Remember when sacked academic lecturer David Miller tweeted that “Zohran Mamdani is a Zionist and a servant of Zionists?” That’s the same Mamdani who appeared alongside Nerdeen Kiswani at a protest in May 2021 under a sign reading, “There is only one solution: Intifada Revolution,” and another one promoting “Resistance.”
In his speech, he supported the BDS movement against Israel. To be fair, though, Kiswani, founder of the group Within Our Lifetime, later accused Mamdani’s statement on Oct. 7, 2025, of erasing “the decades of siege, occupation and systematic killing that led to that day,” among other choice words of denigration.
These days, however, Mamdani is firmly on track, as open-eyed commentators foresaw. The throttle on anti-Zionism is opening wide while the brake on antisemitism is, well, not being employed. Moreover, this situation was and is being facilitated and encouraged by Jews. Another Jew-on-Jew mess.
On the Jewlicious blog, there is a rather sharply worded analysis of Mamdani. He first came to my attention with his 2023 legislative initiative when, as a New York State Assembly member, Mamdani introduced the “Not on Our Dime” bill to block state charities from supporting Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, portrayed as “illegal settlements.” Now, the bill has been reintroduced by his allies.
Mamdani displayed moral degeneration when he made some inflammatory statements, like refusing to issue a clear rejection of his “globalize the intifada” rhetoric; ignoring the cause of death of Karen Diamond, 82, as a result of a Molotov cocktail thrown at a crowd of pro-Israel marchers in Boulder, Colo.; by tweeting that it was a “vicious attack”; and his hosting of anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil and others for a Ramadan Iftar feast at Gracie Mansion.
That, it appears, was just the prologue. Now we have the curse of AIPAC as “monsters.”
Of course, there are so many ways to be a “monster.” Remember when Mamdani mourned an Al Jazeera “journalist” who, remarkably, in his spare time, served as a Hamas sniper? Now, even some of Mamdani’s Jewish allies are criticizing his use of the word to describe the pro-Israel lobbying organization.
One could also criticize his use of that term as being a misquotation based on a mistranslation.
While Mamdani invoked the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci in telling supporters that “the old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born” and that “now is the time of monsters,” in truth, Gramsci, writing in Italian from prison, used the term fenomeni morbosi, or “morbid symptoms.”
Now that the primaries are over, what is important is that Mamdani’s anti-Jewish and anti-Israel orientation is influencing the balance of political power—and not only in New York City and New York State.
Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana may have slammed Mamdani as a “real monster” at the JNS International Policy Summit in Jerusalem this past week, citing his absence from the annual Israel Day Parade, but that is not impressing the electorate, among them too many Jews.
The real monster is what is developing politically. That is the “monster-in-the-making.”
A false narrative about the Jewish people’s national identity and Israel’s actions in its defense has moved from the murky depths of Arab propaganda to college lecture halls. From there, it proceeded to campus lawns and city streets. Gathering strength, its woke approach and neo-Marxist justification drew in the Jewish remnants of the failed communist, socialist and progressive camps who then attracted Jewish liberals.
These liberals were and continue to be embedded deep in Jewish establishment elites, both the anti-Zionist and the accepted legacy organizations. In short, Jewish political and sociological structures are being undermined.
Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists of America slate of primary winners on Tuesday—Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier (who helped lead the 2024 pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University), and progressive Brad Lander—won House races. That, of course, will reflect on the very possible coming conquest of the Democratic Party by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ro Khanna of California and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, not to mention the turbulence within the Republican Party.
Also, pay attention to this report: The city’s Board of Elections reported 420,527 voter check-ins in the 2026 primaries, including the 172,743 voters who took part in the nine-day early voting period that concluded on June 21. That means a little less than 250,000 voters had cast ballots on Primary Day itself. By contrast, more than 1 million votes were cast in the 2025 mayoral primary.
In a piece on March 14, 2024, I quoted Ze’ev Jabotinsky’s words, published in June 1939, and as they seemed not to have enough of an effect, I repeat them. He observed that his fellow Jews were as if “lulled to sleep by chloroform” with “their lethargy, their … ‘it doesn’t concern me’ attitude.” He wrote that he witnessed the abeyance of his fellow Jews’ “abilities to think, fight, desire, even groan in pain.”
Two months later, it became a “too late” situation. Without morbid comparisons, how much time is “too late” for too many American Jews when a “monster” appears?
