Just hours after Zohran Mamdani prevailed in New York City’s mayoral election, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) announced that it was launching an initiative to track and monitor the policies of his incoming administration.
The ADL’s “Mamdani Monitor” will include a hotline that enables New Yorkers to report antisemitism.
“We are deeply concerned that those individuals and principles will influence his administration at a time when we are tracking a brazen surge of harassment, vandalism, and violence targeting Jewish residents and institutions in recent years,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt told Jewish Insider.
When Greenblatt showed up on MSNBC to plug the new project, he wasn’t greeted with the usual camaraderie that he’s presumably come to expect from the network.
“I’ll look right at the camera: if you are a Jewish New Yorker, we have your back,” he told viewers.
He then brought up a number of violent incidents, including the firebombing of Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s house, the fatal shooting of Israeli embassy staff members, and the deadly attack on a pro-Israel demonstration in Colorado.
“We’re all shocked and we all find this abhorrent and I’m sure the next mayor would say the same thing, wouldn’t he?,” responded conservative host Joe Scarborough.
“You have to ask him,” Greenblatt retorted.
“He has gone to one High Holiday service after another, he has talked to the Jewish community,” noted Scarborough.
Greenblatt told Scarborough that those people don’t actually count as Jews.
“He went to an anti-Zionist synagogue, which is like going to the Black breakout at CPAC and saying you understand African Americans,” he reasoned.
When Scarborough asked Greenblatt if he was suggesting that Mamdani supports violence, he insisted he wasn’t.
“I never said that! I never said that, no no!,” shouted Greenblatt.
The transcript of his remarks obviously tells a different story.
This was all too much for Scarborough.
“There’s a lot of blurring and blending here Jonathan!” he said. “You know I love you, you’re on all the time and we’re always a fierce defender of yours, but you seem to be blurring a lot of things together and then looking into that camera and say ‘call us!’”
This rebuke is relatively gentle and contains caveats, but it’s worth noting that mainstream pundits almost never push back on Greenblatt when he makes one of his frequent cable news appearances.
The Greenblatt narrative might not be registering like it used to, but dozens of pro-Israel groups are embracing it.
In a lengthy statement, American Jewish Committee (AJC) Ted Deutch expresses deep concerns about Mamdani’s support of BDS and his comments on arresting wanted war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu. He also calls on the mayor-elect to condemn the phrase “from the river to the sea,” but it certainly seems like that ship has sailed.
“And just as we defend every Jewish community around the world, today and in the months ahead, we’ll be standing proudly with New York’s Jews demanding the safety, security, and respect that we fully deserve,” writes Deutch.
Certainly he doesn’t mean every Jewish community, as Greenblatt made clear.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations said Mamdani’s win marks a “grim milestone.” Former Israeli finance minister and right-wing leader Avigdor Lieberman said, “The Big Apple has fallen,” and called on Jewish New Yorkers to flee to Israel. The Zionist Organization of America (VOA) vowed to fight against Mamdani’s alleged “anti-Jewish and anti-Israel policies and actions.”
“Globalize Zionism!,” declares a statement from the group on the election.
Democratic Majority for Israel (DMFI) sent out a fundraising email downplaying Mamdani’s victory. The group insists that the elections of pro-Israel Governors Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill are much more important.
“There’s a lot of noise in the political ecosystem because of a New York City electorate that is an outlier and not reflective of the rest of the nation,” says the group.
A pro-Israel lobbying group doesn’t think the most Jewish city in the United States reflects the rest of the nation? Makes you think.
Other results
New York City wasn’t the only city where Israel and Palestine factored into campaigns.
Two weeks ago, we dedicated a newsletter to several mayoral races. Willie Burnley Jr. lost in Somerville, and centrist Mayor Jacob Frey fended off socialist State Senator Omar Fateh, who faced unrelenting attacks from right-wing media and some Democrats.
At this time, it’s not known whether Israel-critic Katie Wilson or incumbent mayor Bruce Harrell has prevailed in Seattle.
Residents of Somerville, Massachusetts, voted on a municipal ballot proposal to divest from Israel and endorsed it by a 53% margin. The effort garnered 11,400 votes, surpassing those of mayor-elect Jake Wilson.
