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| Mamdani lights the first Hanukkah candle with Mandy Patinkin (JTA) |
as troubling the soft-pedaling of criticism of him by a high-profile individual like the vice-president is… I have not forgotten about antisemitism on the left. It is still alive and well. Spectacularly so. Nowhere has this become more obvious than in the wake of the election of the first anti-Zionist mayor in New York city’s history.
His election has helped make left-wing
antisemitism a more acceptable part of American culture. By disguising it as
anti-Zionism, one can always claim not to be antisemitic. Just anti-Israel.
That can be a legitimate distinction when it is genuinely the case. One can be
critical of the State of Israel without being antisemitic. Just ask a typical Charedi
Jew how they feel about the State of Israel. Clearly, they are not antisemitic.
I do, however, believe that much - if not
most - anti-Zionist expression is, at its core, based on antisemitism,
expressed through the socially acceptable medium of criticism of Israel.
How to know this for certain is sometimes
impossible. The criticism one hears may sound identical to criticism voiced
within Israel itself, by one political party against another.
Which brings me once again to the mayor-elect
of New York. The question arises: where does he truly stand? Is he
anti-Zionist, or is anti-Zionism simply his way of expressing antisemitism with
plausible deniability?
The more I read about him, the more I believe
he is the former, not the latter. That said, it is conceivable that this could
all be an act designed to mislead his electorate about his true feelings. But I
do not think so. He is working too hard to demonstrate that he is not
antisemitic.
The latest such example occurred on Chanukah.
From JTA:
Zohran Mamdani was welcomed to a Hanukkah celebration at the home of Jewish actor Mandy Patinkin, his wife, actress Kathryn Grody, and their son Gideon.
- The mayor-elect helped prepare
latkes using a recipe from Grandma Doralee Patinkin’s Jewish Family
Cookbook, lit the first candle, and listened to the blessings in a
video he shared on X. “Your mayoral tenure has now been blessed,” Patinkin
said to Mamdani.
Mandy Patinkin’s embrace of Mamdani should
not surprise anyone. They share the same progressive political philosophy and,
according to JTA, similar attitudes toward Israel. (I do, however, find it hard
to believe that Patinkin thinks Israel does not have the right to exist as a
Jewish state, given his strong identification with Jewish peoplehood. I suspect
what he really agrees with Mamdani about is Israeli genocide and that Netanyahu
is a war criminal that should be arrested. Not that the Jewish people don’t
have a right to a Jewish state. But I digress.)
The point is that I am hard-pressed to see an
antisemite doing the kinds of things Mamdani is doing. As I have said many
times before, I believe him when he says he will protect the Jewish community
from antisemitic acts.
That does not absolve him, however, of
responsibility of helping to foment the rise in antisemitism that he now claims
he wants to combat. He has yet to acknowledge this. He seems oblivious to it.
And then there is the following:
A sweeping report released by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has ignited controversy by alleging that a significant portion of Mamdani’s administrative appointees are connected to anti-Zionist activist groups—some associated with rhetoric and symbolism widely viewed by Jewish organizations as crossing the line into antisemitism.
This is what is so worrisome about the
mayor-elect. His propensity to hire people who share his anti-Zionist views
will almost certainly exacerbate the already high incidence of antisemitic
violence in New York.
The mayor-elect must do more to convince
Jewish New Yorkers of his sincerity than simply make promises.
Before suggesting what that might look like,
it is worth considering the source of his anti-Zionism...
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