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Notes -
Mayor Mamdani Bends the Knee - and the Problem with Left-Wing Antisemitism
According to Mamdani the initiative entails "investing millions in Jewish cultural centers and nonprofits" as well as bussing students to the Museum of Jewish Heritage. The high-level details are available in the report.
NYC already hosts two dedicated Holocaust Museums and 6 memorials, but the plan also "calls on the federal government to support Holocaust educational centers and museums in New York City, and to continue to support the large number of Holocaust survivors in NYC through existing federal programs. Additionally, the Mamdani administration supports federal legislative efforts to increase Holocaust educational programming." The plan also pledges $2 million capital investment in the design and construction of the Queens Holocaust Memorial.
The plan also includes a $2.5 capital investment in the Center for New Jewish Culture, a Jewish-dedicated private space. The plan also pledges additional NYPD resources for Jewish neighborhoods.
One of the fascinating aspects of this announcement is that it cites and then wildly misinterprets a passage from the Talmud:
The standard print versions of the Talmud, which Jews actually study, specify "mi-Yisrael" or the soul of a Jew. And this gets to the heart of the problem of left-wing antisemitism, especially with notorious left-wing commentators like Hasan Piker. They always denounce antisemitism in their diatribe against Israel. When in fact the right-Wing antisemites are correct that this is not only a problem with Israel, it is actually a problem with the way Jews politically and culturally organize in the United States. It leads to wildly inappropriate and disparate treatment of Jews in which they get all sorts of public funding and support for their dedicated spaces, combined with unlimited cultural veneration and educational propaganda.
This puts the left-wing antisemites in an impossible position, they are unwilling to admit that it's not just an Israel problem or a Netanyahu problem. The game they are trying to play is impossible, and trying to split those hairs just makes them get immediately bulldozed and subjugated in trying to defend themselves from the accusation of antisemitism.
If you're like me you've encountered Jews who were absolutely certain that Mamdani was going to bring Sharia to NYC and expel the Jews or something. Instead we just even more Jewish special treatment and taxpayer-financed privileges from the left-wing Israel critics who are completely in denial of the actual problem.
I think as far as spending taxes on genocide-related topics to keep some some Jews happy, I think that Mamdani investing a few millions in holocaust museums is not even worth noticing compared to the tens of billions US Congress pays in military aid to Israel in either magnitude or impact.
I think that this is kinda the gist of the disagreement, and I think the distinction is important. I have just browsed through Piker's WP page, and while I strongly disagree with his assertion that Hamas would be "a thousand times better than a fascist settler colonial apartheid state", I also do not consider this to be clear-cut antisemitism.
Generally, the left (for the most part) has nothing in particular against Jews. In fact, Ashkenazim are probably well over-represented among leftist thinkers (just as they are over-represented among thinkers more generally). I mean, there are likely points of contention, Judaism is a patriarchal religion, and circumcision for religious reasons is also unlikely to play well with the secular left. On the other hand, Jews are not proselytizing, and a tiny minority almost everywhere. Deep-held Christian beliefs like their stance on abortion play an important role in US politics, but there simply is no large Judaism voting block who could push for mandatory labeling of non-kosher food or whatever. (Importantly, I claim that Zionism is not a deep-held intrinsic part of Judaism.)
Zionism aside, I would expect that most ethnic and religious Jews would support multi-culturalism for the simple reason that they generally did not consistently fare very well in culturally homogeneous societies. I actually expect that quite a few liberal Jews actually voted for Mamdani.
Netanyahu et al like to call any criticism of Israel antisemitic. This serves two purposes: it discourages (and discredits) critics and it tells the Jews in the diaspora "the world really hates you, Israel is your only safe haven".
In this context, I think paying Mamdani paying a token amount for some Jewish culture center is politically savvy. It sends a clear message to the million (or so) Jews in NYC: "Our problem is with Israel, not Jews. You are still (somewhat) welcome in the woke coalition."
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