Zohran Mamdani’s win fear spurs fear, loathing and a reckoning for American Jews
The crushing victory by the 34-year-old Muslim democratic socialist has launched a plethora of predictions from political pundits about what it means for the Democrats, for Donald Trump and for New York.
But for America’s Jewish community, the questions raised by Mamdani’s victory are deeply personal. For some, there is disbelief that New York City, with 1.3 million Jews – the second largest Jewish population of any city behind Tel Aviv – has elected a mayor who believes Israel is a genocidal state that does not have the right to exist.
Mamdani has accused Israel of committing apartheid as well as genocide in Gaza and has been reluctant to condemn the phrase “globalise the intifada”. He is not a Palestinian but has been a staunch supporter of the Palestinian cause all his life, having co-founded a chapter of the Students for Justice for Palestine at college.
Many Jews fear his victory will turbocharge the anti-Israel American left and will further fuel the surge in anti-Semitism that has brought a raft of violent attacks including the murder of two young employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington.
Yet exit polls in New York on election day indicated that no less than 33 per cent of Jewish voters – one in three – cast their ballot for a Muslim who doesn’t believe Israel should exist.
For America’s Jewish community, this is the bigger story of Mamdani’s victory. The war in Gaza increasingly has led a younger generation of Jews, especially in progressive cities such as New York, to question and to criticise Israel in a manner that once would have seemed unthinkable. Within many Jewish families, parents and their children now hold very different views about Gaza and about Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu.
Of course, Jews in the US, like elsewhere in the world, populate all sides of the political spectrum. In New York, exit polls suggest that roughly two-thirds of Jews cast their vote for Mamdani’s pro-Israel opponent Andrew Cuomo.
But the US Jewish community is broadly seen as more politically liberal than most – including Australia – with seven in 10 Jews in the US traditionally voting Democrat.
As such, the Democrats traditionally have stood side-by-side with Republicans in their fervent support of Israel.
Joe Biden as president was mostly supportive of Israel in its war on Hamas in Gaza after the October 7 massacres. Trump has followed the traditional pro-Israel Republican stance by lifting that support to new levels. This has ensured that the US is far and away the most important and loyal ally to Israel when the latter has rarely been more isolated internationally over the conflict in Gaza.
But Democrat voters overall, including many Jewish Democrats, have been increasingly critical of Netanyahu’s coalition government over its actions in Gaza. It is a notable shift that almost certainly will transform the Democratic Party’s future approach to Israel. If a Democrat succeeds Trump in the White House, it could have direct implications for US-Israel relations and Middle East policy more broadly.
The sizeable number of Jewish voters who cast their ballot for Mamdani in New York did not sway his election. New York also is home to the nation’s largest Muslim population, about 1.5 million, which would have voted for him overwhelmingly, quite apart from his popularity with the broader electorate.
But the exit polls in New York, which showed one-third of Jews backed Mamdani, reflect a new-found willingness from these Jewish voters to tolerate those such as Mamdani who are openly critical of Israel.
Of course, for many of these voters Israel was not on the ballot. A lot of the Jews who cast their ballot for Mamdani no doubt did so because of his manifesto of tax the rich and help the poor, rather than because of anything to do with Israel. But it speaks volumes that they did not particularly care that their mayor-elect did not believe their spiritual homeland had a right to exist.
Trump obviously thought this to be odd, writing on Truth Social: “Any Jewish person that votes for Zohran Mamdani, a proven and self professed JEW HATER, is a stupid person!!!”
Yet polls suggest many US Jews have moved largely in tandem with the American public – and public opinion in many Western nations including Australia – to become steadily more critical of Israel as the civilian death toll in Gaza has grown. A Washington Post poll of Jews in the US conducted in September, before the ceasefire and the release of the hostages, revealed American Jews had become sharply critical of Israel’s conduct of the war.
It found 61 per cent believed Israel had committed war crimes in Gaza while four in 10 believed Israel was guilty of genocide. Even so, American Jews still overwhelmingly blame Hamas, with 94 per cent saying Hamas had committed war crimes against Israelis.
The same poll also revealed a growing generational divide, with 56 per cent of American Jews saying they were emotionally attached to Israel, but this dropped to just 36 per cent among those aged 18 to 34. These younger Jews are also far likelier than older Jewish Americans to say Israel is guilty of genocide in Gaza – a demographic trend reflected in the broader non-Jewish community.
However, polls show that this year white, college-educated older Jewish Democrats also have moved in large numbers to distance themselves from Israel.
As such, the divide between Jewish Democrats and Jewish Republicans is starker than ever, with more than eight in 10 Jewish Republicans supporting Israel’s military actions in Gaza, compared with roughly three in 10 Democrats. The drift in support for Israel among many Jews is reinforced even more within the broader Democratic Party.
A New York Times poll in September found the sympathies of Democrat voters, which were evenly split between Israel (34 per cent) and Palestinians (31 per cent) two years ago, are now sharply lopsided, with 54 per cent saying they sympathised more with Palestinians compared with just 13 per cent for Israel.
Prominent Jewish left-winger senator Bernie Sanders accused Israel in September of committing genocide in Gaza after carefully avoiding making such a claim for almost two years.
