"I don't know what to think..."
Can we recognize that many things can be true at the same time?
Last Friday, a dear, thoughtful Christian friend texted me:
“Are you writing a piece on Mamdani? (Names of several Jewish friends) are on opposite sides and I really don’t know what to think.”
I feel you my friend. I’m Jewish and I feel the same way. Given everything happening behind the scenes in my life right now, I’ve hesitated to touch this topic, because I know whatever I write will piss off someone, either because it’s not unquestioningly pro for one side or unquestioningly anti for others.
And yet…
Hineni. Here I am.
Placing my words as an offering, because as someone wrote when I was still a regular columnist for Hearst: “I rarely agree with anything you write, but you always make me think.”
I wasn’t on social media much last weekend due to my daughter’s wedding (!!!!!) but in the few moments I was, I noticed some friends were celebrating Mamdani’s win and other, mainly Jewish friends, were upset about it because of his past support of the BDS movement, his October 8th, 2023 statement which didn’t condemn Hamas, and because more recently he refused to repudiate the the phrase “Globalize the intifada.”
While I fully understand the concerns about BDS, I am uncomfortable with denying people the right to express their values through their spending decisions, because I do the same. For example, I was an AT & T customer since the first iPhone came out, but ditched them in 2021 after learning they’d funded the far-right channel One America News. When my husband suggested we trade in our SUV for a Tesla Model X a few years ago, I refused because I was disturbed by Musk’s apparent belief that SEC regs don’t apply to him - and that was before he went full-on Nazi.
But the latter two gave me pause, particularly in light of recent antisemitic attacks in this country, including the arsonist who set fire to the Governor’s mansion in Pennsylvania, as Josh Shapiro’s family celebrated Pesach, the murder of two Israeli embassy officials in Washington on May 21st, and the firebombing attack in Colorado on June 1st. On Monday, one of the victims of the Colorado attack, 82 year-old Karen Diamond, died of the injuries she sustained.
I’m reminded of that fear every time I walk into my synagogue, past recently installed concrete bollards out front to prevent a car ramming through the newly reinforced front door, under the eye of the increased number of security cameras, and hear the announcement at our board meeting that we must all undergo a security refresher before the High Holy Days to ensure our congregants can worship safely. That’s in addition to the increased security guard presence on those days. You want your place of worship to be welcoming to all, to have open doors, but it’s been decades since synagogues have had that luxury.
Top it off with reading about the “Death Death to the IDF” chants (and watching so many people defend it) and I get why many of my Jewish friends are apprehensive.
And yet…
I came across this graphic last week, and even though it was created to express the many factors that go into fighting the mental health crisis in our country, it struck me as a useful visual way to explain why Mamdani appeals to so many New Yorkers, especially young voters.
What Zohran Mamdani tapped into is the thing that too many older establishment Democrats have steadfastly ignored for literally decades at the party’s peril: the economic concerns of voters who are not members of the wealthy donor class.
This was true even before SCOTUS’s disastrous Citizens United vs FEC decision (2010), which “ushered in massive increases in political spending from outside groups, dramatically expanding the already outsized political influence of ultra-wealthy donors, corporations, and special interest groups.”
Judging from conversations I’ve had with younger people about his win, Mamdani tapped into their frustration about the lack of strong resistance to Trump from party leadership, and the justified belief that the gerontocracy, particularly in the US Senate, doesn’t understand their despair about finding jobs with benefits, about exorbitant healthcare costs, student loan debt, lack of affordable housing, lack of investment in public transport, and so many other issues.
While I might not agree with “the youts” on everything, it’s indisputable that since I was in my 20’s in the 1980’s, economic inequality has increased dramatically by a number of different measures. In other words, the Republican Party dogma that tax cuts on the wealthiest members of society are the key to economic growth ("a rising tide lifts all boats”) is political fiction— unless, of course, they meant lifting the production of billionaire mega yachts, that is.
In short, the wealth generated by “Trickle Down” economics hasn’t trickled down, but rather concentrated it in the hands of a wealthy few. Both the share of US household income held by middle class families and the percentage of Americans in middle class households has been declining.
