WhatsappIf Mamdani’s bigotry and obsessive hate of Israel don’t seem to bother most New Yorkers and even many Jews, then it illustrates how prejudice has become mainstreamed.
What does it look like when you normalize antisemitism rather than making it something that only exists on the margins of society? In the more than two years since the Hamas-led Palestinian attacks in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, American Jews have seen hatred directed against them steadily portrayed as not just a reasonable argument but the work of idealists who oppose a mythical “genocide” perpetrated by “white” oppressors and their supporters.
We are now at the point where the views of those who feel that one Jewish state on the planet is one too many—while encouraging terrorism and even contemplating the genocide of Israelis—are considered acceptable public discourse. And many non-Jews and even a sizable minority of Jews in New York City think anyone aware of this should just stop complaining about it.
Marginalizing Jewish fears
That’s the only conclusion to be drawn from a new poll of New Yorkers that fully demonstrates that Jews are officially being marginalized while antisemites have moved into the mainstream.
The poll released this week from the liberal Democratic firm Honan Strategy Group paints a stark contrast between the feelings and opinions of much of New York City’s Jews and non-Jews. It shows that a majority of Jewish residents think that the newly inaugurated Mayor Zohran Mamdani is threatening them and enabling those who mean them harm. By contrast, the majority of non-Jews think that Jews are “overreacting” and complaining simply because of “politics.”
That’s a troubling result. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to imagine any responsible pollster even asking such a question, let alone publishing the results if this had been posed to any other minority group.
In 2026, would blacks or Hispanics who believed that they were under attack from a politician who openly favored discrimination against them be polled about whether their fears were overblown or just an example of unfair political attacks? Would those who are not members of those groups be asked to weigh in on whether these minority groups were “overreacting” to what they perceived as racism?
Not likely.
But it’s considered nothing out of the ordinary for a political consulting group that serves a party where antisemitism has become normalized for such a question to be considered a legitimate point of discussion.
The context for this poll is a situation where Jews, who make up only approximately 10% of New York City’s population, are the victims of 57% of all of the reported hate crimes committed in the city. The statistics were announced this week by New York Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, along with Mamdani and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul. All three expressed concern as to how Jews are being targeted, with the mayor chiming in to claim that he will “continue to confront hate crimes aggressively and protect every community targeted because of who they are.”
Genocide for some Jews
Left unsaid was the reason why Jews are the focus of so much hate in the city with the largest Jewish population in the world, one that has been a bastion of deep-blue political liberalism. The answer is that many of the incidents stem from the left-wing campaign of delegitimization and demonization against the Jewish community that is championed by Mamdani himself.
The 34-year-old mayor, whose short career has revolved around opposition to the existence of the modern-day State of Israel, hasn’t just refused to condemn the chants calling for terrorism (“Globalize the intifada”) or for genocide against them (“From the river to the sea”) employed by those who target Jews for intimidation and violence on college campuses. He is also an unabashed supporter of BDS—the movement to boycott, sanction and divest from Israel—that is a form of illegal discriminatory commercial conduct against Israelis and American Jews and not, as he claims, political speech.
Mamdani seeks to differentiate his anti-Zionism from supporting actual violence against the intended victims of the threats emanating from the mobs that share his views. Half of the Jews in the world live in Israel. So to say that you can be in favor of genocide against them but want New York’s Jews to be safe—the overwhelming majority who consider the Jewish state important to their identity and faith—isn’t merely disingenuous. It’s a form of gaslighting, albeit one that is increasingly considered normative among liberal elites and in the media, especially in The New York Times and other liberal news outlets.
His decision on day one in office to revoke the executive orders issued by his predecessor after Oct. 7 that were designed to protect Jews, such as recognizing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism in law, spoke louder than his anodyne though oddly unspecific assurances about Jewish safety, uttered during the hate-crimes presser with Tisch and Hochul. Critics of the definition, like Mamdani, do so because they want to disassociate the term from the way contemporary antisemites, whether on the left or the right, conduct themselves. They seek a definition of antisemitism in which actual acts of Jew-hatred don’t count.
That he chose to do so was not an accident. Far from being tangential to his goals for New York, it’s fair to say that the man who founded a chapter of the antisemitic Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin College in Maine more or less got into politics to promote this agenda of Jew-hatred.
