By Jonathan S. Tobin
It didn’t take long for the Democratic Party’s media cheering section to demonstrate how far the Overton Window had moved among liberals with respect to antisemitism. Centrist Democrats and the liberal Jewish establishment were genuinely shocked by Zohran Mamdani’s victory in last week’s Democratic Party mayoral primary in New York City. Within days, however, it was clear that legacy outlets reflecting mainstream opinion on the political left weren’t going to tolerate much in the way of criticism of his extremist views about Israel and the Jews.
Within days, it was clear that anyone who claimed that Mamdani should be rejected out of hand as a possible mayor of New York on the grounds of stands that were, at best, antisemitism-adjacent or, at worst, open endorsements of Jewish genocide, rather than the candidate himself, were going to be the ones under fire. Within 48 hours of Mamdani’s win, The New York Times was already using the word “Islamophobic” in headlines to describe his critics.
Legitimizing antisemitism
It is fear among Democrats about being labeled as Islamophobic that explains why so few prominent members of the party and officeholders are refusing to condemn Mamdani now that the 33-year-old New York state representative has become their party’s nominee. That’s not just smoothing his path to victory for a fellow Democrat, despite the horror that many New Yorkers feel about him. It’s also achieving something the political left has been assiduously working toward, especially since the Hamas-led Palestinian Arab attacks on southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023: the legitimization of antisemitism in the American public square.
While some of the online reaction to Mamdani was inappropriate, the attempt by Democrats and their liberal media cheerleaders to frame the narrative about the opposition to him as one primarily about Islamophobia is fundamentally dishonest.
Characterizing verbal and written criticisms of Mamdani as “racist” is not only a matter of inaccuracy or misinterpretation of those venting their anger and outrage about the prospect of him being mayor of the most Jewish city in the world outside of the State of Israel. Such arguments were the next logical step involved in legitimizing opinions about Israel and Jews, as well as those fighting to destroy it, along with other radical causes.
The issue is not whether the next mayor of New York is a Shia Muslim (he practices the faith of his mother rather than that of his Hindu father). In a city as diverse as New York, few care about Mamdani’s faith or his background as the son of immigrants (his mother was a Gujarati Indian Muslim born in Uganda, and his father an Indian-American of Hindu Punjabi descent).
What matters is the fact that he is a Socialist on economic issues and an adherent of the ideological war on the West being waged by the hard left. His extremist views may well be influenced by his faith and ethnicity. Yet they are just as much a manifestation of the fashionable ideas that label the West and America as irredeemably racist, and Israel and the Jews as “white” oppressors who must be suppressed. In this sense, the New York mayoral campaign has transcended politics. It is, instead, another manifestation of the conquest of American elite institutions of higher education by so-called “progressives” that led to mobs targeting Jews on college campuses since Oct. 7.
Mamdani has been an ardent advocate for the cause of “free Palestine,” which is to say the effort to “free” the territory—meaning, from the Jewish population—of the only Jewish state on the planet. That is an idea that ought to be rejected by all decent people everywhere not only because it singles out the Jews for deprivation of rights, such as that of living in peace and sovereignty in their ancient homeland, but also because it can only be achieved by the sort of genocidal wars that Hamas and its Iranian sponsor have long advocated and continue to pursue. This despicable cause has gained increasing support on the political left, largely on the strength of blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” against Palestinian Arabs in Gaza in its just war against Hamas, endorsed by Mamdani and other Democrats.
Suppressing criticism
If, as the Times and other liberal outlets insist, Mamdani’s views are to be accepted as legitimate stands about which we must agree to disagree when discussing them, then what we are witnessing is not a prejudiced reaction to the rise of a non-white Muslim politician. Rather, it is an attempt to suppress criticism of the mainstreaming of antisemitism and other extremist beliefs by the political left.
This tactic has been a staple of the anti-Israel movement for years and has achieved some notable successes, especially during the Biden presidency. The last Democratic administration balanced the lip service it paid to the rise of antisemitism on its watch with an attempt to treat concerns about prejudice against Muslims as being of equal concern.
While all prejudice is deplorable, the problem with virtually all of the discussion about Islamophobia in recent years is that most such attacks against Muslims aren’t actually racist ones.
To the contrary, the comments and stands that are labeled as Islamophobic are almost always attempts to call out the rabid Jew-hatred and virulent prejudicial positions and language that are mainstream discourse among American Muslims, especially on the part of those groups, like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which purport to represent them.
Such advocacy is based on the false assertion that Muslims are being subjected to widespread attacks and discrimination in the United States. The primary source for this claim is CAIR, a group that masquerades as a civil-rights organization but was founded as a cover for those seeking to raise funds for Hamas terrorists in the United States illegally. CAIR has a consistent record of antisemitism but also seeks to downplay or rationalize Islamist terrorism, like the Oct. 7 attacks.
Moreover, the organization’s claims about the situation of American Muslims and Arabs are simply not backed up by empirical evidence. This dates back to its false assertions that were echoed by most mainstream media about a mythical post-9/11 backlash against Muslims that was largely made out of whole cloth. Contrary to CAIR’s claims (echoed by most liberal media outlets) that it is Muslims who are under siege, FBI hate-crime statistics have shown for the last two and a half decades that American Jews have been the primary victims of acts of religious prejudice in the United States. Attacks on Jews far outnumber those on Muslims by large margins every year, and that is especially true since Oct. 7, 2023, when a surge of antisemitism began, fueled largely by the same kind of anti-Israel bigotry echoed by Mamdani.
