Every generation eventually asks the same haunting question.<\/p>\n
After Pearl Harbor, Americans asked how so many warning signs had been missed.<\/p>\n
After September 11, the question was repeated.<\/p>\n
After October 7, Israelis again wondered how years of accumulating warnings failed to produce action before catastrophe struck.<\/p>\n
I am not suggesting that New York City is about to experience another Pearl Harbor or another October 7.
I am suggesting something equally important.<\/p>\n
A drone show takes place over the New York Harbor, displaying a graphic of the Statue of Liberty against the Lower Manhattan skyline in July. (credit: JUSTIN SETTERFIELD\/GETTY IMAGES)<\/p>\n
History teaches that democracies rarely fail because warning signs are absent. They fail because too many people convince themselves that someone else will act.<\/p>\n
As I write these words from Jerusalem, I find myself thinking of my parents. In many ways, I am grateful they are no longer here to witness what has become of the New York they loved.<\/p>\n
I am a fourth-generation New Yorker on my father\u2019s side, and like millions of American Jews, I grew up believing New York represented something extraordinary<\/a>: a city where freedom, pluralism, and the rule of law protected everyone.<\/p>\n That belief shaped my life.<\/p>\n In 1980, while studying at Brooklyn College, I had the privilege of serving as a research assistant to Dr. Hillel Seidman, a Holocaust survivor, distinguished scholar, and journalist.<\/p>\n He was a prominent Orthodox journalist, author, historian, and activist for Agudath Israel, who later wrote critical analyses of international diplomacy and the United Nations (such as his 1982 book United Nations: Perfidy and Perversion).<\/p>\n He taught me that the UN was never merely a diplomatic institution. It was often the stage upon which tomorrow\u2019s political realities first appeared.<\/p>\n Dr. Seidman followed the tenure of UN secretary-general Kurt Waldheim. He and prime minister Menachem Begin shared a deep friendship and commitment to Holocaust remembrance and to the principle that powerful public officials should never be beyond scrutiny.<\/p>\n Following Yasser Arafat\u2019s 1974 address to the General Assembly, when Arafat famously appeared with both an olive branch and a gun, Dr. Seidman and Begin believed the greater danger was not the gun. It was the olive branch, because it carried legitimacy while concealing a more dangerous reality.<\/p>\n That conviction eventually led to the investigation into Waldheim\u2019s wartime record. I was privileged to assist in portions of that research before the effort was later expanded by the World Jewish Congress, sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and others. The lesson has remained with me throughout my career.<\/p>\n No public official is above the law.<\/p>\n No public official is above scrutiny.<\/p>\n Today, history feels as though it is echoing.<\/p>\n History repeats itself<\/p>\n Within weeks, the opening of the 81st United Nations General Assembly will once again place New York at the center of global attention. But this year\u2019s gathering threatens to become something far more consequential than an annual diplomatic event.<\/p>\n It risks becoming one of the largest internationally televised anti-Israel demonstrations ever staged on American soil. Chances for violent outbreaks are serious, given the intense polarization surrounding Netanyahu\u2019s presence, the deep entrenchment of activist networks, and the physical constraints of narrow Manhattan side streets.<\/p>\n The likelihood of severe, localized structural breaches, violent skirmishes with police lines, and destructive clashes between rival demonstrators shifts from \u201clow\u201d to \u201cmoderate-to-high.\u201d<\/p>\n Whether Mandani\u2019s public statements about Netanyahu\u2019s guilt of war crimes carry legal significance or political symbolism is ultimately for others to debate. Their cumulative effect, however, is impossible to ignore.<\/p>\n The irony should trouble every American.<\/p>\n Earlier this year, the mayor declined to participate in New York\u2019s Israel Day Parade<\/a>. Yet New York now appears poised to become the backdrop for what may become the most significant anti-Israel spectacle ever broadcast globally from the US.<\/p>\n This matters because New York is no ordinary city.<\/p>\n It is America\u2019s financial capital. It is one of the world\u2019s media capitals. It is home to the UN.<\/p>\n What happens there rarely stays there.<\/p>\n
Reports already point to extraordinarily large demonstrations surrounding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s<\/a> expected visit. Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s public statements suggesting that Netanyahu should be arrested if circumstances permitted have added fuel to an already volatile atmosphere.<\/p>\n