Out of the frying pan into the fire
New York Jews fear if Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor of New York, their financial security and personal safety will be in jeopardy.
By Sara Lehmann
JNS
Jul 4, 2025
Jews can’t seem to catch a break. Just when it was safe for them to leave their shelters in Israel, those in the biggest Jewish community outside of Israel are realizing they may have to find shelter.
The State of Israel has just come off a brilliant and decisive victory against the biggest exporter of antisemitism in the world. Aided by U.S. President Donald Trump and the American military, Israel clobbered Iran and decimated its nuclear capabilities, ridding the world of a terrorist state bent on annihilating the Jewish state.
The euphoria in Israel is palpable, despite the deaths of 29 civilians, with hundreds wounded and massive property damage. There is an almost bewildering sense of relief following decades of habitual dread. And while the ceasefire between Israel and Iran is tenuous, the outlook is buoyant for now.
Trump declared the ceasefire on June 23, bringing an end to what he dubbed the “12-day war” and ushering in an era of guarded optimism and peace through strength. Fear of an intifada against Jews in Israel was cautiously on the wane.
The very next day, Jewish New Yorkers suffered a case of emotional whiplash when a supporter of the chant “globalize the intifada” was nominated as the Democratic mayoral candidate of the city. Suddenly, the intifada moved from the Middle East to New York. And New York Jews, who comprise the largest population in the Jewish Diaspora, find themselves moving out of the frying pan and into the fire.
(l to r) Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and U.S. Congressman Jerrold Nadler, both Jewish, enthusiastically congratulated Mamdani.
Many New Yorkers are scratching their heads, wondering how so many of their neighbors voted for the socialist, antisemitic Zohran Mamdani. Throngs of residents and businesses fled the city in recent years as it became a crime-infested metropolis. Now, as it tries to dig itself out, the city stares down the barrel of a candidate who will inflict more crime and cause more New Yorkers to flee.
But for New York Jews, the fear of a mayor Mamdani is a double whammy. It is a lethal combination that threatens financial security and personal safety. This is a man who supports the boycott and divestment movement, will not recognize the State of Israel, vows to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York, shouts “Free Palestine” at rallies and refrains from backing annual resolutions for Holocaust Remembrance Day as a New York state representative.
Mamdani’s support for defunding the police and using social workers to replace them, and his refusal to deport criminal illegal aliens, threaten all New York citizens. But Jews, who are already the No. 1 victim of hate crimes in the city as antisemitism has become normalized, fear more harassment, sanctioned with a wink and a nod from a future mayor himself.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams calls Mamdani a “snake oil salesman” and blasts his illusory enticements of freebies from housing to groceries to child care to transportation. Trump calls him a “100% Communist lunatic.” New York Jews call him a danger.
But Mamdani’s mostly young, progressive supporters call him a hero. Decades of being fed anti-American sentiment from kindergarten through college and further nurtured through the media have produced a generation of skewed self-loathing that has turned self-destructive.
Mamdani’s voters either are unaware or choose to ignore the failure of socialism around the globe for more than a century. Worse, they ignore how socialism and communism always morph into the very fascism they decry.
These are voters who balk at American exceptionalism, yet have never had to sacrifice like their grandparents’ generation did when they defended and built up this great country. Instead, they sacrifice their self-preservation and their future. And, in the process, the future of others.
They are much like self-hating Jews, most of whom have little knowledge of authentic Judaism beyond how it might aggrandize their ideology. These include leftist groups like Jews for Justice in Palestine and IfNotNow, which side with Islamists and march in support of Hamas terrorism against their own people. This, despite the threat Hamas poses to them, too.
They also include politicians like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who endorsed Mamdani, and Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), who enthusiastically congratulated him, though they condemned Trump for saving Israel and America by bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. To borrow a phrase from leftist ideology, they represent the intersection between self-hating Jews and self-loathing Americans.
New Yorkers, especially Jewish New Yorkers, are now faced with an existential threat come November. This threat does not come in the form of nuclear or ballistic missiles, but from the destructive power of a socialist antisemite in Gracie Mansion, which may be just as lethal to the city that serves as the capital of the world.
It will take the united, vigorous power of those who oppose socialism and antisemitism to obliterate the threat and protect the great city of New York. That, and lots of prayer.
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