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The Art of Making Antisemitism Look Like Justice
This episode explores the nuanced dynamics of antisemitism in New York City under the leadership of Zoran Mamdani, highlighting the shift from overt hostility to a more insidious form of exclusion mas...
The Art of Making Antisemitism Look Like Justice
Technology •
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This is a guest essay by Guy Goldstein,
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a third-generation Holocaust survivor,
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and Daniel Greenfield,
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a Shillman Journalism Fellow
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at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.
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The fear spreading through New York City's Jewish community
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is primal.
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A Muslim socialist has been elected to lead the city
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that wants to find Jewish safety in the diaspora.
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For weeks, Jewish circles have whispered
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the same question, what happens now?
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People expect confrontation.
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They imagine boycotts, public purges,
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and a mayor who will finally say aloud
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what the activist left has only hinted at for years.
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They brace for a sudden collapse, a visible enemy,
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a breaking of taboos,
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but that is not what is coming.
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What is coming will not feel like an attack.
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It will feel like a slow, suffocating embrace.
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Zoran Mamdani does not need to persecute Jews
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to reshape their place in New York City.
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He needs only to disarm them.
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He will do it with inclusion, civility, and charm.
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After the hysteria that follows his election,
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even the smallest gesture of goodwill
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will look like salvation,
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a polite phone call to a rabbi,
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a visit to a Holocaust memorial,
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a social media post condemning anti-Semitism.
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The city will sigh with relief,
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it will believe it has been spared.
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And in that calm, the real project will begin.
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Mamdani comes from the activist world
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where moral framing is the real battlefield.
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He knows that victory is not about destroying your opponents
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but about redefining them.
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His first term will not be about confrontation.
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It will be about legitimacy.
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He will present himself as the mayor of inclusion,
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a man of empathy and bridge building.
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He will launch task forces and round tables
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on hate and diversity that read like an ideal civic mosaic.
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The anti-deformation league
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and American Jewish committee will be invited,
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praised, and seated beside J Street,
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a leftist Jewish lobbying organization.
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The council on American Islamic relations,
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so-called progressive rabbis,
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student activists, and interfaith coalitions.
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It will look like partnership.
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In practice, it will be a demotion.
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As conversations shift from anti-Semitism
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to all forms of hate,
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Jewish vulnerability will be diluted
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into a universal moral vocabulary
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that no longer recognizes its uniqueness.
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When Jewish organizations object,
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they will be cast as parochial,
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unable to evolve with the city's quote-unquote,
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progressive conscience.
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And once the language of exclusivity
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is replaced with the language of equality,
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the Jews will have lost their agency
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to define their own oppression.
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This strategy is not new.
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The National Anti-Semitism Task Force
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for U.S. President Joe Biden's administration
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already perfected it.
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The Anti-Defamation League
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and other Jewish institutions
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were invited to participate,
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but surrounded by organizations
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that reject Jewish definitions of anti-Semitism.
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It was sold as diversity,
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but it worked as dilution.
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The warnings about anti-Semitism
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cloaked in anti-Zionism
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were absorbed into broad discussions
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of systemic hate.
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Mamdanny will replicate that model in New York City
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and call it justice.
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He will also cultivate his own court of good Jews,
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young, articulate activists
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who reject the link between Jewish identity
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and the Jewish state
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will be elevated as symbols of modernity and virtue.
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They will appear beside him at events,
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in task forces, in photo ops.
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They will insist that Jewish safety
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does not depend on Israel,
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that Zionism is not essential to Jewish identity.
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They will help Mamdanny frame himself
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as a friend of the Jews
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while dismantling the moral foundations
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that have sustained them.
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This pattern is not new either.
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Every generation of anti-Jewish power
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has found its Jewish enablers.
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The Zars had their courteers.
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The Soviets there have sexia.
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The West, its intersectional activists.
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They are always convinced
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they are saving Judaism from itself.
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Mamdanny will not silence Jews.
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He will deputize them.
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Mamdanny's policies
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will follow the same gentle pattern.