Note that the precipitous decline began in the 80’s and has continued ever since. Thanks for nothing, Republicans, who have apparently not had a new idea for growing the economy since.
Now Senate Republicans have passed the Big Ugly Bill, or as I like to call it, The Dennis Moore Bill (“He steals from the poor, and gives to the rich, stupid bitch”), sending it back to the House, it’s no wonder that Mamdani’s message is resonating with so many young New Yorkers.
What’s more, the reaction to his victory has been deeply disturbing and disgustingly Islamophobic.
Rep Marjorie “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene (R-GA) posted a cartoon of the Statue of Liberty in a burka.
Rep Brandon Gill (R-TX) reacted to a video where Mamdani ate biryani with his fingers, a practice that millions of people do every day across many cultures and continents, with a xenophobic exhortation to “Go Back to the Third World.”
Rep Randy Fine (R-FL) opined that"Zohran Mamdani would do to New York City what Khomeini and Khamenei did to Tehran. We cannot let radical Muslims turn America into a Shiite caliphate.” This is the same guy who suggested using nuclear weapons in Gaza, so it’s pretty clear he has multiple screws loose.
Rep Nancy Mace (R-SC) who wants to build a concentration camp in her state because it’s “got a swamp and a dream…South Carolina’s gators are ready. And they’re not big on paperwork” was equally reprehensible:
And even more unsurprisingly, inveterate attention seeker, 9/11 conspiracy theorist and failed Congressional candidate Laura Loomer launched into Islamophobic invective. “There will be another 9/11 in NYC and @ZohranKMamdani will be to blame…Get ready for Muslims to start committing jihad all over New York.”
On NPR’s Brian Lehrer show, Senator Kristin Gillibrand (D-NY) allowed a caller to frame the discussion and accused Mamandi of “making references to global jihad,” even after the host (love you Brian!) warned “There’s a lot in there, senator, some of which may be inaccurate. So I don’t know, I can’t fact check everything in real time.” She has subsequently apologized and had a conversation with Mamdani about how to “lower the temperature”.
But worst of all was the Inciter in Chief, who used his familiar tell “A lot of people are saying” to make the false claim that Mamdani isn’t here legally (he’s lived in the US since 1998 and became a naturalized US citizen in 2018) and going on to threaten him with arrest if he didn’t cooperate with the masked unidentified Trump Gestapo agents who are plucking innocent people off the streets and whisking them off to camps.
And yet…
The chants led at the Glastonbury Festival last weekend were deeply disturbing. They have nothing to do with Mamdani, but I mention them to illustrate why some of your Jewish friends might be reacting from a place of fear and uncertainty - from that feeling that we are vulnerable no matter what our views, because the same people who are decrying the dehumanization and killing of Palestinians in Gaza are calling for the dehumanization and killing of our loved ones. I know this statement will rankle many, but I beg you to hear me out.
I have cousins in Israel who served in the IDF as part of their Army service because that’s what young Israelis (that’s male and female, Pete Hegseth) are required to do. Same as in a long list of other countries. The exception in Israel are ultra orthodox youths studying in yeshivas, something that has been a significant point of contention with more secular Israelis, especially given religious extremists like Smotrich and Ben-Gvir in the governing coalition and the ongoing settler violence in the West Bank. Last weekend settler violence turned on the IDF as well. Smotrich and Ben Gvir, who have openly espoused ethnic cleansing and starvation. You know Smotrich and Ben Gvir, the same guys who are apparently trying to derail a cease fire agreement that would release the remaining hostages. Those guys.
So even though I (like many Israelis) might want a cease fire and despise the current extremist Israeli government, can the people justifying the chant understand how it feels to hear a crowd of people in a country you hold dual citizenship with, calling for the death of your family members for doing their mandatory military service?
What makes it even more egregious are statements like this:
“Bobby Vylan did not call for the death of Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader. He called for an end to the most violent force on the world stage today. No other military force brazenly and routinely carries out such extreme atrocities against men, women and children, and boasts about them openly.”
Really? No other military? Not Russia in Ukraine and Chechyna? Not even the Saudi bombing of Yemen?
