The anti-Zionist moves naturally into anti-Semitism territory by critiquing what Jews do in shul.
We didn’t notice Denver Mayor Mike Johnston telling the Archdiocese of northern Colorado what’s wrong with the way it conducts its relations with the Vatican.
We didn’t notice Colorado Governor Jared Polis telling our state’s Evangelical churches how to script their theology in differentiation from Protestant churches.
In fact, we don’t recall any Colorado mayor or governor telling Evangelical churches how to think about Israel.
Nor do we recall dual British-American citizens being told by elected American leaders what’s wrong with the Church of England.
But the mayor-elect of New York, Zohran Mamdani, finds it natural to tell a New York synagogue that it violated its sacred space. Full stop. Mamdani’s reason is irrelevant. Religious autonomy is guaranteed under the US Constitution.
But it is instructive to cite Mamdani’s reason for condemning the New York synagogue: It hosted a meeting for an organization that assists Jews making aliyah, that is, moving to Israel.
Such a meeting is a violation of international law, says Mamdani. Which law? The law forbidding citizens to leave their country? We thought that issue was resolved after decades of activism against the USSR’s ban on Jews leaving the country. The law forbidding Jewish citizens of the US from living in Israel? If that is a violation of international law, it means that Mamdani denies the right of Israel to exist, for if Americans may not legally live in Israel, logic dictates that Jews anywhere may not live in Israel.
Or is Mamdani saying that American citizens may not live in Israel if they choose to live on the West Bank? Here we reach the nub of the inherent racism in anti-Zionism, or at least Mamdani’s anti-Zionism. If he holds that it is a violation of international law for Jews to live in the West Bank, this means that the West Bank should be Judenrein. That would be Mamdani’s position.
And that would be the racism inherent in the “two state solution” as many, including Mamdani, conceive it: One territory for Jews, which must be a pluralistic state; and one territory for Palestinians, which must not be a pluralistic state. Rather, it must be a territory devoid of Jews. That’s what Mamdani’s critique of an aliyah meeting in a synagogue means: Since the meeting facilitates the residence of American Jews in what he takes to be territory that rightly belongs to Palestinians, this is a violation. No Jews, only Palestinians, may reside on what he takes to be Palestinian territory.
There is no international law that forbids Jews from living anywhere, which is why Mamdani didn’t specify one. He couldn’t. But he could cast a shadow over Jews engaged in legal activity in a synagogue, no less. He could say: The Jews there violate international law. It’s a smear against Jews. It’s anti-Semitic. It’s proof again, if proof were needed, that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism.
Mamdani takes with the one hand what he gave the protesters outsiide the New York synagogue with the other. He gave the protesters just criticism for threatening violence against Jews, for protesting in order to “make Jews scared.” But then he took it back by saying that the protesters were calling attention to Jews who were violating international law by what they were doing in their sacred space.
Mamdani’s use of the term “sacred space” is galling. Orwellian. As if he respects Jewish sacred space. If he did, he would have critiqued the protesters’ call to violence and left it at that. But because the protesters were the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation, and because this group celebrated Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities, Mamdani couldn’t be satisfied with a critique of the protests. On Oct. 8, he himself did not condemn the Oct. 7 atrocities.
It seems that Mamdani has set down a pattern for how he intends to relate to Jewish “Zionist” New Yorkers, i.e., most Jewish New Yorkers. Give with one hand, take away with the other. Support what narrowly fits within a Jewish citizens’ rights — but then cast them in a larger frame, a frame that has a clear defamatory message.
There is still another seminal issue here. Mamdani’s invocation of the “violation of international law” is more than a canard. It goes still deeper. The issue is: Who gets to define one’s religion? The answer is: the religion’s adherents, not the practitioner of another religion (or of none).
The idea that Jews have a sacred space but that a non-Jew can tell Jews when it is violated is itself a violation of the autonomy of every religions, at the very least under the American Constitutional system. Mamdani does not get to define the role of Israel in Judaism, and by extension does not get to define the role of aliyah in Judaism.
Jews (and Muslims and Hindus and Buddhists) do not get to define the meaning of the mass in Catholicism. Mamdani does not get to define what is Jewishly appropriate in a Jewish sacred space.
The genius of the American experiment is that any private citizen may think whatever one wants of the person’s religion, but if one is an elected public official, the rules change. The official must defend the right of another religion to be practiced as its adherents please, however wrongheaded the official might think a given religion is, provided only that the religion’s adherents break no non-discriminatory law of the land.
Memo to Mamdani: The Catholic allegiance to the Vatican in another country on another continent breaks no law. The fondness of any American immigrant for the religion of his home country breaks no law. American citizens from Ireland to Indonesia may swear allegiance to religions rooted outside the US. Jewish Americans have a right to fondness for Israel and a right to consider moving there.
Zohran Mamdani needs to bone up on Constitution 101. Don’t count on it. Mamdani’s hostility to Israel blinds him to Constitutional basics.
© IJN 2025
