Or, perhaps, never-departed antisemitism is just convenient again
It’s well-trod ground, an often told and always ugly tale. When political leaders want a scapegoat to either gain or hold power, some resort to an age-old trope: blame the Jews.
Thus, Edward I exiled Jews from England in 1290, as The Public Medievalist tells us. Philip II of France—in serious debt at the age of 15—kidnapped Jews and held them for ransom, then confiscated Jewish property and expelled them from France. Phillip II let Jews return to France in 1198 but imposed heavy taxes on them. In 1306, Philip IV of France arrested 100,000 Jews, seized their property, and expelled them on the grounds that they represented “a state within a state.” French Jews were banished and then readmitted in repeated cycles for nearly 200 years.
Are we seeing much of the same sentiment — albeit toned down and dressed in different clothing — today? Are traditional friends of the Jews in the Democratic Party, for instance, spurning them as they seek power? Consider the election in New York City in which the whipping boys are wearing yarmulkes. In the city’s congressional primaries, three candidates backed by anti-Zionist Mayor Zohran Mamdani vaulted to victory by attacking Israel.
One, Darializa Avila Chevalier, had attended a pro-Palestinian rally in the city on Oct. 8, 2023, where some cheered the Hamas savagery of the prior day. As The Times of Israel reported, near the end of her victory speech this week, her supporters started chanting “free, free Palestine.” Chevalier, who had helped organize pro-Palestinian demonstrations at Columbia University, won in a district that includes Jewish institutions, including Yeshiva University. She defeated a steadfast supporter of Israel who served as a congressman for a decade.
Another Mamdani ally, state Assembly Member Claire Valdez, beat the handpicked successor of a retiring congresswoman. As she addressed backers, Valdez promised, “We will stand up to the genocide.”
And the third, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, bested U.S. Rep. Dan Goldman, a two-term incumbent, after lambasting Goldman as insufficiently critical of Israel, as The New York Times reported. Lander slammed Goldman for not backing legislation to block arms sales to Israel and for refusing to call its war in Gaza a “genocide.” Both men are Jews and Lander calls himself a “liberal Zionist” who just opposes Israeli government policy.
While there’s little question that these pols advanced in large part by pillorying Israel, the bigger question is to what extent they represent an anti-Israel swing among Democrats. Indeed, to what degree do they mirror such a swing among young people in both parties, something polls suggest is widespread?
Certainly, in many respects New York is an outlier, the bluest of the blue cities on the East Coast, one where Democrats vie to be further left of one another. All three victorious candidates, for instance, embrace Mamdani’s Democratic socialism, though Lander quit the Democratic Socialists of America after the Oct. 7th massacre.
And it may be that the relatively small numbers of primary voters who chose them reflect only a fraction of voters (though in New York a primary win is tantamount to a general election victory). As the New York Post chortled, just 7 percent of voters cast ballots for the trio and the backers were predominantly under 30, folks it called “The Young and The Clueless.”
But such candidates are not alone. In Denver, voters on June 30 will choose among candidates including Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old political naif who is leading in the polls against veteran incumbent Diana DeGette, 68. DeGette is Colorado’s longest-serving congresswoman, taking office in 1997, four months before Kiros was born. While DeGette has taken a pro-Israel stance, she tempered it with opposition to selling offensive weapons to Israel.
Kiros’s main qualification for office seems to be that, in 2023, she was fired from her job as a lawyer at New York’s Sidley Austin firm after she wrote an open letter in response to such firms signing a letter of support for Israel. In her response, she garnered attention by calling Israel an apartheid state while rebuking antisemitism alongside Islamophobia. Calls to eliminate Israel are anti-Zionist, not antisemitic, she insisted, as she accused Israel of a “colonial role in Palestine.”
Kiros, who was born in Ethiopia and came to the U.S. as an infant, earned a law degree from the University of Notre Dame. Most recently, she worked as a barista while studying for a doctorate in public policy.
