As an active retired UFT member I believe our 2000 Delegates have spoken with their 63 % endorsement vote for Mamdani. With that vote, the Union is now saddled with his endorsement, much to the chagrin and consternation of many of our activists and loyal Union members.
I believe the Op Ed I submitted (below)but not published will explain why many of us will not vote for him (despite our Union’s endorsement) and may not vote at all considering the choices we are facing in the upcoming mayoral election.
We Know Antisemitism When We See It — So Why Are We Being Told Zohran Mamdani Is a Friend?
By Bob Zuckerberg
In the months since October 7, American Jews have been told to “stay calm,” “understand the context,” and even “check our privilege” as antisemitic rhetoric floods our streets and institutions. But it’s one thing to endure this from anonymous trolls or distant ideologues — and another when it comes from an elected official in New York City, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel.
Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani presents himself as a principled progressive. But over time, he has made it unmistakably clear that his politics depend on erasing or minimizing Jewish trauma — and excusing or outright praising those who incite or commit violence against Jews.
Let’s put aside euphemisms. In 2017, Mamdani released a rap track praising the “Holy Land Five,” a group convicted in U.S. courts of funneling $12 million to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. “My love to the Holy Land Five,” he rapped. That wasn’t subtle. That was a political message.
Since becoming a public figure, Mamdani has doubled down. He has refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” — a slogan regularly chanted at New York protests, where it now serves as a thinly veiled call for violence against Jews globally. The First and Second Intifadas killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians, including children and Holocaust survivors, in bombings, shootings, and stabbings. This is not ancient history — these are traumas that define our living memory.
Worse still, Mamdani compared “globalize the intifada” to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — a grotesque equivalency that drew public rebuke from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. They rightly called the comparison “offensive” and “outrageous.”
He didn’t apologize. He didn’t even reconsider.
After the horrors of October 7, Mamdani issued a public statement that failed to name Hamas once. Instead, he criticized Israel’s government. There were no words for the babies burned alive, the families executed, the women raped and paraded. No empathy for a nation reeling from the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
He later refused to support resolutions affirming Israel’s right to exist or condemning the Holocaust. His office claimed he doesn’t typically sign such resolutions — but this is about something deeper than legislative habits. This is about values.
Mamdani’s legislative priorities are similarly telling. He is a co-sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime Act,” which would empower the state to investigate and potentially penalize Jewish nonprofit organizations in New York for supporting Israeli institutions — even hospitals, youth programs, or universities. It singles out Jewish communal support structures for scrutiny unlike anything else in state law. There is no equivalent targeting of nonprofits that support Chinese, Iranian, Turkish, or Palestinian causes abroad.
This is a familiar feeling for many of us. Jewish history teaches us that antisemitism rarely appears first in the form of violence. It starts with dehumanization. With isolation. With double standards and insinuations that Jews are uniquely dangerous or disloyal. Then, often with a self-righteous smile, it becomes law.
And yet Mamdani is still defended as a “friend” of the Jewish community. His allies insist he is merely “anti-Zionist,” as if that somehow separates him from the centuries-old patterns of antisemitic suspicion and hatred. He recently appeared on the show of influencer Hasan Piker — a man who has called Jews “bloodthirsty pig dogs” and Orthodox Jews “inbred.” Mamdani offered no pushback. He engaged warmly.
At what point are we allowed to say: Enough?
This is not about “criticism of Israel.” Israeli democracy includes fierce internal criticism. Israeli streets are filled with anti-government protests. Israeli courts and journalists hold leaders accountable in ways most democracies can only dream of.
This is about a refusal to see Jewish people as a people — as a nation, with our own history, memory, and sovereignty. It is about the erasure of Jewish identity and Jewish grief under the guise of social justice.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once warned that antisemitism mutates. It doesn’t always look like the past. Today, it wears new clothes — the language of activism, anti-imperialism, and intersectionality. But its essence is the same: the view that Jewish life and legitimacy is uniquely problematic, and must be dismantled.
We are not overreacting. We are not confused. We know exactly what this is.
And if this is what “allyship” looks like in 2025 — refusing to name Hamas, praising terror fundraisers, chanting for global intifada — then Jewish New Yorkers are fully within our rights to say: We don’t need friends like this.