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Sister city ties with Israel
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will not be severed,
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but reviewed for balance.
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Educational programs
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will not denounce Zionism,
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but broad and narratives.
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Municipal grants will flow to NGOs
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that speak of peace
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while teaching that Jewish nationhood is oppression.
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Every decision will sound fair.
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Each step will seem moral
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and together they will replace
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post-war Jewish security
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with post-colonial guilt.
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The true danger is not that Mamdanny will rage.
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It is that he will remain calm.
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He is young, emotional, and ambitious.
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But if he resists the temptation
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to flaunt his disdain,
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if he chooses patience over pride,
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he will achieve something unprecedented.
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He will show the world how to isolate Jews
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without ever appearing to harm them.
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New York City is not a local stage.
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It is the capital of the post-war world order,
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the seat of the United Nations,
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the epicenter of global media,
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finance, and NGO diplomacy.
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What happens here?
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writes the moral code for the modern West.
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If Mamdanny can recode anti-Semitism in New York City,
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if he can make the erosion of Jewish legitimacy
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appear as moral evolution,
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he will have created the prototype
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for the global isolation of Jews.
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NGOS will copy it.
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Universities will teach it.
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European mayors will cite it.
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Within a decade,
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it will become the new democratic standard
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for polite exclusion.
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A world where Jews are still invited into the room,
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but no longer allowed to define what safety means.
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This is the birth of a modern secular demitude,
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a system in which Jews are tolerated only so long
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as they abandon the authority to speak for themselves.
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It is not imposed by religion,
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but by virtue,
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not by threat of death,
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but by fear of moral disapproval.
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It promises equality while quietly restoring subordination,
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turning Jewish presence into a conditional privilege
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that exists only at the pleasure of others.
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It would not be the first time such a model succeeded.
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London under its current mayor,
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Sadiq Khan,
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showed how power could disarm Jewish vigilance
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without open hostility.
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Khan began with outreach,
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with interfaith partnerships,
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and moral gestures that calmed suspicion.
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Over time, anti-Semitism in London was normalized,
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not through violence,
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but through fatigue.
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Jewish fear was reframed as overreaction.
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Israel became a moral problem rather than a partner.
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The method worked because it felt like progress.
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Mammdani's politics draw from that same playbook
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of charm and restraint,
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the politics of empathy as a ratio.
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For 80 years,
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Western civilization has treated anti-Semitism
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as the moral boundary that defines its decency.
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If that boundary falls in New York City,
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the capital of global legitimacy,
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it will fall everywhere.
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The diaspora will lose the civilizational protection
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that grew out of the memory of the Holocaust.
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Israel will lose the moral shield that memory provided,
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and the world that once said,
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never again will find a new way to forget,
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not through hate, but through virtue.
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So yes, Jews should be concerned about Zoran Mammdani,
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but not because he will roar with hatred,
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the paralyze in the opposite,
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in the smile, the invitation,
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the handshake in front of the synagogue,
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the next phase of anti-Semitism will not come shouting,
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it will come applauding,
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it will come in the name of justice,
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and by the time it finishes,
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it will have rewritten who speaks for the Jews,
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and who is allowed to be one.
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The question of who is a Jew
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can be answered in different ways by different people,
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but one would reasonably assume the answer
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has to be based on some kind of standard.
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In political polls, there are no standards at all.
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Their polls tell us nothing about what Jews believe
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because they can't define what a Jew is.
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And how do you measure something you can't define?
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In the New York City's mayoral election this past week,
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the pre-election gold standard, Quinnipiac poll,
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showed Andrew Cuomo taking 60% of the Jewish vote,
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Curtis Sleewa taking 12%,
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and Zoran Memdani having to make do with 16%.
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However, exit polls, which usually rely
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on a very small Jewish sample,
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claim that 63% voted for Cuomo,
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only 3% for Sleewa,
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and 33% for Mamdani.
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Polls of Jewish voters are not only notoriously unreliable,
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dependent on small sample sizes to capture
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a complex community.
