{"id":566617,"date":"2026-07-30T09:22:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:22:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/566617\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T09:22:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T09:22:20","slug":"mamdanis-netanyahu-video-fuels-debate-over-the-meaning-of-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/566617\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani\u2019s Netanyahu video fuels debate over the meaning of antisemitism"},"content":{"rendered":"

JTA \u2014 In 2002, Lawrence Summers, then president of Harvard, described a series of mostly anti-Israel actions on and beyond campus as \u201cantisemitic in their effect if not their intent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Summers\u2019 reputation has suffered since then for reasons unrelated to Israel, but his framing remains potent. Jewish leaders frequently use the phrase to suggest that even criticism of Israel made in good faith can inspire acts of hate.<\/p>\n

That paradigm resurfaced this month in the reaction of prominent rabbis and other Jewish leaders after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a two-and-a-half-minute video explaining that he had no authority to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu under an International Criminal Court warrant accusing the Israeli prime minister of crimes against humanity. In the same video he called Netanyahu \u201ca war criminal\u201d and \u201cthe architect of a horrific genocide.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRhetoric that may not be antisemitic in intent can still be antisemitic in effect, as yours has been,\u201d wrote Rabbi Joshua Davidson of Temple Emanu-El in an open letter<\/a> to the mayor.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s video and the Jewish reaction seemed to represent a new lowpoint in the increasingly tense relationship between the mayor and the pro-Israel Jewish community.<\/p>\n

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Mamdani has been frequently and often harshly critical of Netanyahu since his campaign for mayor in 2025 \u2014 leading many Jewish leaders, for example, to boycott an event marking Jewish American Heritage Month in May. Last month, even some of his Jewish supporters were critical<\/a> when he used the word \u201cmonsters\u201d<\/a> to describe the pro-Israel lobby AIPAC.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s different in the latest eruption was the timing \u2014 just days after the video dropped, a Jewish man was stabbed near a synagogue on the Upper West Side \u2014 and the platform: The video was on its way to garnering more than 200 million views before anyone in the Jewish establishment could get a statement out the door.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not at all clear that anything Mamdani said inspired the attacker, who eyewitnesses say yelled the Arabic phrase \u201cAllahu akbar\u201d while attacking the Jewish man and an Asian man. (He is being charged with hate crimes<\/a> relating to both victims.) Some Jewish leaders were more careful than others in pointing this out.<\/p>\n

Defenders of the mayor insist that legitimate criticism of Israel, however harsh, is not a priori antisemitic or inciting.<\/p>\n

Critics of Mamdani are themselves divided, between those, such as the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s Jonathan Greenblatt, who said the mayor\u2019s rhetoric stems from an \u201cantisemitic worldview,\u201d and those who say his \u201cworldview\u201d isn\u2019t the point: It\u2019s his anti-Israel rhetoric that makes Jews feel unsafe or potentially raises the threat level.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tThe scene of a stabbing on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, New York City, July 23, 2026. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

The critics and defenders are really arguing about the same question, just from opposite directions: One side asks how much criticism of Israel a public figure can voice before it becomes antisemitic, in intent or effect; the other side charges that \u201cantisemitism\u201d becomes a word used to police criticism of Israel, and to stoke the public\u2019s fears about a perceived political opponent.<\/p>\n

Davidson and another prominent local rabbi invoked safety in their responses to the video. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl of Central Synagogue, in her own open letter<\/a>, accused Mamdani of using \u201cdehumanizing language reserved for no other nation\u201d and said his rhetoric \u201chelps create the climate in which threats and violence flourish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davidson was careful to say he wouldn\u2019t call the stabbing \u201ca direct result\u201d of the video \u2014 and then spent the rest of the letter implying exactly that, writing that Mamdani\u2019s \u201cconstant stoking of the fires of resentment toward Israel\u201d had \u201cjeopardized\u201d Jewish security.<\/p>\n

Defenders of Mamdani say such accusations of cause and effect are baseless, often suggesting that opposition to Mamdani is less about Jewish safety than shielding Israel from criticism.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tAn anti-Zionist protester wearing a Hamas headband, in New York City, January 6, 2025. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community says over and over again, \u2018It\u2019s fine to criticize Israel, it\u2019s fine to criticize Bibi,\u2019\u201d said Mik Moore, a board member of the progressive Jewish advocacy group New Jewish Narrative, in an interview. \u201cAnd then there\u2019s a very long list of exceptions: not too much, or not in this way, or not if they\u2019re not also going to say it about other people, or not if your job is New York City mayor.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added, referring to a traditional rabbinic concept that creates extra rules to prevent people from breaking a biblical commandment, \u201cI think the community is just creating fences around fences around fences, so that the idea that you can criticize Israel has become meaningless.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi: Mayor treats Jewish identity as \u2018morally tainted\u2019<\/p>\n

