Tizzy

Some American Jews are again in a tizzy. Democratic Socialists allied with Zohran Mamdani did very nicely, thank you, in the New York elections. We were in NYC at the time, watching the returns roll in, an electoral astonishment like Mamdani himself. You’d think that anything that called itself “socialism” would be dead on arrival, even in a cosmopolitan metropolis. But Zohran Mamdani has a gift for branding, and old standards of contamination do not apply.

I don’t have much to say about Chevalier and Valdez, two candidates who beat their tiny little drums as if obsessed with the question of Israel’s culpability. Both made the issue a centerpiece talking point, and used it as a tool in a campaign of virtue signaling. I happen to be one of those self-critical Zionists who believe that Israel has much to atone for, but Chevalier and Valdez gave it their all, ignoring the catastrophe of October 7th. In fact, Chevalier attended a rally of her bedmates celebrating the Hamas attack on Israeli settlements. Is there a big enough constituency for this version of politics? Without any doubt the answer is yes. Borderline Jew-hatred has its partisans on the left.

But the more interesting race was Goldman vs. Lander, competing for the 10th District in Lower Manhattan/Brooklyn. Goldman was the moderate, Lander the progressive, aligned with Mamdani after losing the race for Mayor. For the umpteenth time, Israel was at the center, with Lander pounding away at its sins, refusing to take money from AIPAC, and continually affirming his links to Mamdani. You could be forgiven for thinking that he was a Palestinian activist and, when he won, that’s how some people told the story.

The truth is actually far more complicated. Lander beat the pants off Goldman with plenty of support from the Jews of New York, but this was not a case of anti-Semitism run wild. Both men are Jews who support the legitimacy of the State of Israel. Both affirm their belonging to the Jewish People. I don’t know much about the pre-Gaza Lander, but he had hard things to say after the slaughter of Palestinians and the erasure of Gaza as a home for its citizens.

But this doesn’t mean that Democrats have lost their minds or that the time is up for American Jews. It means what elections typically mean: a snapshot in time of the will of the electorate. The largest concentration of Jewish Americans voted for a candidate who mirrored their views. Like it or not, there has been a shift with an ascending number of American citizens mistrustful of Israel’s motives and behaviors. That is true of Republicans and Democrats; it is especially true of young people in both camps. The turnaround has been picking up steam since last fall, and it equally applies to the sensibility of American Jews, who did not see Lander as a threat to our security.

If I were a prophet I could tell you where this all ends, but any resolution begins with Israel itself. It seems to have set aside diplomacy as a tool of statecraft and put its exclusive faith in force. Many of us would say that it needs a new government, which cannot arrive soon enough.