Within the aftermath of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, bloodbath—the place over 1,200 Israelis have been slaughtered in a terror assault that included rape, arson, and the execution of kids—Individuals anticipated bipartisan ethical readability. As an alternative, they received one thing chilling: elected officers refusing to sentence terrorism.
Amongst them is Zohran Mamdani, a rising determine in New York’s Democrat Get together and a declared mayoral candidate. Somewhat than condemn the worst bloodbath of Jews for the reason that Holocaust, Mamdani deflected.
He labeled Israel an “apartheid regime” and failed to supply even a cursory acknowledgment of Hamas’s crimes. No point out of the youngsters burned alive, no outrage on the systematic rape of Israeli ladies, no condemnation of Hamas’s use of human shields.
Mamdani’s actions reveal an emblem of a broader shift throughout the Democrat Get together, the place ethical equivocation on Jewish struggling is neither punished nor punished.
In December 2024, Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American historical past, refused to permit a vote on the Antisemitism Consciousness Act.
The invoice, which sought to undertake the IHRA definition of antisemitism already acknowledged by over 40 democracies, would have protected Jewish college students and establishments from hate masquerading as criticism of Israel.
The IHRA definition attracts a transparent line: denying Jews the precise to self-determination or calling Israel a racist endeavor is antisemitic.
Schumer failed. He bowed to a celebration base more and more influenced by radical anti-Zionist voices. Whether or not out of concern or political calculus, the message was unmistakable: standing up for Jews, even within the wake of mass slaughter, is not a precedence for the Democrats.
Consultant Rashida Tlaib went additional. In June 2024, she launched a decision accusing Israel of genocide—ignoring Hamas’s warfare crimes and the IDF’s efforts to keep away from civilian casualties.
Much more grotesque, when Jewish Individuals have been injured in a Might 2025 terrorist assault at a peaceable pro-Israel rally in Boulder, Colorado, over 100 Home Democrats refused to again a decision condemning the violence.
Mamdani, in the meantime, has launched the “Not on Our Dime!” bill within the New York State Legislature. The invoice seeks to chop off funding to nonprofits that assist “Israeli settler violence”—a imprecise and ominously broad phrase. What constitutes “unauthorized assist”?
The invoice doesn’t say. Its purpose is to delegitimize any connection between American Jews and Israeli civil society.
Even Mamdani’s refusal to disavow the phrase “intifada”—a time period related to the deliberate homicide of Jewish civilians—is telling. In interviews, he acknowledges that many view the time period as a name to violence. And nonetheless, he embraces it.
Final Sunday, I spoke at a rally opposing Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy. Afterward, a teenage woman in a “Free Palestine” hat requested a query throughout the open discussion board: Why will we think about “intifada” antisemitic?
She went on to say that she understands the historical past—and nonetheless views the intifada as justified.
That’s the results of leaders like Mamdani. They’ve normalized extremism, romanticized violence, and confused ethical readability with colonialism.
The Second Intifada was not a “resistance.” It was a campaign of suicide bombings, mass shootings, and cafe massacres. There is no such thing as a justification for that. There by no means was.
“Mamdani claims he doesn’t assist violence, however he gained’t condemn slogans that some interpret as calls to kill Jews,” authorized scholar Alan Dershowitz advised me. “Individuals who lived by way of Russian communism, Cuban socialism, or the Venezuelan collapse would by no means vote for him.”
And but Mamdani just isn’t marginalized—he’s gaining momentum, notably amongst younger voters and Socialists. The platform he helps reads like a softer model of the regime my mother and father fled within the Soviet Union—a regime that denied Jews their rights, their dignity, and their security.
Mamdani’s reputation is a collapse of ethical consensus. The Democrat Get together is not cut up between moderates and progressives. It is split between these keen to face up for Jews and those that is not going to.
Historical past warns us: when leaders tolerate hate, it grows. When Democrats normalize silence, violence follows. If the Jewish group—if America—fails to take this second severely, we might discover ourselves reliving historical past far before we expect.
