Even after his upset primary win a few weeks ago, there have been some Democrats who have been trying to rally an "independent" candidate to beat Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani in the general election. It's an endeavor I view as scurrilous, for the same reason I found third party protest voting in 2024 or 2020 or 2016 scurrilous: Democrats should support the results of the Democratic primary, and certainly should not risk letting in a reactionary because their heart just isn't moved by the Democratic nominee. There may be extraordinary exceptions to this rule, but Zohran Mamdani is not one of them. If Joe Walsh gets it, the rest of us can too.
But to be honest, I view this as a bit of a moot point, because the attempt to rally an anti-Mamdani seems to be sputtering. As the Wall Street Journal puts it, the anti-Mamdani initiative suffers from missing a few key ingredients, such as "a positive message" and "a candidate" and "enough votes to win." Seems problematic.
This broader fizzling out has, I think, a more specified Jewish parallel. Reports of Jewish loathing of Mamdani are wildly overstated, but there's no doubt many have concerns, and some of those concerns are legitimate. While I think the criticisms of his condemnations of the Colorado and DC attacks are wildly unfair, his statement immediately following 10/7 was genuinely bad, and Jews are allowed to find worrisome his support for BDS and his refusal to denounce the slogan "globalize the intifada."
Yet while there's been a lot of media froth about these issues, my sense is these concerns haven't actually manifested in widespread Jewish backlash to Mamdani. There are concerns, but not panic. And more often than not, it seems, many NYC Jews are just not venturing that loud of an opinion at all, even where they do disagree with Mamdani, on issue areas that in years past we might have really seen a widespread blowup. What's going on?
My mind returns to a post I wrote at the very tail-end of the Obama administration, following his decision to, for the first and only time, abstain from voting on or vetoing an anti-Israel UN Security Council resolution reaffirming that the Israeli settlements in the West Bank were unlawful (you might remember the abstention as the one Tim Walz voted to condemn).
The usual suspects on the right went ballistic about the Obama administration's "betrayal of Israel". And for my part, I was well-familiar with all the arguments against enabling such UN resolutions -- the general bias of the institution, its naked double-standards where Israel was concerned, specific language in the resolution itself that seemed to downplay legitimate Jewish connection to Jerusalem. But my post was about why, in spite of all that, I just could not bring myself to get mad about it.
But I just can't bring myself to be angry. I read the usual suspects falling over themselves in histrionic rage -- Mort Klein ranting that "Obama’s anti-Semitism runs so deep that he also apparently needed to drive one more knife into Israel’s back," Netanyahu saying he "colluded against Israel", David French fulminating against the supposed "50 years of foreign policy" undone by a single abstention -- and I just can't do it. I can't.
The ADL -- which murmurs empty platitudes about the President's right to implement policy when picking avowedly anti-two-stater David Friedman for Ambassador -- suddenly is "incredibly disappointed" that the Obama administration followed consistent American policy in opposition to the settlements? The JFNA -- which (and this was forwarded to me by an AIPAC-attending friend of mine) "has not said ONE THING about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism from Trump and his appointees" -- sure found its voice on this one.
[....]
Will this resolution do any good? I doubt it. It's empty words from a body whose words deservedly carry little credit. Still, much of international diplomacy is the art of using empty words to send messages. Maybe the message here is that breathless hysterics about Obama selling Israel out! over and over and over again won't carry the day forever. Certainly that's a message I can get behind, regardless of whether anyone pays attention to the substance of the resolution.
I just can't take seriously anymore people who simultaneously decry America's policy towards Syria as being naught but words, while breathlessly characterizing one -- one -- abstention on a UN resolution that is consistent with longstanding American policy towards Israel as an act of "aggression". One would think that those "mere words" would pale in comparison to $38 billion in aid America will be giving Israel thanks to Obama's leadership. The UN is not the only entity whose words carry little credit these days. I've completely lost whatever confidence I had in mainline Jewish groups to maintain a sense of proportion and principle when it comes to defending a secure, democratic, Jewish state of Israel.
The UN resolution won't accomplish anything. Perhaps its only tangible impact is that it is felt as a rebuke by the Israeli government. Given their behavior over the past eight years towards the Obama administration and the American Jewish community writ large, I can't even be mad about that. You're not getting everything you want, all the time, from your "friends"? Welcome to the club.
So I abstain on this fight. Why shouldn't I? If I believe -- and I do -- that the settlements are "a" (not "the") obstacle to peace, and I believe -- and I do -- that Israeli settlement on territories in the West Bank should be contingent on a final, negotiated status agreement with the Palestinians, and I believe -- and I do -- that part of any remotely plausible peace plan means that not everyone will get to live on the precise acre of land that they wish, why should I muster up any outrage on this resolution? Because its verbiage isn't perfect? When is it ever? Because the UN is biased? Of course it is, but so what? Because the Netanyahu administration is trying its level best to negotiate a two-state solution and this throws a wrench in their delicate plans? Don't make me laugh.
Fast forward to today, and I think a lot of people are feeling something similar to this. A simple way of putting it would be that the comportment of the Israeli government over the past (at least) 18 months has been so abysmal that it has made many of us considerably more tolerant of anti-Israel criticism than we might have been in years past. Even the criticisms we don't personally agree with, don't seem so far out-of-bounds -- they might not be what we believe, but they're not wildly out of range of what we believe.
But things run deeper than that. Part of what we're seeing is an exhaustion over being asked to go to the mat for an Israeli government that we know -- we know -- would never lift a finger for us in return. They view people like us with the utmost contempt, even as they scream at us to show good Jewish solidarity and back them to the hilt. The post-10/7 story has been Jewish liberals patiently extolling the need to understand military necessity and holding complexity and remembering the hostages, with the Israeli government responding by openly promising to starve out Gazans while selling out the hostages, all to keep the war going as long as possible in order to save Netanyahu's political skin and satisfy the far-right's expansionist agenda of ethnic cleansing. Virtually every narrative of justice that could have been mustered on Israel's behalf in the wake of 10/7 has, by Israel's own hand, been made out to be a cruel joke. Jay Michaelson got it exactly right: they've made us feel like freiers -- sucks, fools, saps.
At some point, one just doesn't want to do it anymore. What's the point? Again, it's not that we don't have reasonable concerns. But after the 50th iteration of having a reasonable concern about someone's 10/7 tweet transmogrified by right-wing extremists into "hell yeah, we should cut all of Columbia's funding and deport the students to South Sudan!", one eventually learns to keep quiet.
So that's what I think we're seeing. Partially, it's a greater tolerance for sharper criticisms of Israel than might have been accepted in year's past. But partially, it's just a decision to abstain -- to withdraw from the one-sided bargain where American Jews serve as Israel's defense attorney and Israel thanks us by spitting in our food and calling us suckers. Enough is enough.
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