Sources:
Politico: Mamdani defends “Globalize the Intifada”
NY Post: Holocaust Museum rebukes Mamdani
City Journal: Breakdown of Not On Our Dime Act
Daily Beast: Mamdani’s rap tribute to Holy Land Five
I want to be able to see your point of view more clearly. So I tried reading the sources, except the NY Post since I am trying not to reference or drive too much traffic to that publication. When I searched the other three sources seem not to show up under the titles you listed. Can you please share the links?
Again, both of the links you sent do not match your sources.
However, when I read these articles, the cribed message is not that Mamdani is anti semetic, but that he disagrees with the rules that a class of people, born in a cou try are entitled to less rights that those given the country through colonial treaties, not free will have created an apartheid state.
He has also condemned the October 7th Attack as a war crime, as well as acknowledging the Israli Settlements that forcefully displaced Palestinians is also a violation of international law. We can both support the right of the Jewish people to live free, while also acknowledging the importance of the Palestinian people to have self determination free of colonial rule and apartheid dehumanization as well.
To Do so requires we acknowledge that the forced resettlement, or removal of people from their homes based on race does not breed peace, but resentment. It happened in Europe, it has happened in the US, and in countries across human history the subjugation of one people by another is part of our history. How we respond to it now, knowing that history is also important. Do we approve.of the forced removal and resettlement of people's into camps? Do we support the restriction of people in the land they were born in based on their race or religions?
Can we truly find a way to peaceful coexistence if we cannot recognize the historical suffering occupation causes in a effort to find truly equal footing as opposed to subjugation?
Thank you for expressing your concerns so sincerely and with a genuine desire for peace and justice. I agree that we must learn from history and that human dignity and equality are non-negotiable. That said, I think it’s important to clarify some points and offer a broader context.
First, many Palestinians are citizens of Israel—about 20% of Israel’s population. They vote, hold office, serve on the Supreme Court, and participate in every aspect of Israeli civic life. This reality does not reflect apartheid, but rather the challenges of a democracy navigating coexistence amid a century-long conflict, often marked by violence and rejectionism from Israel’s neighbors and from groups like Hamas.
Since its inception in 1948, Israel has faced existential threats from surrounding nations and terror groups committed to its destruction. These are not abstract fears—they are lived realities, including wars, suicide bombings, and over 20,000 rockets launched at civilians in recent years alone. The security measures Israel takes—while tragic in their impact on innocent Palestinians—are not rooted in racial or ethnic hatred, but in survival.
The term “colonial” doesn’t fit this context either. Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, with millennia of historical, spiritual, and physical connection to it. The modern return to that land was not about conquering others, but about reestablishing a homeland after centuries of persecution, including the Holocaust.
That said, I do believe Palestinians deserve dignity, opportunity, and a pathway to their own national self-expression—just not at the expense of Israel’s security or existence. Real peace must come from mutual recognition and a willingness to reject violence, not from one-sided historical narratives that vilify one side while absolving the other.
We can support coexistence, equal rights, and justice for all people without distorting the facts on the ground or assigning collective blame. We must be honest about history, yes—but also honest about the present. And above all, we must hold space for complexity without compromising on truth.
Full transparency, I have never visited Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. One resource I use to describe the inequities that the occupied portions, including zones B and C, C where palestrinian people have trouble accessing basic items such as education and water, and where they have little control to develop or maintain their own ancestral lands is his document from the UN here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/israels-housing-policies-occupied-palestinian-territory-amount-racial
Those are the lines in my piece where I attempt, maybe not so successfully, to draw a parallel line to the Trail of Tears in the US. Or in prior writings can think of how HOA and "private community's" in the history of the US including redlining and other aspects unofficially locked people, including Jews out of neighborhoods here in the US in the not so recent past.
as far as Colonialism The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines colonialism as "Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas, political theorists have used theories of justice, contract, and natural law to both criticize and justify European domination. In the nineteenth century, the contradiction between liberal ideals and colonial practice became particularly acute, as the dominion of Europe over the rest of the world reached its zenith"
That part of the world the people there have been without self determination for much of recorded history. the Romans, The Ottomans, and between WWI and WWII the British ruled over the people. When the British, and other European nations did not want to return lands and power pillaged during WWII, in support of their own decision to continue the expatriation of the Jewish People they turned over the colony of Mandatory Palestine to the Jewish people. But if we use the definition above as a guideline, is giving the land, currently with people living on it who were not consulted dominion over them by another group. I can find no place where the Palestinian people of Mandatory Palestine were consulted by the British if they wanted to have their lands given to the authority of the created Israeli government, in order to create a Jewish Homeland in a place where they too can trace their own historical roots. The gift to European Jews of the British Colony of Mandatory Palestine that has led to the dispossetion (SP?) of land, and power by the Palestinian people. In my piece it is part of why I reference the words of Reb Moshe Shonfeld in his work "Holocaust survivors Accuse" from 1977. I see that it is not properly cited in the resource list, but it is cited in the document, I will add it to the resource list later in the week.
