Why Zohran Mamdani's Primary Wins Sucks
Putting aside all the political details for now (obviously Andrew Cuomo is a deeply flawed candidate; the Democratic establishment is a mess; voters went for flash and identity over the experience of a truly capable progressive like Brad Lander; Trump is a fascist POS who is making everything bananas), Zohran Mamdani represents the normalization of extremism and hate within the Democratic party and our political discourse. But he's not a hater or extremist, you might respond. Well, that's just not what the record shows.
Mamdani has made Palestinian rights central to his political identity (which is fine — I support Palestinian rights, self-determination, and security; I want two secure and peaceful states side by side; I want Israel to leave the West Bank; Netanyahu is an asshole), but he goes far beyond criticizing Israeli policy or actions.
He is part of a growing and increasingly normalized trend of delegitimizing Israel and refusing to acknowledge its right to exist (imagine criticizing another state in that manner — "Turkey has mistreated its Kurdish minority; the state must cede all land to the Kurds and cease to exist!"); disproportionately focusing on Israeli actions, exponentially more than any other nation, even those that commit horrible atrocities; supporting the BDS movement (boycott, divest and sanction), which nominally seeks to pressure Israel through economic and cultural boycotts but actually amounts to the aggressive censorship and harassment of Israelis (and Jews) of any persuasion, and has as part of its platform the dismantling of the state of Israel; accusing Israel of genocide regardless of facts on the ground and without similar accusations about Hamas or others; and refusing to back away from the slogan "globalize the intifada," a non-theoretical call for "resistance" and violence against Jews everywhere.
For him to say, explicitly, Jews YES and Israel NO, is to say "I like Jews so long as they're the right kind of Jew." And the majority of Jews in NYC, the US, and the world who support Israel's right to exist are therefore the wrong kind of Jew. That is simply racism, antisemitism, hate, bigotry — whatever you want to call it.
All of this rhetoric has cumulatively led to a very real climate of hate and violence against Jews — not just the recent cases in the news — but ongoing harassment, vandalism, and attacks all over the place. Jews are, not coincidentally, per capita victims of hate crimes far more than any other group in the US.
So, in the most Jewish city in the world, it feels alarming that we'll have a mayor who is proudly crossing the line between legitimate criticism of Israel and demonization of Jewish people.
Zionism, despite all of the hype in the media, is simply the liberation movement of the Jewish people, who have never known real security for long (despite the relative comfort of the US in 2025). There is no part of mainstream Zionism that seeks to disenfranchise or harm Palestinians. It is precisely the extremism of the Mamdanis of the world — coupled with the actions of Hamas, Iran, Hezbollah, and other bad faith actors in the region — that has driven the Israelis to extremes not previously possible. I would like a world where haters on both sides would shut up, support peace, and help us return to actual compromise that benefits both Palestinians and Jews.