As for the poll, it’s important to view the survey data from a source that is aligned with Mamdani with a shovel full of salt. The survey question was clearly designed to help the mayor by not outlining what Jews are complaining about or fully explaining his eliminationist views about Israel. It framed the issue as a choice between validating how Jews “feel” and labeling it as a politicized “overreaction.” In that way, it helped minimize Mamdani’s contempt and depict those who are complaining about it as hysterics or mindless partisans.
Nevertheless, it’s important as an accurate reflection of how liberal opinion leaders—the poll was first leaked to the left-wing Forward newspaper—want to frame the debate about the post-Oct. 7 surge of antisemitism. The goal here is to both minimize a growing surge of Jew-hatred and to essentially exonerate those political players who are stoking it.
Singling out Jews
This has been accomplished by flooding public discourse, in mainstream and left-wing forums, with blood libels about Israel committing “genocide” in Gaza. The Jewish state’s efforts to defend its citizens against Palestinians who engaged in an orgy of murder, rape, torture, kidnapping and wanton destruction are depicted as not merely aggression but part of a racist and settler-colonial effort to harm “people of color” by “white” oppressors. Mamdani and his supporters frame the efforts of Islamist murderers and rapists to eradicate the Jewish state as akin to the struggle for civil rights in the United States. In doing so, they treat all Jews who won’t disavow an essential element of their faith and identity as, like Israelis, racists who deserve to be singled out for violence.
Under the circumstances, it’s hardly surprising that even a skewed poll like that of Honan Strategy would show that 55% of non-Jews would say that Jews are “overreacting” to Mamdani’s antisemitism.
Nor should we be shocked that 47% of Jewish respondents would say that Mamdani’s “criticisms” of Israel are “legitimate policy disagreement,” while only 40% of Jews and 23% of non-Jews say that he has crossed a line and is fueling antisemitism.
Even if we think those numbers are tilted heavily in Mamdani’s favor, they reflect the way many Jews, especially in a city that is a stronghold for the left wing of the Democratic Party, have acted the way many targets of hate have always behaved. Some of this is due to the influence of Marxists like Mamdani, a self-styled Democratic Socialist who spoke of replacing America’s tradition of “rugged individualism” for one of “collectivism” in his inaugural speech. They have traditionally attacked Jewish identity and rights, dating back to the writings of Karl Marx (who was born a Jew but was converted as a child, along with the rest of his assimilated German family) in the 19th century, through the lethal oppression of Jews by the Soviet Union. Moscow also helped foster and promote the libelous campaign now taken up by Mamdani that labels Zionism as a form of racism.
In the last year, incidents of bloody antisemitic terrorism in Boulder, Colo.; Washington, D.C.; Manchester, England; and last month, on Bondi Beach in Australia have demonstrated what happens when governments are indifferent to advocacy for these smears.
Jews internalizing hatred
But the willingness of some Jews to dismiss antisemitism, even after all the horror of the last two years, is also about something else. It’s clear that a minority—albeit a sizable one in places like New York, where so much of the Jewish community leans hard to the left—of the Jews have internalized the animus directed at them and now blame the victims, whether Israelis or Americans, of antisemitism for the behavior of the antisemites.
It is not atypical behavior for victims of discrimination to look inward to find the causes of violence rather than at the perpetrators and ideas that animate them. But it is more likely to happen when mainstream discourse becomes dominated by the Jew-haters. Under those circumstances, it is far easier for those who promote this noxious ideology to get away with pretending to be an advocate for human rights, as Mamdani does, and for the Jewish targets of victimization to be told to pipe down and stop complaining.
That was, after all, just how African-Americans who protested against those who promoted segregation and discrimination during the century of Jim Crow racism in the United States. In an era where such vile bigotry was made commonplace, they were also dismissed and told they were overreacting. Now, the very people on the left who falsely analogize that dark period of American history to the Palestinian war on Jewish existence, supported by Marxists and Islamists, are telling Jews to back down in much the same manner.
The only answer to Mamdani and those promoting the idea that those who notice the antisemitism of the left and American Muslims are just partisan hysterics must be the same one given by advocates of civil rights to the racists of America’s past. Those in the media and the political establishment must be told that members of the Jewish community aren’t going to be marginalized by being told to calm down and not believe evidence seen almost daily. Decent Americans of every faith and ethnic background must make it clear that Jews will not be silent or acquiesce to a mayor out for retribution. His actions must be resisted with the same loud and determined protests and political action that Americans have eventually meted out to other types of hate-mongers.