Some in Colorado’s Jewish community have blasted her for her comments about Israel. In May, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Colorado released an open letter accusing her of reinforcing “many of the same reductive and dehumanizing dynamics that are making many Jews feel increasingly unsafe and alienated,” as The Colorado Sun reported.
More recently, in an interview with a local TV station, Kiros declined to call a deadly 2025 firebombing of a group of Jewish demonstrators in Boulder an act of antisemitism. Asked about the Oct. 7th assault in Israel, she said the attack, which left about 1,200 mostly civilians dead, was an “inevitable consequence.” And she also said the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the U.S. were similarly inevitable.
Liberal Denver Rabbi Rachel Kobrin, who has little use for Israel’s current government and publicly prays weekly for the safety of both Israelis and Palestinians, wrote in The Denver Post that, nonetheless, she is “deeply troubled” by Kiros.
“When she can’t even name the antisemitism Jews in Colorado are experiencing every day, how can we believe that she will work for our safety?” the rabbi asked. “I have deep concerns that the ‘just’ world she claims to want to create does not include Jews like me and my community. She considers Israel an illegitimate, colonialist state and appears to have closed her mind to all other opinions and, indeed, to the human consequences of her rhetoric.”
The rabbi added: “When Kiros speaks about dignity and justice for all people, I want to believe she means it. But dignity that excludes Jews and denies the safety of Israelis is not universal dignity.”
Still, the question remains: to what extent are Kiros and the New York Democrats representative of their party? High profile as they are, they are outnumbered by pro-Israel candidates whom voters backed. These include House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries (who ran unopposed in New York) and Adrian Boafo in Maryland, as well as New Yorkers Yvette Clark, Laura Gillen, Gregory Meeks, Tim Kennedy and others, along with several other incumbents from Maryland, all backed by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
An incumbent congressman from New Jersey who ran unopposed in early June, Josh Gottheimer, has been unsparing in criticizing fellow Democrats for their blinkered approaches to Israel.
“The Democratic condemnation piled on Israel’s government is overwhelming in comparison to other allies,” he wrote in a May commentary in The New York Times. “It’s also louder than Democrats’ condemnation of Iran’s regime for the slaughter of thousands of Iranians in December and January. Israel has been decried by some leading Democrats as an ‘apartheid’ state. But I haven’t heard any of them claim apartheid when it comes to how women and L.G.B.T.Q. people are treated across the Middle East.”
He continued: “Democrats have justly denounced the Trump administration for its broadsides — in some cases, threats — toward some of America’s closest allies. But many increasingly excuse, or join, feverish denunciations of Israel, our longstanding, democratic and strategic ally.”
No doubt, such incumbents will be taken to task in some quarters for their support of Israel as the general election approaches. Consider some observations by Brad Goverman, the Boston-area former technology consultant and college lecturer who runs The Jew News Review. This longtime Democrat says he has “no difficulty criticizing Israeli governments,” as he says most Israelis do, but …
“For decades, support for Israel occupied a secure place within the Democratic coalition,” Goverman wrote in a recent piece bemoaning changes in his party. “Today, criticism of Israel has become not merely acceptable but, in some circles, politically advantageous. Positions that would once have been considered well outside the party’s mainstream increasingly shape primary campaigns, activist organizations, and the language of rising political leaders.”
To be sure, some candidates may have a point in slamming Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as many of his countrymen do. After all, a government responsible for the deaths of more than 70,000 people in Gaza -– even if in response to the massacre of 1,200 of its own citizens — has much to account for. This is especially true because Israel has failed to vanquish Hamas, as it aimed to do.
And yet, it all seems terribly convenient for politicians who have no difficulty assailing Zionists – read Jews – and suggesting that Jews, unlike other peoples of the world, don’t deserve a state of their own after all. Do we hear echoes of those medieval rulers who loved to whip their populations up into frenzies with attacks on those they deemed to be foreigners in their midst?
Sadly — tragically — it all seems too familiar.