As I said I am not an expert in the politics, or history of the Middle east. But to say that taking a position that the annihilation of Gaza as retribution for October 7, or the beating of an American Citizen of Palestinian Ancestry by Jewish Settlers in the west Bank is an indication of Mamdani being Antisemetic himself, or unfit to lead our city to me allows us to turn a blind eye. Would we turn a blind eye if these actions were being done to a Christin Population? I am not sure in the US we would. Instead i position that we are forgiving of the dispossession of historical family farms to create Jewish Settlements in the west Bank, or the Zones A, B, and C sections of Israeli rule over the Palestinian populations of the world may be more because of our own cultural Islamophobia that we as a nation, and as a city need to examine. And maybe, just maybe if we look at our own ingrained and culturally acceptable Islamophobia with a critical lens we might be less willing to accept that Mamdani's mayoral tenure for NYC and the way he is being portrayed by his political rivals such as Cuomo and Adams to play upon both the current rise in antisemitism in the US, and the consistent Islamophobic narrative our country has normalized we can get past his Brown skin, and the fact that his religion is not the accepted Judeo Christian norm of NYC and the US, but rather build something forward where we move to provide a better NYC.
I appreciate your openness in acknowledging that you’re not an expert on Middle Eastern history—few of us are. But when this history is invoked to shape contemporary judgments, it’s important that the record is accurate.
First, the British did not gift Palestine to the Jewish people. The British Mandate over Palestine was not a colony in the usual sense, but a League of Nations responsibility given to Britain after World War I, with the stated goal—endorsed by international law in the Balfour Declaration and later in the San Remo Conference of 1920—of facilitating the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in their ancestral land. Importantly, this did not mean displacing the Arab population; the intention was for both Jews and Arabs to live in peace under self-governance.
In 1947, the United Nations, not Britain, voted to partition the land into two states—one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan. The Arab states and the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it and launched a war against the nascent Jewish state. That war—not a colonial handover—is what led to displacement, tragedy, and long-standing grievances on both sides.
As for October 7, let’s be clear: the massacre of over 1,200 civilians, including children, the elderly, and entire families, was not simply a provocation—it was a calculated act of mass murder and terror, unprecedented in its brutality. Any country—any people—would respond. The loss of innocent life in Gaza is horrifying and tragic, but the context matters: Israel is at war with a terror organization, Hamas, that embeds itself among civilians and openly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Equating Israel’s military response to annihilation flattens a complex, tragic situation into an oversimplified moral binary.
No one should be beaten, dispossessed, or demonized based on their religion or ethnicity—whether Jewish or Palestinian. Islamophobia, like antisemitism, is real and deeply concerning, and I agree we must confront it. But critiquing a political candidate’s views on Israel or terrorism is not inherently Islamophobic—just as criticizing Mamdani’s associations and statements is not inherently racist.
This isn’t about turning a blind eye. It’s about insisting on nuance and truth. We can advocate for Palestinian rights and dignity without rewriting history or demonizing Israel for defending itself. We can oppose Islamophobia and acknowledge the ways antisemitism, including in intellectual and activist spaces, often hides behind the language of justice.
Let’s aim to build that better NYC—and a better world—through facts, dialogue, and empathy for all people.
Sent from my iPhone
Begin forwarded message:
From: Robert Zuckerberg <zuckie15@aol.com>
Date: July 15, 2025 at 8:37:29 AM EDT
To: zuckie15@aol.com
Subject: Critics say Zohran Mamdani is antisemitic. He says he’s holding Israel accountable. - POLITICO
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/22/critics-say-zohran-mamdani-is-antisemitic-he-says-hes-simply-holding-israel-accountable-00416388
As an active retired UFT member I believe our 2000 Delegates have spoken with their 63 % endorsement vote for Mamdani. With that vote, the Union is now saddled with his endorsement, much to the chagrin and consternation of many of our activists and loyal Union members.
