Take This Test Before You Cast Your Vote for Mayor

The second and final mayoral debate in New York changed nothing. Unless Curtis Sliwa drops out, Zohran Mamdani will be the next mayor of New York. An antisemite will lead the city with the largest Jewish population and he will have been elected with the votes of thousands of Jews, who value their progressivism more than their Jewish heritage.Mr. Mamdani has condemned progressives who do not support Palestinianism. To Mr. Mamdani, “Progressive Except for Palestine” is not progressive. The reality, however, is that Palestinianism is anything but a progressive cause. At its core it calls for the end of Israel, and its replacement by a Hamas-dominated theocracy.Polls show that a significant majority of Palestinians in Gaza, in the West Bank, and throughout the world support Hamas and reject any two-state solution that leaves Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people. If there has ever been a regressive, anti-progressive group, it is Hamas.Recently, videos have shown Hamas terrorists executing fellow Palestinians and shooting at others. Many Palestinian supporters around the world have joined Gazans in cheering these murders. Many also cheered when Hamas threw gays off roofs, killed members of the Palestinian authority, and stole food from hungry Gaza civilians.The pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campuses around the world that followed Hamas’s October 7 massacres and Israel’s responses did not call for a two-state solution. They demanded that Palestine be “free from the river to the sea” and that the intifada be globalized. This means the violent replacement of democratic Israel with tyrannical Hamas, which is an offshoot of the theocratic Muslim Brotherhood.It is true that many progressives support Palestinianism and oppose Israel, but such support does not make Palestinianism a progressive cause. Indeed, it raises the disturbing question of why so many progressives have focused so exclusively on the Palestinian cause, to the exclusion of other pressing causes, such as the Kurds, Uyghurs, Christians in parts of Africa, even Ukrainians. Is it because the alleged oppressors of these other groups are not Jews or allies of America?The Kurds have a far stronger case for statehood than the Palestinians. There are many more of them. They are more distinct — in language, ancestry, and even religion — from their neighbors than the Palestinians are from other Arabs. They were promised a state by the treaty of Sèvres. They have been far less violent in their quest for statehood than the Palestinians. Yet they are not a progressive cause.Mr. Mamdani does not require alliance to the Kurdish cause as a precondition for joining his progressive club. It only shows how misguided some progressives can be and how they will oppose any nation that is an ally of the United States and support any group that is opposed to it. This isn’t progressive. It is anti-American, anti-Western, and anti-Judeo-Christian.That anti-Israel protests persist even after a cease-fire proves that the objection of the Mamdani progressives is not to the policies or actions of Israel, but to its very existence. Real progressives — in the spirit of Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt and more recently Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama — support Israel’s right to exist, along with progressive domestic and foreign policies.Mr. Mamdani’s litmus test — you can’t be a Mamdani progressive if you support Israel — turns progressivism into discriminatory bigotry that excludes many real progressives, not to say liberals. This is reminiscent of Soviet “progressivism,” which quickly pivoted from anti-Zionism to antisemitism.If Mr. Mamdani were true to his word, he would reject the support and endorsement of all pro-Israel progressives, liberals, Democrats, and independents. Yet he is actively seeking their support. In order to secure it, he will twist his words and positions to accommodate their need to deny that they are supporting an overtly anti-Israel candidate. And many — included some Jews — will fall for it, or pretend to.In the debate, Mr. Mamdani said he would recognize Israel, but not a “Jewish state,” because he “would not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.” What mendacious hypocrisy. Every Arab and Muslim state has a system of hierarchy based on religion. Anyone seeking citizenship in Saudi Arabia must convert to Islam. It is illegal for Qatari citizens to own a Bible. And Sharia law prevails in several Muslim countries.Yet Mr. Mamdani “recognizes” these countries. To deny Israel the right to be a Jewish country — or the nation-state of the Jewish people — is antisemitism on a national level and international level. Let’s face the sad reality that the hard left has become irredeemably anti-Israel, but that many — how many is unclear — voters who are not anti-Israel are prepared to prioritize their support for other left-wing issues and politicians over their support for Israel.Mr. Mamdani is right about one thing: This mayoral race is a litmus test. If no one who is pro-Israel can call themselves a progressive, it would seem to follow that no one who votes for Mr. Mamdani can call themselves pro-Israel. Take that test before you cast your vote.

Take This Test Before You Cast Your Vote for Mayor

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