equal rights everywhere, or you don’t believe in a one-state solution at all.
You can’t have it both ways.
The Temple Mount Test Case
If you want a perfect example of the hypocrisy, look up — literally — to the Temple Mount.
If you support one state where every citizen has equal rights, then you support Jews having the same rights as Muslims to: Visit their holiest site. Pray at their holiest site. Build a synagogue at their holiest site. That is what equality means.
But the United Nations — which these same activists quote like scripture — demands the “status quo,” a euphemism for banning Jewish prayer on Judaism’s holiest ground. It is the only place on earth where Jews are legally prohibited from praying. The UN defends this discriminatory regime with fervor.
So which is it? Is it a one-state democracy of full equality, or an international system that criminalizes Jewish religious rights because the Jordanian Waqf insists on it?
You cannot simultaneously denounce Jewish prayer as a provocation and claim to champion “equal rights for all.”
One State Means Equal Rights — For Jews Too
If Zohran Mamdani and his movement were intellectually honest, they would have to say:
Jews may live anywhere in the land
Jews may pray anywhere in the land
Jews may build synagogues anywhere in the land
Jews may return to their ancient homes — Hebron, Shiloh, the Old City of Jerusalem
Not one activist chanting for “full equality” will utter those words. Because their version of “one state” is equality for some and erasure for Jews.
Call it what it is.
You can’t claim a one-state solution while denying Jews the very rights you demand for others.
The vile antisemitism of Within Our Lifetime‘s Nerdeen Kiswani and MPower Change‘s Linda Sarsour isn’t accidental or peripheral — it’s the smoke that hides the fire. Their venom serves political purposes: to push Zohran Mamdani further and to make him look like a moderate.
Kiswani, the founder of Within Our Lifetime, just declared that there is “no scourge of antisemitism” in New York, that antisemitism is merely a “political tool.” She dismisses Jewish fear as propaganda, mocking the very notion that attacks on Jews are real or meaningful. It’s malice dressed up as activism.
Sarsour, her ideological twin, has spent years deflecting and justifying Jew-hatred while demanding that “Zionists” be excluded from feminist and progressive spaces. Both women were already disgusting before Mamdani’s rise; their brand of hatred was a known quantity. But now, with a self-proclaimed “anti-Zionist” mayor-elect, their vitriol has a new function.
By shouting louder, by pushing uglier rhetoric, by saying they will hold Mamdani “accountable,” Kiswani and Sarsour pull the Overton window so far into open antisemitism that Mamdani’s own positions — once fringe — could appear reasonable. When he calls for “justice for Palestine” but refuses to condemn chants for the destruction of Israel, he suddenly sounds measured. When he pays lip service to opposing antisemitism while platforming its deniers, he looks balanced.
That’s the trick. The extremists normalize the radical.
Expect them to ratchet it up — louder, uglier, more unapologetic. Every grotesque statement they make gives Mamdani cover to pretend he’s in the middle, that he’s the “responsible” voice between hatred and hysteria. In reality, it’s a choreography: they spew; he sanitizes.
This is how antisemitism gains respectability — not only through mobs on the street which are clearly terrifying sights – but through mayors in city hall who appear “moderate” only because the activists behind them are obscene.
New York should not fall for the illusion. The vile bigotry of Sarsour and Kiswani doesn’t make Mamdani reasonable — it exposes how far the city’s moral compass has tilted. When hatred becomes the baseline, even those who echo it softly begin to sound centrist.
There’s always someone worse. That’s how the worst ideas survive.
During a July 31, 2021 WOL rally in Brooklyn, after fireworks were lit, Kiswani told [01:02:43] the crowd: “I hope that a pop-pop is the last noise that some Zionists hear in their lifetime!”
The cameras panned across the crowd at Zohran Mamdani’s victory celebration — the newly elected mayor of New York City, surrounded by socialist activists, digital influencers, and the self-congratulating left. It was meant to be a night of triumph for the “movement.” But what stood out for those watching was not unity, or even politics. It was who was cheering.