The mainstream critics of Mamdani counter that they aren\u2019t saying that a politician can\u2019t criticize Netanyahu. Rather, the mayor\u2019s intense focus on this issue, his harsh language and his avowed anti-Zionism make no distinctions between a supporter of Israel and a supporter of the Israeli government. It\u2019s that very support, like Zionism itself, that becomes suspect, and puts a target on every Jew\u2019s back.<\/p>\n

That was Buchdahl\u2019s point in her open letter to the mayor: \u201cYou continue to divide Jews into those whose politics you deem acceptable and Zionists whom you cast beyond the pale \u2014 knowing, as you do, how many Jews in this city are deeply attached to Israel, you cannot claim to protect Jews while using the power of your office to make Jewish identity morally tainted and imperilled.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tRabbi Angela Buchdahl speaks during a Hanukkah reception with US President Joe Biden in the East Room of the White House in Washington, December 11, 2023. (Andrew Caballero-Reynolds\/Pool via AP)<\/p>\n

In his statement, Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, said Mamdani\u2019s focus on Israel \u201cdistracts from urgent local responsibilities\u2026 including responding to a deadly Legionnaires\u2019 outbreak.\u201d (The bacteria recently killed five people and sickened more than 80 across Manhattan\u2019s Upper East Side.)<\/p>\n

\u201cLeadership means solving the crises you have the power to fix, not inventing ones you cannot,\u201d Treyger wrote. In other words, stay in your lane.<\/p>\n

NYC mayors have weighed in on foreign policy before<\/p>\n

In fact, mayors of New York, with its huge ethnic voting blocs, have often dabbled in international affairs in the name of constituent services. Ed Koch traveled to Ireland on a goodwill tour, but ended up infuriating Irish voters by suggesting the British troops in Northern Ireland were not \u201coccupying forces\u201d \u2014 remarks he later retracted.<\/p>\n

In 1995, Mayor Rudy Giuliani ejected Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat from a United Nations celebration concert at Lincoln Center, saying it would be \u201cenormously offensive\u201d to host a leader like Arafat \u201cbecause of the murder they\u2019ve engaged in over a period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before Mamdani, all 11 New York City mayors elected since the founding of Israel in 1948 visited the country. Eric Adams, Mamdani\u2019s immediate predecessor, visited the country twice as mayor and once referred to New York as the \u201cTel Aviv of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tNew York City Mayor Eric Adams praying at the Western Wall, in Jerusalem, November 16, 2025. (Benny Polatseck\/Mayoral Photography Office via AP)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Jewish community, for my entire lifetime, has been very happy for mayors to speak out about Israel when it was in support of Israel,\u201d said Moore.<\/p>\n

For Jewish New Yorkers accustomed to such gestures, especially those old enough to remember when Israel was a less polarizing subject, Mamdani\u2019s rejection of Zionism is a political and personal affront.<\/p>\n

\u2018Stunt\u2019 clip doesn\u2019t help Palestinians, says columnist<\/p>\n

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, for one, urged the mayor to lean into his concern for the Palestinians \u2014 only not in the way he has so far.<\/p>\n

Calling the recent video a \u201cpolitical stunt,\u201d he urged Mamdani<\/a> to shelve his unrealistic calls for a one-state solution to the conflict and instead convene a meeting of all sides of the issue around a path to two states for two peoples.<\/p>\n

\u201cRather than being a constructive bridge builder between [the city\u2019s Muslims and Jews], Mamdani, the city\u2019s first Muslim mayor, has chosen to be a bridge destroyer \u2014 using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as his ax,\u201d wrote Friedman.<\/p>\n

Beyond the argument over criticizing Israel, Mamdani\u2019s video also rekindled a debate over the conflation of Zionism and Jewishness, which both Mamdani critics and supporters say is being weaponized in the debate over his activism.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tA pro-Israeli protester yells towards counter-protesting Ultra-Orthodox Jews from the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta organization (not pictured) at a rally in opposition to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in New York, July 26, 2026. (AP Photo\/Ryan Murphy)<\/p>\n

