By: Rafael Castro

Contrary to most pundits, I do not see the fact that Zohran Mamdani is now mayor of New York City as the main reason to worry about his victory. Yes, he might raise taxes on white neighborhoods (and white-adjacent ones). Yes, he might say nasty things about Zionism and AIPAC, he might never visit Israel, never join the Israel Day Parade, and refuse not to sport a keffiyeh the next time he enjoys pastrami or visits the Satmar Rebbe.

No, the real reason to worry about Mamdani’s victory is that surveys indicate that around 30% of New Yorkers self-identifying as Jewish cast their ballots for an avowed anti-Zionist and Hamas apologist.

Commentators have tried to conceal this disgraceful percentage by arguing that this 30% is not really Jewish-neither halakhically, nor culturally, nor in terms of religious observance. And yet, while probably true, all these subtle distinctions and nuances are unlikely to impress or be taken seriously by American politicians and American political parties.

According to post-election surveys, Donald Trump secured around 30-45% of the Jewish vote in New York City. Nevertheless, these figures are largely owed to very heavy Haredi and Modern Orthodox (not Open Orthodox) support for Trump. Among non-Orthodox Jews, Donald Trump performed worse than Zohran Mamdani.

In other words, the November 4th results showed that a socialist anti-Zionist and Hamas sympathizer is more popular among liberal progressive American Jews than the most pro-Israel President in the history of the United States of America.

At this point, antisemites should concede that the trope of “dual loyalties” is as absurd as libels about host desecration and matzah baked with blood. But antisemites are unlikely to recant. What is certain, however, is that both Democrats and Republicans will reassess their views on Jews and on foreign policy vis-à-vis Israel.

The Pedersen Index of Electoral Volatility is used by campaign managers and political parties to ensure that platform positions and messaging maximize voter intake. On November 4th, the Democrats realized that they can nominate the most hideous Jew-baiter in the most Jewish city in America, still perform well among liberal progressive Jewish voters, and thereby attract more numerous Muslim, leftist, and antisemitic voters. At the same time, Republicans understood that even the most pro-Israel Republican candidate in history, with a Torah-observant daughter and Jewish grandchildren, will remain deeply unpopular among that sector of American Jews.

The frustration of the GOP with Jewish voting patterns is understandable. In the 1990s, brave conservative intellectuals like William F. Buckley Jr. and Richard John Neuhaus attacked antisemitism frontally. Ideological and ethical considerations played a big role in their views. Nevertheless, it is naïve to suppose that their stance was not also motivated by electoral considerations and by the belief that purging the Republican camp of bigotry and antisemitism would make the GOP attractive to Jewish voters, with all the electoral and financial implications of securing their support in crucial states.

The behavior of American Jewish voters since the 1990s has consistently pulverized these hopes. And the consequences of this scorned courtship are self-evident: apart from Ted Cruz and Dan Crenshaw, no one in the Republican Party has really called out Tucker Carlson for fomenting antisemitism. Republican politicians are clearly spineless and ethical midgets, but politically they are savvy: why alienate Tucker Carlson and the tens of millions of Americans who like him for the sake of a minority whose political loyalties are immutable generation after generation?

A similar logic determines Democratic tolerance of antizionism and antisemitism. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar represent Muslim communities that are smaller, poorer, and less organized than Jewish America. Nevertheless, Muslim votes, unlike Jewish ones, cannot be taken for granted. When Amer Ghalib, the Democratic mayor of Hamtramck, Michigan, endorsed Donald Trump in September 2024 and helped him triumph in Michigan, Muslim Americans showed both Democrats and Republicans that their votes are negotiable.

Let us compare and contrast the savvy political opportunism of Mr. Ghalib with Alan Dershowitz, who remained loyal for decades to an increasingly anti-Israel Democratic Party and finally threw in the sponge in September 2024. Had Mr. Dershowitz and other Jewish leaders made it clear two decades ago that Jewish support for the Democratic Party would mirror Democratic support for the Jewish state and the Jewish people, neither Barack Obama nor Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez-let alone the hateful Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib-would probably ever have set foot in Washington, D.C.