This is where even a progressive Jewish woman like me feels that there is antisemitism driving some of this rather than an merely an expression of human rights.
Look I get it. Punk is about being provocative.
But if you’re defending and celebrating Bob Vylan for leading a chant of “Death Death to the IDF” or Mo Chara of Kneecap for saying “The only good Tory is a dead Tory” at a concert in 2023, after the murders of Labour MP Jo Cox in 2016 and Tory MP Sir David Amess in 2021 (Chara disingenuously claims it was “a joke” using same tactics as right wing extremists, FYI )because that it’s “merely a distraction” from Gaza (which I saw all over social media earlier this week) but you also claim to be horrified by the murders of Democratic state Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband and the attempted murder of Democratic state Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, I suggest that you take a good look hard in the mirror and ask “who have we become?”
And yet…
Despite all of this, I’m more sanguine about Mamdani’s victory than many of the friends I saw decrying it online. I am not alone. This story from Michelle Goldberg’s latest column, reminds me of the things I love about New York:
In 2023, a branch of the Palestinian restaurant Ayat opened in Brooklyn’s Ditmas Park, not far from where I live. The eatery trumpets its politics; the seafood section on the menu is headed “From the River to the Sea,” which I found clever but some of its Jewish neighbors considered threatening. An uproar grew, especially online, so Ayat made a peace offering.
In early 2024, it hosted a free Shabbat dinner, writing on social media, “Let’s create a space where differences unite us, where conversations flow freely, and where bonds are forged.” Over 1,300 people showed up. To serve them all, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported, Ayat used 15 lambs, 700 pounds of chicken and 100 branzino fish. There were also sandwiches from a glatt kosher caterer, a six-foot-long challah and a klezmer band.
The event captured something miraculous about New York City, which is, for all its tensions and aggravations and occasional bursts of violence, a place where Jews and Muslims live in remarkable harmony. In Lawrence Wright’s recent novel set in the West Bank, “The Human Scale,” a Palestinian American man tries to explain it to his Palestinian cousin: “It’s not like here. Arabs and Jews are more like each other than they are like a lot of other Americans. You’ll see them in the same grocery stores and restaurants because of the halal food.”
Eating side by side does not, of course, obviate fierce and sometimes ugly disagreements. But while outsiders like to paint New York as a roiling hellhole, there’s an everyday multicultural amity in this city that’s low-key magical.
And the thing that has helped me overcome some of my instinctual fear is that Zohran Mamdani appears to someone who is open to listening and learning - something we need a LOT more of in our country.
Many of Mamdani’s Jewish constituents defend him. And he has reached out to the Jewish community, including the Haredim. I hope my friends who were decrying his primary win are just as loud in opposition to Curtis Sliwa, who has made grossly antisemitic statements in the past, but now claims to be pro-Israel.
In a NY Times Opinion piece on June 24th, M.Gessen wrote:
“Terrorists aim to provoke a reaction. A violent and disproportionate response, because it amplifies their message that whatever they have targeted is absolute evil. They got that response in Israel’s devastation of Gaza following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7.
Terrified people tend to support disproportionate violence. Terrified people make perfect constituencies for politicians like Netanyahu because they can be convinced that the unrelenting massacre and starvation of Gazans are necessary to keep Israel safe.”
And yet…
Terrified people make perfect constituencies for politicians like Donald Trump, too.
We need to listen to one another’s fears, to really hear each other, not to try to shut down protest by allowing a wannabe dictator to weaponize antisemitism for authoritarian purposes.
So where do I stand on this?
As writers, we know that words have power. They have the power to inspire us to be better humans, but conversely to inspire people to commit atrocities.
I support free speech and yet…
Why is it so hard to make a conscious choice to avoid using language that we know full well causes fear in others? Mamdani might not have condemned the use of From the River to the Sea or Globalize the Intifada as many of us would have liked and yet…he appears to be making the choice to refrain from using the term himself. It’s because of that I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and judge him on his actions, especially because he is highlighting the economic inequality and top-down control of public schools, which so many of us have been writing about for a very long time.