Standing shoulder to shoulder, laughing and hugging, were Jamaal Bowman, Hasan Piker, and Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan — three men whose names have become synonymous with the moral collapse that followed the Hamas atrocities of October 7.
Zeteo’s Mehdi Hasan at the Mamdani victory party with Hasan Piker and Jamaal Bowman. (start at 52:00)
Bowman, the disgraced former congressman, made his name shouting on New York’s streets that Israeli women were not raped on October 7 — that the accounts of mass sexual violence by Hamas terrorists were fabricated. He wasn’t a lone crank in an internet comment section; he was a member of Congress using his platform to publicly deny the humanity of Jewish victims in the streets of his district.
Hasan Piker, meanwhile, mocked the entire subject on his Twitch stream, telling his millions of followers that he didn’t care if the women on October 7 were raped. That flippant cruelty — that casual dismissal of atrocity — has become a feature, not a bug, of a corrupted culture that cloaks moral degeneracy in “anti-imperialist” rhetoric. His anti-American and anti-Israel rhetoric had become so toxic, that Rep. Ritchie Torres, a Latin-Black gay Congressman, wrote a letter on October 29, 2024 to the CEO of Twitch to have Piker removed.
And then there was Mehdi Hasan, who publicly argued that early reports of “mass rape” on October 7 were overstated and politicized, arguing that the allegations had been “weaponized by supporters of Israel.” At Mamdani’s party, he stood smiling with Bowman and hugging Piker as the pain of Jews was being amplified and normalized.
And celebrated.
The spectacle was a black mirror of a broken city — a city that once prided itself on tolerance and moral clarity now relishing Jewish trauma.
New Yorkers didn’t just elect a socialist. They elected a symbol of moral inversion — a man whose supporters include those who laughed at, ignored, or explained away the rape and murder of innocents.
When the applause dies down and the speeches fade, one question will remain for the city that crowned Mamdani: What kind of people celebrate with rape deniers and those that revel in the pain of the most persecuted minority-minority?
It took New York City barely a decade to move from Michael Bloomberg (mayor 2002-2014) to Zohran Mamdani — from a billionaire moderate who built a global business to an anti-capitalist socialist who’s never built anything.
Mike Bloomberg winning third term as NYC mayor
Bloomberg personified competence, merit, and modernity. He was a technocrat with a work ethic forged in markets — the quintessential New Yorker who believed that numbers mattered, that data and pragmatism could solve problems, and that capitalism, however imperfect, was the engine that kept the city alive.
Mamdani is the inversion of that story. He’s the smiling avatar of grievance politics — a man who’s never signed a paycheck, raised capital, or met a payroll, yet rails against the very system that feeds the city’s workers. He doesn’t want to grow the pie; he wants to break the plate.
So what happened to New York? How did a city that once celebrated builders and innovators — from bankers to artists, from garment manufacturers to tech founders — turn to someone who blames success itself for society’s ills?
Did New Yorkers Change — or Did the World?
Some say it was Donald Trump — the Queens developer turned president — who poisoned the well. For many New Yorkers, capitalism’s swagger became indistinguishable from his brashness. “Moderate” began to sound like “complicit.” Every problem was blamed on “the system,” and every system was condemned as oppressive.
Others blame social media, the great amplifier of outrage. The algorithms rewarded passion over proof, hashtags over homework. The loudest became the leaders, and anger became authenticity. The more you despised the system, the more followers you gained.
Still others point to federal polarization — a country at war with itself. Washington became tribal, and so did New York. To be anti-Republican meant embracing anything that wasn’t Republican, even if it was radical.
The Fall of the Striver Ideal
Bloomberg embodied a uniquely American, and particularly Jewish, story — the son of immigrants who rose by grinding harder, thinking smarter, and building bigger. For generations, that was the city’s moral code: earn it.