When all Americans – including Republican voters – are polled, the country is evenly split with 34 per cent saying they side with Israel and 35 per cent with the Palestinians. However, this is a significant shift from the days after the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023, when 47 per cent sided with Israel and just 20 per cent with Palestinians.
This drift from Israel has frustrated and alienated senior traditional Democrats who believe their party should stick side-by-side with Israel as it once did.
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New Yorker and the most senior Jewish politician in the US, has pointedly refused to endorse Mamdani.
“Senator Schumer has had to balance the energy that Mamdani has inspired with young voters with the reticence older voters and the business community have felt toward the mayor-elect, with Israel being another complicating factor,” Ben Tulchin, a Democratic pollster who worked for New York mayor Eric Adams’s 2021 campaign was quoted as saying.
Leading house Democrat Hakeem Jeffries held off endorsing Mamdani until last month and says he does not see him as the future of the party.
“(Mamdani) will have to convince folks that he is prepared to aggressively address the rise in anti-Semitism,” Jeffries says.
Concerns about what the rise of Mamdani means for anti-Semitism in the US prompted more than 1000 rabbis, cantors and rabbinical students from around the country to sign a petition last month to oppose “rising anti-Zionism and its political normalisation”.
“As rabbis from across the United States committed to the security and prosperity of the Jewish people, we are writing in our personal capacities to declare that we cannot remain silent in the face of rising anti-Zionism and its political normalisation throughout our nation,” the petition said. “When public figures like New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani refuse to condemn violent slogans, deny Israel’s legitimacy, and accuse the Jewish state of genocide, they, in the words of New York Board of Rabbis president Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, ‘Delegitimise the Jewish community and encourage and exacerbate hostility toward Judaism and Jews’.”
Mamdani’s victory has made him a target for Trump, who derides him as “my little communist mayor” and predicts his win will lead to social and economic disaster in New York. But Trump will also use Mamdani’s win to contrast the President’s “unwavering” support for Israel with that of Mamdani and the Democratic Party.
It is ironic, given that American Jews overwhelmingly support the Democrats, that Trump, a Republican, has done more to help Israel and Middle East peace than any other American.
Trump’s peace plan has resulted in the release of all 20 remaining living hostages from Gaza and has led to a ceasefire that, although tenuous, continues to hold and raise hopes that the war in Gaza is over.
Yet Trump is also facing fractures within his own MAGA movement over Israel.
A conference of America’s leading Jewish Republicans in Las Vegas this week lurched from what the Times of Israel called “jubilation over a tenuous ceasefire in the Middle East into a clarion call to stem the spread of anti-Jewish voices within the party”.
Conservative American Jews have been horrified by the anti-Israel attitudes of some prominent MAGA identities. These include conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson, who welcomed Nick Fuentes, a far-right Holocaust denier with anti-Semitic views, on to his podcast last week and refused to vigorously challenge him.
“We are at this point in what I consider sort of the early stages of an undeclared civil war within the Republican Party, as it relates to Israel, and anti-Semitism and the Jewish community,” Republican Jewish Coalition leader Matthew Brooks said.
Reactions in Israel to Mamdani’s victory in New York have ranged from horror to a quiet resignation.
“The Big Apple has fallen,” said Avigdor Liberman, the leader of a right-wing opposition party and former foreign minister. He urged “New York Jews who want to survive” to emigrate “to where they belong – the land of Israel”.
Amichai Chikli, a right-wing Israeli minister whose portfolio includes the Jewish diaspora and combating anti-Semitism, claimed Mamdani was “someone whose positions are not far removed from the jihadist fanatics who murdered 3000 of (New York’s) people” in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.
“New York is walking with open eyes into the abyss into which London has plunged,” he said in reference to London’s Muslim mayor Sadiq Khan.
David Horovitz, the founding editor of The Times of Israel, had more thoughtful observations, writing: “There’s an argument to be made that Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the New York mayoral elections is all about local issues, and that his hostility to Israel is largely irrelevant.
“Some (New York Jews) doubtless chose Mamdani in part because they endorse his strategic delegitimisation of an Israel to which they were never connected or from which they are increasingly alienated. But others, who are troubled by his stance on Israel, backed him nonetheless because they are more preoccupied with the day-to-day problems of the city they live in, and believe he will do a better job of alleviating them than (Mamdani’s opponent) Andrew Cuomo would.
“Yet Mamdani has left no doubt that his support of the Palestinians and refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state are central to his identity and purpose … it is anti-Semites who will be encouraged by his victory.”
Despite his views on Israel, Mamdani vowed in his victory speech to “build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism”.
It remains to be seen whether he is willing to take up that fight in the robust manner in which he promises.
There is good reason to be sceptical. For many American Jews, Mamdani’s election as mayor of the country’s most Jewish city is not only a deeply worrying development. It is also a stark illustration of how America’s Jewish diaspora is fracturing over Israel and the war in Gaza.
Cameron Stewart is a former New York correspondent for The Australian.
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For many of America’s 7.5 million Jews, the landslide election of the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israeli Zohran Mamdani as New York mayor must have felt like a punch to the gut. Yet for others it was proof of a generational shift away from the once unbreakable bond between American Jews and Israel, a trend that threatens to reshape US politics and foreign policy.