The anti-Israel rhetoric at the University of Missouri is not happening in a vacuum. It reflects a larger national pattern, one that becomes clearer when examined alongside the rise of politicians like Zohran Mamdani, the recently inaugurated mayor of New York City.
Mamdani’s platform represents the mesh point between Democratic Socialism and the umbrella organizations associated with anti-Zionism, which has blazed across North American campuses. The patterns he established reflect the behavior of the university’s Young Democratic Socialists of America (YSDA), where statements blaming Israel for the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and invoking “occupation” and “apartheid” have become commonplace.
Why is this bad? Considering the fact that these student groups aren’t trying to win any major elections, they have had the freedom to express their opinions in ways that Mamdani has not.
Missouri’s YDSA chapter has been radically persistent with its staunch anti-Zionism, and there seems to be a mixing with members of the now-inactive chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, whose president was recently placed on probation for harassing a pro-Israel student. YDSA often projects the genocidal chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” and has a history of pushing blatant misinformation about Israel.
Since the start of Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza post-Oct. 7, the group has consistently covered shared campus spaces with overly inflated casualty figures meant to demonize Israel that not even Hamas can try to justify. The Gaza Health Ministry (or Hamas propaganda machine) that YDSA frantically spews claims that not a single person has died of natural causes in more than two years.
This campus behavior underscores the risks associated with similar rhetoric when adopted by elected officials.
If Mamdani is to govern with the same attitude toward the Jewish state and pro-Israel/Zionist community as YDSA, the consequences for many of his constituents will be cause for concern. It should be obvious why a mayor of America’s largest Jewish community, who legitimizes rhetoric denying Jewish peoplehood and Israel’s right to exist, poses a direct harm to Jews in New York City.
Mamdani has made numerous controversial assertions about Israel as a whole, as the mayor-elect has a long history of advocating for the “Palestinian cause,” dating back to his days as a student at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he co-founded the school’s SJP chapter in 2012.
In perhaps the most glaring moment of Mamdani’s tenure as president of the anti-Israel student group, he co-authored an opinion piece in which he stated, “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.” While Mamdani’s head-turning remarks about the Jewish state may have begun in college, they certainly did not cease upon his graduation in 2014.
In 2017, Mamdani joined the Democratic Socialists of America, the largest socialist organization in the United States. As a member, he assisted in the campaign for Khader El-Yateem, who was running for the New York City Council at the time. Mamdani explained his support by stating, “He (El-Yateem) was a socialist, he was pro-BDS, and he was running for local office.”
BDS is the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.
Immediately after Oct. 7, Mamdani released a statement that omitted any condemnation of Hamas, instead opining that “the path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
He also refuses to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and has threatened to arrest the prime minister of Israel should he visit New York.
When examined together, the parallel becomes unmistakable.
Conversely, Missouri’s YDSA chapter is an example of when radical ideology goes unchecked. Anti-Zionism has become the mesh point of people on both ends of the political spectrum, as they unite in their resentment of Zionism.
The university and its administration must distance itself from this inflammatory mischaracterization of a nation-state, and instead work with reasonable Israeli and Palestinian voices to foster safe discourse, physical safety, and a diversion from woke and misguided radicalism.
What began as slogans on campuses has transformed into electable messaging, proving that anti-Zionist rhetoric is more than just a posture, but a popular political brand.