Mamdani represents something new — or perhaps something lost. He is not the striver, but the symbol. The story isn’t one of building, but belonging. It’s politics as identity and resentment rather than responsibility and results.
When a city stops admiring those who build and starts rewarding those who only protest, decline is not far behind.
A Mirror, Not a Moment
New York’s journey from Bloomberg to Mamdani isn’t just a change in politics — it’s a cultural inversion. The Jewish billionaire who built an empire has been replaced by a Ugandan Muslim who campaigns against empires. The technocrat gave way to the ideologue. The achiever to the accuser.
The city once responded to horrible radical Islamic terrorism in downtown Manhattan by electing a proven builder to remake the city. Now the city has responded to that vile terrorism in southern Israel by rallying behind a novice who vilified the victims.
It’s tempting to say the city changed. But perhaps it merely revealed what it had become: a place where envy now outshouts excellence, and where tearing down is easier than building up.
Frank Sinatra sang the city’s theme song “New York, New York,” that “if I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere.” The city was a mark of excellence and competence. To win in New York City was the proving ground to anywhere and everywhere.
Does that now mean that grievance is the current marker of greatness in America? That radicalism and revolutionaries are the vanguard? Anti-capitalist socialism will come for cities around the United States?
The tragedy isn’t only that the city chose Mamdani. It’s that so many think it’s progress.
There are signs on the streets of London that read “LOOK RIGHT.” They are painted boldly on the pavement to protect visitors—especially Americans—who are used to glancing left before stepping into the street. In the U.K., traffic comes from the opposite direction, and those who rely on old instincts can find themselves in sudden danger.
So it is now with American Jews.
For generations, they have turned instinctively to the Democratic Party—to the left—out of habit, heritage, and a deep belief that liberal ideals best protected minorities. But the political landscape has shifted beneath their feet. The party that once championed freedom, tolerance, and support for Israel has been co-opted by radicals: anti-Israel voices, socialists, and anarchists who now wield growing influence in its ranks.
These are not the Democrats of old. They are activists who view capitalism as oppression, who denounce Israel as colonial, and who see Jews not as a vulnerable minority but as part of a power structure to be dismantled. They are coming for capitalism—and for the Jews who helped build and sustain it.
This election, American Jews must recognize that the public square is not what it used to be. The political traffic now comes from the right direction—but the danger comes from the left.
Jews Must Rise Above America’s Political Polarization
For Jews, the political spectrum no longer runs right or left — it runs above and below the line.
America once resembled a bell curve, a society centered in moderation. But over the last decade, that middle has collapsed into a barbell nation, with weight piling up at the extremes. And history has shown: whenever societies polarize, Jews suffer at both ends.
On the left, antisemitism festers in universities and coastal enclaves, driven by a socialist–jihadi alliance that paints Jews as colonial thieves and privileged elites. On the right, particularly across America’s heartland, antisemitism takes the form of nationalist resentment, depicting Jews as cunning manipulators steering the country toward decay.
The Jewish community now faces hostility from Justice Democrats and the Democratic Socialists on one side, and Christian nationalists and conspiratorial populists on the other. As America sorts itself into partisan tribes, Jews are politically homeless — stranded in what might be called Team White, surrounded by Red and Blue armies locked in mortal combat.
It is a moment that demands clarity: Jews must not follow the crowd, nor celebrate the likes of Zohran Mamdani or Marjorie Taylor Greene simply because they shout loudest. Safety will not be found at the edges.
NYC mayoral front-runner Zohran Mamdani with the extremist group Democratic Socialists of America
Instead, Jews must think on the Y-axis and rise above the line — where decency, truth, and moral courage define political identity, not the toxic binaries of today’s discourse. The task is to build bridges among the decent left, right, and center, and to undermine the machinery of polarization itself.
Be counter-algorithm. Social media algorithms are built on inflaming passions and feeding extremism. Get kids away from social media including banning phones in schools. Encourage people to spend less time on the platforms or to promote moderate posts.
