Words, Words, Words
Parsing the fault lines of our political beliefs
“They’re still your friends?” asked a friend of mine, upon hearing of the many people I know in New York City who voted for soon-to-be-mayor, Zohran Mamdani in the recent mayoral election. The friend, who’s Israeli by birth, noted that my progressive Jewish New Yorker friends much just be naive, seemingly protected from the anti-semitism she feels in Amsterdam where she’s lived for many years, let alone Europe in general.
“Did you discuss Israel’s need for security?” This was almost spat out by the 21 year old son of friends as we enjoyed a delicious Friday night dinner together. His entire army service has all been post-October 7th. He has been in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria, where he has seen firsthand Hamas and Hezbollah’s brutality towards Israelis (with the outbreak of the war), as well as to Gazan and Lebanese civilians. Having served on the frontline, he feels more than ever that the Israeli government has to be honest about its security needs and what it will take to keep Israelis safe, let alone Jews in general.
When I was discussing this with Ira, he quoted a retired army mucky-muck’s recent comment when discussing Israel’s security pre-October 7th on the Gaza border. “We needed to have shlaykes under our belts,” the army guy said, meaning, for stronger deterrents we needed belts in addition to suspenders.
A recent news report indicated the challenges Jerusalem, where I live, faces ensuring safety for all of its residents, given all of the Arab villages in and around the city, and yes, given the heightened emotions of the past few years, and Hamas cells operating in the area. They love to ask the question, “could another October 7th happen?” Such discussions make dismantling our safe room, where my favorite lounge clothing continues to be stored in case of an emergency, complicated.
But these discussions, let alone the IDF’s operations in the West Bank, and its continued presence in Gaza (as the world argues we should begin Phase II in Gaza), this as the country waits for Ran Gvili z”l, the last person to be returned to Israel - he was killed on the 7th, and his body was taken hostage - makes Israel just continue to be considered the world’s bully.
What a happy place for the world. When Israel is just seen as bad.
What’s been happening in the West Bank, the violence that has escalated since October 7th, isn’t easy to read about, even coupled with the knowledge, this via reserve duty soldiers we know locally whose work has taken them to some of the West Bank, that there’s lots of “bad guys and bad stuff,” happening. What about the government at least showing more interest in the rapid growth of illegal settlements along with the violence of this specific subset of settlers? We all know it won’t happen right now but articles like this recent one in the NY Times only portray Palestinians as helpless. Perhaps they are in the areas reported on but what about in those harder line towns and villages where Hamas cells proliferate?
I read the article with a pit in my stomach. (Link above)
“Even as the war in Gaza commanded the world’s attention over the past two years, the facts on the ground were shifting in the West Bank, intensifying the battle for control of the lands of Bethlehem and Jericho, Ramallah and Hebron…
Extremist Jewish settlers and Palestinian farmers are the foot soldiers in this endless conflict, an extension of the war in 1948 that accompanied the establishment of Israel. And since the Oct. 7., 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza, Israel’s far-right government has embraced a playbook of expanding settlements across the West Bank, transforming the region, piece by piece, from a patchwork of connected Palestinian villages into a collection of Israeli neighborhoods.”
Before I return to the topic of NYC and Mamdani, I ask you, is there anything in that quote that bothers you? I took umbrage with this line, “since the Oct. 7., 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian militants from Gaza…” How dare they refer to the Hamas foot soldiers - rapists, arsonists, and brutal murderers - of October 7th as Palestinian militants? Write the article. Tell the story. All of the stories. I can live with that. But put the blame in the right places in terms of the government and ministers but watch your language…
It’s all a game of language, right? I say it one way, and you say it another way, and public figures play another game of how they say and express their thoughts and beliefs. We have to read between the lines and try and parse their real meanings.
When I travel and listen to my American Jewish friends and their thoughts about Israel, and most of them haven’t even visited since Fall ‘23 - I think about how we’re all language and nuance foot soldiers, some of us knowingly and some of us unknowingly, in the war against Israel.