But a full analysis of political power so unnecessarily squandered must mention figures like Bernie Sanders, Peter Beinart, Judith Butler, and Norman Finkelstein. These figures have provided legitimacy and vital oxygen to the enemies of Israel and of the Jewish people. To understand why this is so, it is important to understand the basic dynamics of antisemitism.

The theories about antisemitism are almost endless. But the basic dynamics of antisemitism are easily replicable in any school classroom. Every classroom has a top student. This top student is generally most resented both by the weakest students, who call him a nerd, and by the second-best student. Usually, these students will conceal their animosity toward the top student. Their slander or attacks against him would be intuitively recognized by most classmates as being motivated by envy.

However, suppose that in the classroom there are cousins or siblings of the top student who bad-mouth him and impute vile motivations to his character. If this goes on long enough, eventually most classmates will understand and justify the attacks of the envious students against the top student. After all, the siblings and cousins have granted a hechsher to the hatred-especially since cousins and siblings seldom backstab their own flesh and blood.

In the real world, the top student is Am Yisrael; the second-best students are groups with superiority/inferiority complexes (Germans until 1945, Muslims today, Christians prior to the Holocaust); the weakest students are communities that underperform socioeconomically; and the backstabbing relatives are the Jews who, on Haaretz, Jewish Currents, and countless leftist and antizionist organizations and platforms, attack Israel and the Jewish community, defaming both as racist, supremacist, apartheid-like, and what not.

Fanatical partisanship and fifth-column behavior are, however, only two factors in the ongoing debacle of the Goldene Medine. The third factor is the timidity with which American Jews have reacted to the recent upswell of antisemitism.

When Cornell University announced last year the return of Professor Russell Rickford, after his academic suspension due to his endorsement of the October 7th massacre and his exhilaration at the rape and murder of Israeli women, children, and elderly, I was horrified. So I wrote to every Jewish organization at Cornell, urging them to collect Jewish signatures protesting the return of the genocidal professor and announcing that if Rickford was allowed to return, then the signatories would transfer to universities elsewhere.

Not a single organization replied. Frankly, I cannot understand why any self-respecting Jewish family would transfer almost 300k to a university that bankrolls Jew-hating low-lives like Rickford. Likewise, I do not understand why, in the heart of New York City, at Columbia, Jewish students and professors were hounded and harassed for months amid the inaction and timid criticism of most Jewish organizations.

And yet imagine if, at Cornell or Columbia, not Jews but Black, Hispanic, or LGBT students had been targeted by analogous vitriol and hatred. Imagine if, say, a Professor Karl Schultz had proudly celebrated his exhilaration at the drowning of Mexicans in the Rio Grande while they were fleeing ICE. Would Jewish students have shrugged their shoulders? No. They would certainly have picketed the president’s office, organized sit-ins, and collected enough signatures to ensure that Professor Schultz got fired and that his next job would involve herding hogs.

Likewise, if any other minority at Columbia had been under siege, hundreds of thousands of New York Jews would have descended on Morningside Heights and stormed the Columbia University campus as if it were a modern-day Bastille. Why? Because defending and fighting for the rights of the weak and oppressed is the soul of Tikkun Olam and the soul of American Jewry. However, in their view, actively defending and fighting for the rights of fellow Jews, to many, reeks of vulgar Kahanism and of provoking a counterproductive escalation.

Tragically, despite the heroic example set forth by Israel, too many fifth- and sixth-generation American Jews are reacting like their forefathers, who in the shtetl had no choice but to hide and pray that the goyim would calm down.

American Jews, however, do have the choice to fight, and they should fight. Firstly, because appeasement of evil never works. Secondly, because the nations respect only those who fight for their honor and dignity fearlessly. Thirdly, because the alternative to putting up a fight is for American Jews to land in the dustbin of history for having defended, at the moment of truth, the rights and dignity of everyone except themselves.

          (IsraelNationaNews.com)

Rafael Castro is a Yale- and Hebrew University-educated political analyst. An Italian-Colombian Noahide, Rafael can be reached at [email protected]