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—People anticipated bipartisan ethical readability. As an alternative, they bought one thing chilling: elected officers refusing to sentence terrorism.
Amongst them is Zohran Mamdani, a rising determine in New York’s Democrat Social gathering and a declared mayoral candidate. Relatively 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 kids burned alive, no outrage on the systematic rape of Israeli girls, no condemnation of Hamas’s use of human shields.
Mamdani’s actions reveal an emblem of a broader shift throughout the Democrat Social gathering, 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 best 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 now 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 conflict crimes and the IDF’s efforts to keep away from civilian casualties.
Much more grotesque, when Jewish People have been injured in a Could 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!” invoice within the New York State Legislature. The invoice seeks to chop off funding to nonprofits that help “Israeli settler violence”—a imprecise and ominously broad phrase. What constitutes “unauthorized help”?
The invoice doesn’t say. Its objective 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 through the open discussion board: Why will we contemplate “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 marketing 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 help violence, however he received’t condemn slogans that some interpret as calls to kill Jews,” authorized scholar Alan Dershowitz informed me. “Individuals who lived by means of Russian communism, Cuban socialism, or the Venezuelan collapse would by no means vote for him.”
And but Mamdani shouldn’t be marginalized—he’s gaining momentum, significantly amongst younger voters and Socialists. The platform he helps reads like a softer model of the regime my dad and mom 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 Social gathering is now not break up between moderates and progressives. It is split between these keen to face up for Jews and people who 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 significantly, we could discover ourselves reliving historical past far before we predict.
