Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna from 1897 to 1910, used antisemitism to win popularity, making detestation of Jews a key plank of Austria’s Christian Social Party. Adolf Hitler lived in Lueger’s Vienna and would praise him in Mein Kampf, although, for the most part, the mayor did not back up his anti-Jewish rhetoric with policies.
Jew-haters and those who, like Lueger, used Jew-hatred for political purposes, coined the term “antisemitism” in 1870s Germany to make their bigotry sound modern and scientific rather than ancient and religious. Today, those obsessed with Jews and the State of Israel as ultimate sources of evil do the same with “Zionism.” It makes antisemitism sound “progressive.”
Zionism is the national liberation movement of the Jewish people. Pogroms in the 19th century and the Holocaust in the 20th century taught Jews the inherent vulnerability of living at the sufferance of others. Zionists understood that only a sovereign Jewish state could ensure Jewish equality.
Today, resurgent antisemitism uses anti-Zionism as a gateway drug. The abuse took root in 1975, when the U.N. General Assembly passed the infamous Soviet-inspired, Arab League-promoted “Zionism-is-racism” resolution. The resolution was Moscow’s revenge for Israel’s defeat of its Egyptian and Syrian clients in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.
“Genocide” has replaced “racist” as the ultimate anti-Israel malediction.
Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s new mayor, belongs to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The party’s economic and social views mark it as neo-Marxist. Two of the three successful Democratic Party insurgents Mamdani endorsed in the city’s June 23 congressional primaries are also DSA members. The third is a former member. All three followed the mayor in accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip.
They do so because the “racist Israel” libel has not quite done the trick. Not when Israeli Arabs are the freest Arabs in the Middle East, and Israel rescued tens of thousands of endangered black Ethiopian Jews.
“Genocide” has replaced “racist” as the ultimate anti-Israel malediction. But the indictment is false. In Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other perpetrators of the Oct. 7, 2023 pogrom, the ratio of noncombatant-to-combatant deaths among Gazans has been lower than in Iraq and Afghanistan when U.S. and British troops battled Islamic fanatics.
Nevertheless, Mamdani and his Congress-bound acolytes—Republicans or independents will provide vaporous opposition in November’s general elections—outdo Lueger when it comes to the Jews. Just before the New York City primaries, Mamdani warned against “monsters” among us, which he identified as the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC and its supporters. Echoing the early 20th-century czarist forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Mamdani accused them of nefarious conspiracies, including mobilizing “dark money” to divide right-thinking Americans.
Teachers’ unions, dairy farmers, friends of Italy and similar lobbies all raise funds and try to get out the vote for preferred candidates. But when Jews do so for pro-Israel politicians, they become “monsters.”
If one really wants to find dark money, look to Qatar. It supports Hamas and hosts Al Jazeera, the Islamic world’s largest platform for anti-Western, anti-Christian and anti-Jewish Islamist propaganda. Qatar has reportedly spent at least $400 million to influence American businesses, universities and think tanks.
If one is looking for the ripple-effect of Mamdanism, of the “progressive” left’s illiberal anti-Zionism, one need only visit Maryland.
The state’s Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen repeatedly attacks AIPAC “as a malign force distorting democracy,” in the words of Washington Jewish Week. Gov. Wes Moore, another Democrat, said to harbor presidential ambitions, has declared Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a war criminal who has made American Jews less safe. Here is the old claim that Jews who defend themselves cause antisemitism.
When “Christ-killer!” loses its deadly effect in a secular age, cry “genocide!” The circle of Jew-hate closes, from medieval to post-modern, reactionary to “progressive.”