I believe the Op Ed I submitted (below)but not published will explain why many of us will not vote for him (despite our Union’s endorsement) and may not vote at all considering the choices we are facing in the upcoming mayoral election.
We Know Antisemitism When We See It — So Why Are We Being Told Zohran Mamdani Is a Friend?
By Bob Zuckerberg
In the months since October 7, American Jews have been told to “stay calm,” “understand the context,” and even “check our privilege” as antisemitic rhetoric floods our streets and institutions. But it’s one thing to endure this from anonymous trolls or distant ideologues — and another when it comes from an elected official in New York City, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel.
Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani presents himself as a principled progressive. But over time, he has made it unmistakably clear that his politics depend on erasing or minimizing Jewish trauma — and excusing or outright praising those who incite or commit violence against Jews.
Let’s put aside euphemisms. In 2017, Mamdani released a rap track praising the “Holy Land Five,” a group convicted in U.S. courts of funneling $12 million to Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. “My love to the Holy Land Five,” he rapped. That wasn’t subtle. That was a political message.
Since becoming a public figure, Mamdani has doubled down. He has refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” — a slogan regularly chanted at New York protests, where it now serves as a thinly veiled call for violence against Jews globally. The First and Second Intifadas killed over 1,000 Israeli civilians, including children and Holocaust survivors, in bombings, shootings, and stabbings. This is not ancient history — these are traumas that define our living memory.
Worse still, Mamdani compared “globalize the intifada” to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising — a grotesque equivalency that drew public rebuke from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. They rightly called the comparison “offensive” and “outrageous.”
He didn’t apologize. He didn’t even reconsider.
After the horrors of October 7, Mamdani issued a public statement that failed to name Hamas once. Instead, he criticized Israel’s government. There were no words for the babies burned alive, the families executed, the women raped and paraded. No empathy for a nation reeling from the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
He later refused to support resolutions affirming Israel’s right to exist or condemning the Holocaust. His office claimed he doesn’t typically sign such resolutions — but this is about something deeper than legislative habits. This is about values.
Mamdani’s legislative priorities are similarly telling. He is a co-sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime Act,” which would empower the state to investigate and potentially penalize Jewish nonprofit organizations in New York for supporting Israeli institutions — even hospitals, youth programs, or universities. It singles out Jewish communal support structures for scrutiny unlike anything else in state law. There is no equivalent targeting of nonprofits that support Chinese, Iranian, Turkish, or Palestinian causes abroad.
This is a familiar feeling for many of us. Jewish history teaches us that antisemitism rarely appears first in the form of violence. It starts with dehumanization. With isolation. With double standards and insinuations that Jews are uniquely dangerous or disloyal. Then, often with a self-righteous smile, it becomes law.
And yet Mamdani is still defended as a “friend” of the Jewish community. His allies insist he is merely “anti-Zionist,” as if that somehow separates him from the centuries-old patterns of antisemitic suspicion and hatred. He recently appeared on the show of influencer Hasan Piker — a man who has called Jews “bloodthirsty pig dogs” and Orthodox Jews “inbred.” Mamdani offered no pushback. He engaged warmly.
At what point are we allowed to say: Enough?
This is not about “criticism of Israel.” Israeli democracy includes fierce internal criticism. Israeli streets are filled with anti-government protests. Israeli courts and journalists hold leaders accountable in ways most democracies can only dream of.
This is about a refusal to see Jewish people as a people — as a nation, with our own history, memory, and sovereignty. It is about the erasure of Jewish identity and Jewish grief under the guise of social justice.
Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks once warned that antisemitism mutates. It doesn’t always look like the past. Today, it wears new clothes — the language of activism, anti-imperialism, and intersectionality. But its essence is the same: the view that Jewish life and legitimacy is uniquely problematic, and must be dismantled.
We are not overreacting. We are not confused. We know exactly what this is.
And if this is what “allyship” looks like in 2025 — refusing to name Hamas, praising terror fundraisers, chanting for global intifada — then Jewish New Yorkers are fully within our rights to say: We don’t need friends like this.