Invest in institutions that elevate, not inflame. Support schools, media, and synagogues that model dialogue over division.
Be models of decency. Civility is countercultural today — make it contagious. Argue without anger, engage without hatred, and remind others that moral clarity does not require moral superiority.
Rebuild community and trust. Host conversations, bridge gaps, and welcome allies who differ politically but share ethical ground. Strength grows in connection, not isolation.
Be proudly above the line. Celebrate being moderate, balanced, and reasonable. The middle is not weakness — it is wisdom earned through restraint.
Expose extremists, even within. Call out the Jewish radicals who justify Hamas and the October 7 pogrom, as well as those who echo conspiratorial nationalism. Moral consistency demands internal accountability.
Teach Jewish ethics loudly. The Torah’s call to pursue justice and peace should echo in civic spaces — as a guide for repairing the world, not tearing it further apart.
A polarized society is a society on edge — brittle, unstable, and eager for scapegoats. Extremists will portray Jews as symbols of what’s wrong, a convenient vessel for resentment. As a minority-minority, Jews become easy targets when the center collapses.
The survival of the Jewish people in America depends not on joining the mobs below the line, but on lifting others above it — where truth, civility, and unity still have a fighting chance.
To watch a political novice backed by a far-left extremist group rise to the brink of becoming mayor of the largest city in America is frightening enough. To realize that he will have the full backing of a Democratic governor and a compliant state legislature to enact his radical agenda is terrifying. Zohran Mamdani, a darling of the antisemitic Democratic Socialists of America, has weaponized a friendly smile and promises of “free” everything into a populist movement ready to capture real power.
The race is effectively over. The weakness and fragmentation of his opponents make his November 4 election almost certain. But that does not mean New Yorkers are powerless. Far from it.
1. Register Democratic — and block the radicals. While national elections generate headlines, your single vote barely registers on a national scale. Local elections, however, can be swung by a few hundred ballots. In a deep-blue state like New York, the real election is the Democratic primary. That’s where the socialists gain power — because moderates stay home or remain registered as independents. If you want to stop extremists from running your city, county and state, you must register as a Democrat and vote against the zealots in the primaries.
2. Vote Republican in the general election — everywhere. Even outside New York City, every voter can help slow the DSA’s march. New York State operates under a blue-wall trifecta: a Democratic governor and supermajorities in both the State Senate and Assembly. Republicans have no effective voice. Governor Kathy Hochul’s open endorsement of Mamdani means his far-left policies will move through Albany unchecked unless the state’s Republican vote share grows.
Far-left media Jacobin advances “to govern, the Left needs many Zohrans.”
So yes — in this strange political moment — the smart play for moderates and centrists is tactical: register Democratic to stop radicals in primaries, and vote Republican to blunt their power in office.
If New Yorkers don’t act now, the most radical city government in America won’t just run New York — it will set the agenda for the entire country.
To read The New York Times or watch Saturday Night Live today is to be told that Zohran Mamdani’s critics — not Mamdani himself — are the problem. Those who dare question his rhetoric or friends are branded “Islamophobes.” The journalists and comedians who once prided themselves on “speaking truth to power” now serve as antisemitism’s defense attorneys.
The New York Times calls political criticism of Mamdani “Islamophobia”
Nowhere in The Times’ coverage will you find an honest accounting of Mamdani’s behavior: his use and defense of the slogan “globalize the intifada” — a phrase that calls for expanding anti-Israel violence worldwide. No mention that he’s proudly endorsed by, and a member of, the Democratic Socialists of America, a group whose members have declared “there are no innocent Israelis” and whose leaders celebrated “the war of liberation” even as the ceasefire was announced. No mention that Congressman Jamaal Bowman, the man who said that Israeli women’s rape claims should not be believed, stands firmly behind him — or that Bowman is now rumored for the post of Schools Chancellor, a moral disaster waiting to happen.