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They may not even measure what they claim to.
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The basic problem that pops up is obvious.
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When you compare the polls showing 28% of Catholics
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and the 36% of Protestants voting for Mamdani,
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compared to the 43% of Hispanics
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and 48% of Black voters backing the radical candidate.
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Even though Hispanics are a significant percentage
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of New York City's Catholic population,
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there's obviously a sizable gap
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between the religious Hispanic vote
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and the secular Hispanic vote.
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Likewise, the city's sizable number
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of Black Protestants and Black voters.
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But the same poll groups Jews together
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with the Protestants and Catholics.
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While other groups are separate by religion and race,
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Jews are polled as a race.
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Yet the results are reported as if they were polled
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as a religion.
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The Jewish vote is watered down
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to the point of meaninglessness,
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yet described as a committed electorate.
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From a religious and philosophical standpoint,
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the question of who is a Jew is complex.
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But when applied to a science like polling,
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it ought to come with standards.
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Polling has none.
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The Quinnipiac and Sienna polls, in typical fashion,
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allow people to quote unquote,
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self-identify as Jews.
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Who would claim to be Jewish?
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Who isn't?
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Anti-Israel politicians in New York,
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from Alexandria, Ocasio-Cortez,
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to state-centered or Julius Alizarrava,
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falsely claimed to be Jewish too,
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as a Jew,
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their hostility to the Jewish state,
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their far from alone,
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social media is full of fake Jews
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who find clout and clicks in hating Israel.
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Polling has even fewer safeguards.
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It doesn't have to be this way.
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All pollsters have to do is apply a basic test.
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Pollsters have an alternative way
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of meaningfully measuring the Jewish vote,
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which is to ask about synagogue affiliation and attendance.
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Every time this has been done,
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the Jewish vote becomes significantly more pro-Israel
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and more Jewish.
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During the heyday of then-US President Barack Obama's
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Iran nuclear deal, for example,
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Gallup broke down its polling of the Jewish vote
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by asking about synagogue attendance
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and found that 60% of Jews
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who attended synagogue services on a weekly basis
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disapproved of Obama.
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While 58% of those who went to synagogue
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seldom are never approved of him,
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polls of Jewish voters
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would look dramatically different
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if instead of allowing anyone and everyone
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to quote unquote,
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self-identify as Jewish,
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they asked about synagogue attendance.
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There are people who feel very Jewish
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despite not being religious or going to synagogue.
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And a recent Washington Post poll
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provides a demonstration of another question
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that Polsters could ask.
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It had looked to create a poll of American Jews
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that would show that they are turning against Israel.
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An unintentionally revealed the polls agenda
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by disclosing its methodology and definition of Jews,
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quote,
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the sample includes adults who identify as Jewish by religion,
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as well as those who identify as adults
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with no religious affiliation but Jewish,
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ethnically, culturally,
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or through their family background.
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And either were raised Jewish
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or have a parent who is Jewish.
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The Washington Post casts the loosest possible net,
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watering down the definition of a Jewish respondent
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to the point of absurdity,
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just to get its results.
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Among those who said that being Jewish
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is very important to them,
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63% supported Israel's campaign against Hamas.
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While in perfect proportion,
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63% of those who answered that being Jewish
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is not important to them opposed Israel.
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There is a term for people to whom being Jewish
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is not at all important,
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non-Jewish people.
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That's not a judgmental definition.
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It's a pragmatic one.
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The Jewishness of someone to whom being Jewish
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is unimportant is unimportant.
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His or her views on Jewish matters
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ought to be as unimportant as they consider Jewishness.
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A poll that includes large numbers of people
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to whom the entire criteria
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that the poll is based on doesn't matter
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is a contradiction in terms.
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Polsters could ask those they insist on polling
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as if they were Jewish
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about their meaningful religious affiliation
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or identification.
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Instead, like the Washington Post,
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they poll people who are not in any way
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affiliated with the Jewish community
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to tear down that same community.