Sources:
Politico: Mamdani defends “Globalize the Intifada”
NY Post: Holocaust Museum rebukes Mamdani
City Journal: Breakdown of Not On Our Dime Act
Daily Beast: Mamdani’s rap tribute to Holy Land Five
Good morning,
I want to be able to see your point of view more clearly. So I tried reading the sources, except the NY Post since I am trying not to reference or drive too much traffic to that publication. When I searched the other three sources seem not to show up under the titles you listed. Can you please share the links?
https://www.politico.com/news/2025/06/22/critics-say-zohran-mamdani-is-antisemitic-he-says-hes-simply-holding-israel-accountable-00416388
https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-city-mayoral-election-zohran-mamdani-anti-israel
Again, both of the links you sent do not match your sources.
However, when I read these articles, the cribed message is not that Mamdani is anti semetic, but that he disagrees with the rules that a class of people, born in a cou try are entitled to less rights that those given the country through colonial treaties, not free will have created an apartheid state.
He has also condemned the October 7th Attack as a war crime, as well as acknowledging the Israli Settlements that forcefully displaced Palestinians is also a violation of international law. We can both support the right of the Jewish people to live free, while also acknowledging the importance of the Palestinian people to have self determination free of colonial rule and apartheid dehumanization as well.
To Do so requires we acknowledge that the forced resettlement, or removal of people from their homes based on race does not breed peace, but resentment. It happened in Europe, it has happened in the US, and in countries across human history the subjugation of one people by another is part of our history. How we respond to it now, knowing that history is also important. Do we approve.of the forced removal and resettlement of people's into camps? Do we support the restriction of people in the land they were born in based on their race or religions?
Can we truly find a way to peaceful coexistence if we cannot recognize the historical suffering occupation causes in a effort to find truly equal footing as opposed to subjugation?
Also please ignore my typos in the response. Hard to type and not miss letters etc on a phone.
Thank you for expressing your concerns so sincerely and with a genuine desire for peace and justice. I agree that we must learn from history and that human dignity and equality are non-negotiable. That said, I think it’s important to clarify some points and offer a broader context.
First, many Palestinians are citizens of Israel—about 20% of Israel’s population. They vote, hold office, serve on the Supreme Court, and participate in every aspect of Israeli civic life. This reality does not reflect apartheid, but rather the challenges of a democracy navigating coexistence amid a century-long conflict, often marked by violence and rejectionism from Israel’s neighbors and from groups like Hamas.
Since its inception in 1948, Israel has faced existential threats from surrounding nations and terror groups committed to its destruction. These are not abstract fears—they are lived realities, including wars, suicide bombings, and over 20,000 rockets launched at civilians in recent years alone. The security measures Israel takes—while tragic in their impact on innocent Palestinians—are not rooted in racial or ethnic hatred, but in survival.
The term “colonial” doesn’t fit this context either. Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel, with millennia of historical, spiritual, and physical connection to it. The modern return to that land was not about conquering others, but about reestablishing a homeland after centuries of persecution, including the Holocaust.
That said, I do believe Palestinians deserve dignity, opportunity, and a pathway to their own national self-expression—just not at the expense of Israel’s security or existence. Real peace must come from mutual recognition and a willingness to reject violence, not from one-sided historical narratives that vilify one side while absolving the other.
We can support coexistence, equal rights, and justice for all people without distorting the facts on the ground or assigning collective blame. We must be honest about history, yes—but also honest about the present. And above all, we must hold space for complexity without compromising on truth.
Full transparency, I have never visited Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. One resource I use to describe the inequities that the occupied portions, including zones B and C, C where palestrinian people have trouble accessing basic items such as education and water, and where they have little control to develop or maintain their own ancestral lands is his document from the UN here: https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2022/04/israels-housing-policies-occupied-palestinian-territory-amount-racial
Amnesty International would also classify trhe policies that way (https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/02/israels-apartheid-against-palestinians-a-cruel-system-of-domination-and-a-crime-against-humanity/).
Those are the lines in my piece where I attempt, maybe not so successfully, to draw a parallel line to the Trail of Tears in the US. Or in prior writings can think of how HOA and "private community's" in the history of the US including redlining and other aspects unofficially locked people, including Jews out of neighborhoods here in the US in the not so recent past.
