There is a terrible irony in the spectacle of protesters turning on New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, chanting, "Mamdani you can't hide, we charge you with genocide." Given that accusing Israel of genocide has been one of Mamdani's calling cards, the reversal is almost comical. The episode at a vigil for the victims of October 7 also reveals how obsessive are the forces that politicians such as Mamdani have encouraged, and how hopeless is the notion that the ideological extremism that has spread and metastasized into an anti-Israel obsession can be satisfied through accommodation. Mamdani's great offense, apparently, was to acknowledge that Jews had suffered an atrocity on October 7, 2023.
On the third anniversary of the Hamas massacre, he issued a statement describing the attack as "horrific war crimes," recalling the more than 1,100 Israelis murdered and 251 people abducted into Gaza, and expressing sympathy for New Yorkers who continue to carry the trauma of that day. The opening lines seemed to some like lip service, since the statement then pivoted into a sweeping denunciation of Israel, accusing it of an "ongoing genocide," invoking apartheid and occupation, condemning American complicity and cataloging Palestinian suffering. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the message was devoted to Israel's alleged crimes.
Even on the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, Mamdani felt compelled to turn Jewish remembrance into another occasion for prosecuting the Palestinian case. For some of the activists whose cause he has so enthusiastically embraced, any sympathy for Jews is too much sympathy. The mayor had failed a purity test that appears not to permit any acknowledgment of Israeli suffering whatsoever, without treating it as a betrayal.
This, even though Mamdani is a far-left populist who has gone further than most American elected officials in adopting the language of the anti-Israel movement. He now discovers its most uncompromising elements were prepared to turn on him anyway. Like the mobs of the French and Russian revolutions, this anti-Zionist version believes itself to be morally superior.
But that means the space where true purity can sit becomes smaller and smaller to the point where not even Mamdani can live. The original problem with Mamdani's statement deserves some attention. There are 364 other days in the year on which the mayor can denounce Israel's conduct in Gaza.
He has certainly demonstrated his willingness to do so. The insistence on turning this particular day into another indictment of Israel reflects an inability to recognize Jewish suffering on its own terms. That makes the irony of the mob he faced and the obvious discomfort he felt as he heard shouts of "traitor" all the greater.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