“Really, they voted for Mamdani? What about the hateful things he’s said towards Israel?” said another friend. It’s interesting. Much of what Mamdani has talked and written about, pre-October 7th, wasn’t completely out of line with anyone who wishes for equal rights for all Israeli citizens, let alone those of us who wish for a world where non-violence is more important than killing each other.
“Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms,” Mamdani wrote in a 2014 op-ed in Bowdoin College’s student newspaper. “Israeli universities give priority admission to soldiers, discriminate against Palestinian students, and have developed remote-controlled bulldozers for the Israeli Army’s home demolitions.”
The first part of his statement? That Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in crimes of the government and the IDF feel like an overwrought and naive reading on colonialism, not really surprising for a guy with his liberal, progressive education, let alone growing up in a family of Indian heritage who lived in places like Uganda and South Africa, or sitting around the table on the UWS with the likes of Edward Said. Imagine that. He saw and heard about injustice in personal ways that influenced and guided him, even as he lived a life of privilege and possibility denied many worldwide.
But back to colonialism. Do the young 20 and 30 somethings in NY who voted for Mamdani, let alone their liberal progressive parents who also voted for him (given that a vote for Cuomo was so distasteful, and I get that), feel the same way, this as they walk the ground where indigenous Native American tribes lived their lives before colonialism changed all of that? And just because they have an addendum to their email that asks forgiveness for pushing out those peoples from their ancestral lands doesn’t make it any better. Colonialism is what it’s been about since the beginning of time - a topic for another day. (I wrote about it here)
Also this. As a student, Mamdani he founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and a campaign against Israel’s “oppressive occupation and racist policies,” but wasn’t willing to continue a budding partnership with J Street U, a liberal pro-Israel group that supported a two-state solution. Students for Justice in Palestine followed a policy of anti-normalization, meaning it would no longer be working with groups that supported Israel.
And yet, I wonder if I would have voted for him if I still lived in Brownstone Brooklyn, still drinking the progressive Kool-Aid of my safe, pre-October 7th life? Would I have been okay with his choice not to attend the Salute to Israel Parade this past June because he doesn’t acknowledge Israel as a Jewish state, as he doesn’t “recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.”
He did attend a parade for Pakistan this year, even though it’s a state where religious minorities who are not Islam, the official state religion, are often persecuted. Pakistan is also a country in conflict with its neighbor, India, over Kashmir. When I read up on the history of the British partitioning these 2 countries into Pakistan and India, it sounded a lot like a remake of the colonialist policy that marked these countries until they were independent. (Note: Often colonialist societies were even more colonialist in their “freed state” then they had been under colonial rule.)
Part of me feels he’s just young (or hasn’t experienced any of the real trials of life), and like many of his youthful supporters, that while he’s seen injustice, he hasn’t felt it in his kishkes. He hasn’t cowered in his safe room, hearing the thud of rockets, or been stripped of his citizenship and forced to find a new place to live, like the Iraqi Jews in the early 1950’s. They were taken in by those who would, the Jews of the nascent State of Israel. And yes, they were discriminated, by their own kind, like so many Jews from the Levant in those early years of the State. That doesn’t make it any better, just making the point.
In July ‘25, Mamdani said that he would no longer use the phrase “globalize the intifada,” and consider discouraging others from saying that statement, one that he claims just expresses solidarity with the Palestinian cause, as opposed to espousing violence Israelis, to Jews. And let’s not forget that the violence of October 7th was perpetrated on Nepali and Thai workers, Tanzanian students, Bedouin farm workers, and Arab Israeli citizens working at the Nova festival.
But I’m just parsing facts, right? And we all know the cat’s been out of the bag for a longtime. People have chosen their sides, regardless of what played out, and say what they want to say, because that’s how they’ve been taught the storyline.