as far as Colonialism The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy defines colonialism as "Colonialism is a practice of domination, which involves the subjugation of one people to another. At least since the Crusades and the conquest of the Americas, political theorists have used theories of justice, contract, and natural law to both criticize and justify European domination. In the nineteenth century, the contradiction between liberal ideals and colonial practice became particularly acute, as the dominion of Europe over the rest of the world reached its zenith"
That part of the world the people there have been without self determination for much of recorded history. the Romans, The Ottomans, and between WWI and WWII the British ruled over the people. When the British, and other European nations did not want to return lands and power pillaged during WWII, in support of their own decision to continue the expatriation of the Jewish People they turned over the colony of Mandatory Palestine to the Jewish people. But if we use the definition above as a guideline, is giving the land, currently with people living on it who were not consulted dominion over them by another group. I can find no place where the Palestinian people of Mandatory Palestine were consulted by the British if they wanted to have their lands given to the authority of the created Israeli government, in order to create a Jewish Homeland in a place where they too can trace their own historical roots. The gift to European Jews of the British Colony of Mandatory Palestine that has led to the dispossetion (SP?) of land, and power by the Palestinian people. In my piece it is part of why I reference the words of Reb Moshe Shonfeld in his work "Holocaust survivors Accuse" from 1977. I see that it is not properly cited in the resource list, but it is cited in the document, I will add it to the resource list later in the week.
As I said I am not an expert in the politics, or history of the Middle east. But to say that taking a position that the annihilation of Gaza as retribution for October 7, or the beating of an American Citizen of Palestinian Ancestry by Jewish Settlers in the west Bank is an indication of Mamdani being Antisemetic himself, or unfit to lead our city to me allows us to turn a blind eye. Would we turn a blind eye if these actions were being done to a Christin Population? I am not sure in the US we would. Instead i position that we are forgiving of the dispossession of historical family farms to create Jewish Settlements in the west Bank, or the Zones A, B, and C sections of Israeli rule over the Palestinian populations of the world may be more because of our own cultural Islamophobia that we as a nation, and as a city need to examine. And maybe, just maybe if we look at our own ingrained and culturally acceptable Islamophobia with a critical lens we might be less willing to accept that Mamdani's mayoral tenure for NYC and the way he is being portrayed by his political rivals such as Cuomo and Adams to play upon both the current rise in antisemitism in the US, and the consistent Islamophobic narrative our country has normalized we can get past his Brown skin, and the fact that his religion is not the accepted Judeo Christian norm of NYC and the US, but rather build something forward where we move to provide a better NYC.
I appreciate your openness in acknowledging that you’re not an expert on Middle Eastern history—few of us are. But when this history is invoked to shape contemporary judgments, it’s important that the record is accurate.
First, the British did not gift Palestine to the Jewish people. The British Mandate over Palestine was not a colony in the usual sense, but a League of Nations responsibility given to Britain after World War I, with the stated goal—endorsed by international law in the Balfour Declaration and later in the San Remo Conference of 1920—of facilitating the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in their ancestral land. Importantly, this did not mean displacing the Arab population; the intention was for both Jews and Arabs to live in peace under self-governance.
In 1947, the United Nations, not Britain, voted to partition the land into two states—one Jewish and one Arab. The Jewish leadership accepted the plan. The Arab states and the Palestinian Arab leadership rejected it and launched a war against the nascent Jewish state. That war—not a colonial handover—is what led to displacement, tragedy, and long-standing grievances on both sides.
As for October 7, let’s be clear: the massacre of over 1,200 civilians, including children, the elderly, and entire families, was not simply a provocation—it was a calculated act of mass murder and terror, unprecedented in its brutality. Any country—any people—would respond. The loss of innocent life in Gaza is horrifying and tragic, but the context matters: Israel is at war with a terror organization, Hamas, that embeds itself among civilians and openly calls for the destruction of the Jewish state. Equating Israel’s military response to annihilation flattens a complex, tragic situation into an oversimplified moral binary.
No one should be beaten, dispossessed, or demonized based on their religion or ethnicity—whether Jewish or Palestinian. Islamophobia, like antisemitism, is real and deeply concerning, and I agree we must confront it. But critiquing a political candidate’s views on Israel or terrorism is not inherently Islamophobic—just as criticizing Mamdani’s associations and statements is not inherently racist.
This isn’t about turning a blind eye. It’s about insisting on nuance and truth. We can advocate for Palestinian rights and dignity without rewriting history or demonizing Israel for defending itself. We can oppose Islamophobia and acknowledge the ways antisemitism, including in intellectual and activist spaces, often hides behind the language of justice.
Let’s aim to build that better NYC—and a better world—through facts, dialogue, and empathy for all people.
May I suggest, that in the future use the correct titles when citing a reference. I will start to read the reference you sent, along with other links.