Yet at the heart of the Islamophobia discussion is something more sinister than a group hyping something that doesn’t warrant serious concern. What is most disturbing about the attempt to sanitize Mamdani is that it dovetails with the campaign to gaslight Jews about the prejudice and violence to which they have been subjected.
While Mamdani insincerely claims to oppose antisemitism, he is part of a movement that not only endorses terrorism against Israeli Jews but is also linked to violence against Americans.
The meaning behind ‘Globalize the intifada’
In recent months, three separate incidents of anti-Jewish domestic terrorism have taken place, initiated by people claiming to act on behalf of the “free Palestine” cause that Mamdani has embraced. On Passover, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s Harrisburg residence was the target of an arson attack. In May, two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington were gunned down by another “free Palestine” advocate as they left a Jewish museum. In June, a rally in Boulder, Colo., to draw awareness to the plight of the remaining 50 or so hostages being held by Hamas in Gaza was targeted by another “free Palestine” supporter, who said he wanted to kill all Zionists when he threw a Molotov cocktail at them. That assault resulted in injuries to 13 people, including eight who were hospitalized for burns; this week, 82-year-old Karen Diamond died as a result.
That is literally what “Globalize the intifada” means—the chant that Mamdani specifically refuses to condemn—and other catchphrases like “From the river to the sea”: support for terrorism against Jews. Mamdani supports the war against Israel. He opposes its existence as a Jewish state and couldn’t even condemn the Oct. 7 attacks without also treating the Israeli victims as morally equivalent to the Palestinian murderers, rapists and kidnappers and falsely accusing the Jewish state of “apartheid.” To point out the link between his steadfast refusal to disavow such stands and those who kill Jews in Israel or the United States is neither prejudicial nor unfair. On the contrary, it is those that, like the Times or Axios, which assert that it is wrong to link Mamdani’s position to that of global jihad that are wrong.
Moreover, the fact that he has stuck to these positions while being defended as a victim of prejudice by mainstream outlets like the Times is yet another sign of how such antisemitism is no longer a barrier to widespread support from Democrats.
Leading New York and national Democrats could have reacted to the results with across-the-board condemnations of not only Mamdani’s anti-Zionism and unwillingness to condemn the genocidal slogans of Islamist terror. While a few leading Democrats, such as House Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), have asked him to alter the way he speaks about Israel and to condemn that phrase, they haven’t rejected out of hand the idea of someone who holds such views representing their party in the nation’s largest city.
In recent years, Democrats have been vocal about Republicans needing to disassociate themselves from extremists in their party. Apparently, they didn’t think the same suggestion applied to them. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has long claimed to be the shomer or “guardian” of Israel and the Jews in Congress, and most other members of his party, showed little sign of taking such a stand.
Jumping on the bandwagon
The most compelling evidence of how difficult that would be was not long in coming. Mainstream Democrats have shown themselves unable to draw a line in the sand against a figure who is not merely a Socialist but whose candidacy seems to have become a test case for legitimizing antisemitic views on the left. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who is no conservative, was widely denounced for criticisms of Mamdani and forced to apologize. As Politico noted, most Democrats are now more interested in jumping on his bandwagon rather than in holding him accountable for his radicalism and anti-Zionism.
Part of this is a “no enemies on the left” attitude. It is an attitude that outlets like the Times, which has helped lead the assault on the West and America with its fallacious “1619 Project,” coupled with its biased coverage of the post-Oct. 7 war against Hamas and its Iranian sponsor, would like Democrats to adopt. The fact that it is mimicked by “woke right” antisemites like former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), both of whom despise socialism but identify with Mamdani’s animus for Israel, is unsurprising.
New York isn’t the only place where those who hate Israel and seek to silence or marginalize Jews are dominating the party. In North Carolina, the state’s Democratic Party endorsed smears of Israel and called for an embargo on arms to it. People like Schumer and other Democratic officeholders who may disagree with such rhetoric but understand that their party base is not only comfortable with these blood libels but starting to demand that they go along with it.
But the way this is enforced is more than just a matter of base politics. Nor is it primarily bolstered by the ideological extremism of writers like Michelle Goldberg, Peter Beinart and M. Gessen, who are platformed by the Times and falsely claim that supporting the destruction of the one Jewish state on the planet by means of blood libels and a genocidal terrorist war isn’t antisemitism. It also involves efforts to condemn those calling attention to the alarming legitimization of Jew-hatred by labeling such arguments as Islamophobic and therefore beyond the pale.
What the last few days have shown is that playing the Islamophobia card is how the hard left hopes to facilitate its takeover of the Democratic Party. More than that, it’s a means to whitewash antisemitism and silence supporters of Israel. Publications, politicians and even Jewish groups that are just as concerned about falling out of sync with mainstream liberal opinion as they are about the surge in Jew-hatred that don’t stand up against this false narrative are as much a part of the problem as the controversial candidate himself.
Jonathan S. Tobin is editor-in-chief of JNS (Jewish News Syndicate).
{Matzav.com}