Hearing about the news in Sydney last week, I wondered how those same NY Jews feel? Do they allow themselves to be uncomfortable, concerned that Jihadi extremists could show up at their gatherings? Journalist, Haviv Rettig Gur, noted that worldwide, synagogues have heavy security but not in Israel. Yes, at my modestly sized place of prayer, there are members packing a weapon but we don’t have a guard outside. After October 7th, we kind of upped our guard for a few weeks but only informally, soon relaxing as things felt more comfortable. Yes, we had rockets and thankfully safe spaces but no bodyguards.
In NYC, I asked, in easy ways, how they felt about this 33 year old guy with little experience in public service, managing a budget of $118 billion? Let’s put aside concerns about his leanings toward the Jews or Israel - what about running the city? Most said they saw indication that he was hiring those with the experience he lacked and that made them feel better. Except for longtime city councilman, Brad Lander, who ran against him initially, later endorsing him only to be set aside by Mamdani after the election. They hoped he’d be better than the much reviled Bill de Blasio, who was seen as ambitious and not concerned enough about quality of life and affordability issues that Mamdani put front and center, including fare-free city buses (given that the MTA is struggling and train infrastructure is in bad shape, that’s hard to say how), universal public child care, a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments, more affordable housing units, and a $30 minimum wage by 2030. Maybe it doesn’t matter that it won’t be easy to make happen. It’s for sure refreshing to have someone care about tax increases for the very wealthy NY’ers. I guess it will be interesting to see how he likes living the good live in Gracie Mansion.
But that doesn’t really respond to what bothered my Dutch-Israeli friend, and the Israelis around the table last week. To them Mamdani represents a win for pro-hate, anti-Israeli, and anti-Jewish politics. Activist Elica Lebon put it well with a post wondering why all everybody wanted talk about after the shooting in Sydney was the Muslim guy who stopped the shooters. She doesn’t deny that he was a hero but what about talking about those killed and injured, taking it forward to the post October 7th world when all we could talk about were casualties in Gaza, never the losses that Jews had endured. Mamdani posted effectively on X after Sydney - that’s good - and those who like to parse everyone’s words picked it apart but he was appropriate and timely in his response.
As usual, I’ve solved nothing. I’ve just used my words so we can all consider the sloganism that has changed Jewish lives since October 7th. Clearly, it was happening long before, reminding me of an article from the Jewish Journal, November ‘23 “The Inside Story of How Palestinians Took Over the World.” The article begins with these words, “The brilliant Palestinian plan to capture the pliable minds of American college students was laid out in front of me 25 years ago, during a very sinister business meeting in Israel.” I just reread it and it gave me chills all over again. I recommend you consider looking at it as well, and considering what words make you feel safe and secure, and what words don’t.
Shabbat Shalom
#BringRanGviliHome
Beth, another very thoughtful piece - thank you. Let me say this: I held my nose and voted for Cuomo. I think Mandami is NOT naive. He knows exactly what he’s doing and saying. If he had even one ounce of integrity about condemning other countries that truly oppress their people - many of which are Moslem-ruled countries - he would have made a stronger case for himself as being opposed to oppression rather than singling out the one nation where Jews can feel safe as Jews. But he has fixated on Israel. He has fixated on Jews who support Israel. He has done nothing to quell these fears that Jewish New Yorkers feel about this moment of escalating hatred and violence. If he truly cared, he would have made it clear.
Look - this is my city. It was my city before he was born in Uganda - a place with its own violent history.
He was raised on a pablum of such hatred directed at Israel and Jews. He had many chances to be more circumspect, even if only for political expediency. Something!
Had he not had this hateful obsession, even I may have voted for him.
But I can’t hold my nose that long.
I hope for the best because I love my city. But he needs to do more than attend a Chanukah candle lighting. And I know he won’t.
Shabbat Shalom, dear friend.
Lots to say about this. The new mayor of my hometown , though gratefully no longer my place of residence, is a danger to all. He is clueless, evil and his election is downright frightening. He has made a point of appointing the most inexperienced individuals to his team. Their skill set lie with their politically left wing sentiments, ability to curse and outright Jew hatred. Those who voted for him are naive and equally hateful of are just self hating Jews.