DSA claims that every Israeli is a legitimate target for violence
Worse than silence: spin.
The paper of record tells us that those who raise these issues are targeting a Muslim lawmaker. SNL cast members – who actively lobby for Mamdani – mock Jewish fear and turn it into a punchline. The city’s progressive (read regressive) media elite has turned the word “Islamophobia” into a political disinfectant — scrubbing away scrutiny, shielding radicals, and shaming Jews for daring to be afraid.
Even liberal rabbis like Rabbis Ammiel Hirsch and Elliot Cosgrove have said openly that Mamdani’s words instill fear in the hearts of Jews. But when Jews speak that truth, the same media that weeps for “marginalized voices” sneers at theirs. The new journalism of compassion has only contempt for Jews.
This is not journalism. It is collaboration — a moral betrayal dressed up as sensitivity. The press once prided itself on exposing extremism; now it launders it. The Times and SNL are not neutral observers. They are Hamas’ willing editors, dressing hate in hashtags and calling it progress.
A civilization that excuses incitement, whitewashes vitriol and ridicules genuine fear is not enlightened. It is suicidal.
When the heckler’s veto becomes public policy, liberty dies by degrees.
The world rallied in Paris when jihadi radicals murdered staff at Charlie Hebdo in 2015. Leaders raised banners for free speech and spoke of defending the liberties that make liberal democracies possible. The same chorus rose after other political murders like Charlie Kirk in 2025: condemnations, eulogies, brief outrage.
Yet the Global North has a quieter, more corrosive surrender under way — a surrender not to a foreign army but to the heckler’s veto. When threats of violence can shape who is allowed to speak, to march, to play, or to pray, freedom has already been bargained away.
UK’s MP Ayoub Khan celebrating the banning of Tel Aviv fans from a game because their presence might bring out protestors. Other fans were welcomed to attend in October 2025.
Too often now the mere presence of Jews is treated as a provocation that must be managed by erasure. In Britain, politicians warn that protests will make events “unsafe” and ask organizers to exclude Israeli athletes and fans, Jewish speakers, or symbols rather than arrest the thugs who threaten violence. In 1929, after brutal attacks in Hebron, British authorities removed all Jews from their homes to suppress further bloodshed — an act that punished the innocent to placate the violent. That precedent echoes when modern officials choose exclusion over enforcement.
Call it what it is: when a state lets intimidation determine who may appear in public, it substitutes coercion for law. When politicians cave to the loudest violent faction to avoid a headline, they have abandoned the first duty of government — to protect the rights of every citizen, not to negotiate them away.
Canadian police ask Jewish family to leave the street since their “presence is deemed a sufficient provocation for removal,” in November 2024.
This is not a critique of a religion; it is an indictment of extremism and of political cowardice. The problem is not Muslim faith but those within it who preach and practice violence — and the leaders who, for fear or for votes, let those violent actors set the rules.
A democracy that permits the heckler’s veto on principle is no longer democratic; it is ruled by fear. If we are to remain free, the test is simple: do we defend rights when it is inconvenient, or only when it is safe? If the answer is the latter, then we are well on the way to living under a very different law — one written by radical mobs and enforced by silence.
US President Obama advisor Aaron Keyak tells Jews to “take off your kippah and hide your magen david” to avoid being targeted in May 2021.
President Biden set this in motion in the U.S. in May 2021 when his own Jewish advisor, Aaron Keyak, told Jews to hide their Jewishness, presumably because they should not assume that the government would protect them showing their faith publicly. In September 2024, school officials at New York’s Baruch College said it explicitly, telling Jews that they could not “guarantee their security” if they held a celebration for Rosh Hashana.
We have set the stage for Democratic-Socialist Zohran Mamdani to become mayor of the city with the largest Jewish diaspora community in the world. Where police will not only suggest that Jews stay off the streets but may be directed by the mayor to arrest Jews because their very presence is deemed a provocation.
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?
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.
“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.
First One Through 