In a July 23 Jerusalem Post open letter<\/a> timed to Tisha B\u2019Av, Dov Bleich \u2014 identified as an Orthodox Jewish businessman from Brooklyn \u2014 wrote that the mayor\u2019s video hurt him not because it criticized Netanyahu, but because it omitted any mention of the ways Jews connect to Israel, the land and its people.<\/p>\n

Bleich suggested Jews are being offered a false choice: \u201cEither defend every action of an Israeli government or renounce our attachment to Israel to prove our innocence. I will do neither.\u201d<\/p>\n

He stops short of blaming Mamdani for antisemitism in the city, calling that \u201ccollective guilt,\u201d but argues the mayor bears responsibility for the rhetorical climate he creates, and closes by asking Mamdani to extend to Israelis and Jews the same humanity he has asked New Yorkers to extend to Palestinians.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tAnti-Zionist protesters in New York City, April 5, 2024. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

Journalist Peter Beinart, perhaps the most visible of Israel\u2019s Jewish critics, took the opposite side in the debate over identity, accusing the Jewish establishment of being inconsistent in how it talks about Israel and Jewishness.<\/p>\n

On the one hand, he said in his own video<\/a>, Jewish leaders insist that American Jews should not be held responsible for the actions of an Israeli government. On the other, American Jewish leaders regularly insist, he said, \u201cthat there is something inherent in being Jewish that makes you a supporter of the state of Israel and the way it treats Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tPeter Beinart speaks at a rally to release Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil, who\u2019d been detained by ICE after his involvement in pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel activism, on March 20, 2025, at Foley Square in New York City. (Selcuk Acar\/Anadolu via Getty Images via JTA)<\/p>\n

And yet it is not just Jewish leaders who insist on the connection between Israel and Jewishness, and Jews are hardly of one mind about Israel\u2019s treatment of the Palestinians. Like many other surveys, Pew has found that the overwhelming majority of Jews say \u201ccaring about Israel is an essential or important part of what being Jewish means to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

1 in 4 active US Jews say Israel committed genocide<\/p>\n

As for being supporters of the way Israel \u201ctreats Palestinians,\u201d a recent AP-NORC poll found that American Jews are increasingly divided over Israeli policies. Among \u201creligiously affiliated\u201d Jews \u2014 basically, synagogue members \u2014 only about half say Israel\u2019s ongoing military operations in Gaza are justified, and one-quarter believe Israel has committed genocide.<\/p>\n

Whether they support the Israeli government or not, the conflation of Jews and Israel is \u201cone of the most serious challenges that we face,\u201d said Jonathan Jacoby, the national director of the Nexus Project, an antisemitism watchdog group positioned to the left of the ADL.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe that protests against Israel should take place in front of Jewish institutions<\/a>, all things being equal,\u201d he said in an interview. \u201cBut I understand why, in the context of people declaring that Zionism is an integral part of Jewish identity, those protests are inevitably going to take place. And I do think that we have a responsibility to pay attention to the ways in which we conflate [Jewishness and Zionism], and not just point the finger at the other conflators.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\n\t\tAnti-Zionist protesters outside a school and synagogue in New York City, January 8, 2026. (Luke Tress\/Times of Israel)<\/p>\n

In its statement on the Mamdani video, the Nexus Project rejected the accusations that Mamdani\u2019s criticism of Israel was antisemitic, calling them \u201cunfounded, inflammatory, and divisive.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, Jacoby acknowledged that Mamdani \u201cneeds to talk with greater care about Israel and Palestine,\u201d citing his \u201cmonsters\u201d remark and his hesitation to condemn the phrase \u201cGlobalize the intifada,\u201d which many Jews see as a call to violence.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe needs to respect the complexity of the issues. He needs to understand how things land,\u201d said Jacoby. Conversely, \u201cWe need to understand that as long as Israel\u2019s actions are generating outrage, there\u2019s going to be more and more criticism of Israel, and that as long as Jewish institutions support those actions, they\u2019re inviting hostility.\u201d<\/p>\n

If nothing else, the discourse demonstrated what an optimist would call the diversity of the Jewish community, and a pessimist might call its fractures. In another poll of \u201cconnected\u201d US Jews, released this week by the Israel-based Jewish People Policy Institute, 50% rate Netanyahu\u2019s leadership as poor.<\/p>\n

As for Mamdani, who won over 33% of all Jewish voters in the 2025 election, the \u201cconnected\u201d Jews were largely in agreement: 69% of respondents said he is both anti-Israel and antisemitic.<\/p>\n

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.<\/p>\n

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