The group Somerville for Palestine put out a statement on the victory, detailing the local organizing efforts.
“Over 300 grassroots volunteers gathered more than 11,000 signatures to get the ‘Palestine Solidarity’ question on the ballot,” said the group. “Volunteers spent 7 months canvassing the city, chatting with joggers and bikers on the Somerville Community Path, collecting signatures at farmers’ markets and between garage-band sets at the popular ‘Porchfest’ local music festival. The homegrown Palestine Solidarity ‘Yes on 3’ Campaign defied the odds, defeating an 11th-hour opposition from an astroturf group backed by the controversial ADL which outspent them 4 to 1 in an effort to invalidate signatures and bring an unsubstantiated legal challenge which was quickly dismissed.”
The statement quoted Somerville resident and organizer Mia Haddad:
“This measure would follow previous successful efforts in Somerville to boycott companies complicit in South African Apartheid and those that use practices that violate human rights, such as prison labor. Just as these movements treated local activism and foreign policy as interconnected, Somerville residents see the intersection: “ We don’t want to see children go hungry, in Massachusetts or in Gaza.”
“Americans want to reinvest in our communities, not to see our tax dollars spent for genocide or squandered on lavish parties for billionaires.” The vote in Somerville now marks a decisive trend across the United States and around the world calling for aligning investments with community values by moving public money out of companies that contribute to Israel’s apartheid, genocide and illegal occupation of Palestine.”
Odds & Ends
🗽 Zohran Mamdani wins New York City mayoral race
🇮🇱 Zohran Mamdani’s victory is a loss for Zionism
🇵🇸 Trump’s widening war on the left started with Palestine
🇺🇸 Zohran Mamdani’s historic run will also help free Jews, and U.S. politics, from Zionism
🇿🇦 Electronic Intifada: Trump ambassador pick vows to pressure South Africa over Gaza genocide case
🗳️ New York Times: Zohran Mamdani’s Triumph in New York Evokes Intense Reaction in Israel
🇮🇷 Responsible Statecraft: Arab leaders are no longer buying Washington’s Iran story
🇸🇾 Reuters: US military to establish presence at Damascus airbase, sources say
🛢️ Counterpunch: Dick Cheney, Iraq and the Making of Halliburton
🇮🇶 The Nation: His Works Completed, Dick Cheney, Mass Murderer of Iraqis and American Democracy, Dies
Re: Greenblatt told Scarborough that those people don’t actually count as Jews. “He went to an anti-Zionist synagogue”
Doesn’t it seem odd to anyone else that famous members of B’nai B’rith (who established the ADL) were all famous Anti-Zionists, like Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr., B’nai B’rith President Simon Wolf, and one of the founders and leaders of American Reform Judaism, Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise? Who knew the ADL would publicly defame them one day and falsely claim they don’t actually count as Jews? That will no doubt surprise the current publishers of The New York Times, the Ochs-Sulzberger family, who are direct descendants of Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise.
I prefer to think that Greenblatt just invented his own fake Jewish religious test and publicly failed it. He admitted the ADL doesn’t have the back of New York Jews, unless they’re Zionists. So, the majority of the founders of B’nai B’rith and Reform Judaism were Anti-Zionists. They correctly taught the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine would harm their religion, be unfair to others living there, be impractical, and published articles in the New York Times that opposed the idea. “Wisdom is known by her children” as the old Jewish proverb explained.
Mamdani put equality on the table. Because equality is so powerful a concept, Zionist zealots are intimidated.
Re: “Greenblatt told Scarborough that those people don’t actually count as Jews.”
As fighting continues in the Middle East, a new genetic study shows that many Arabs and Jews are closely related. More than 70% of Jewish men and half of the Arab men whose DNA was studied inherited their Y chromosomes from the same paternal ancestors who lived in the region within the last few thousand years….geneticist Michael Hammer of the University of Arizona in Tucson found that the Y chromosome in Middle Eastern Arabs was almost indistinguishable from that of Jews.
https://www.science.org/content/article/jews-and-arabs-share-recent-ancestry
Blood Brothers: Palestinians and Jews Share Genetic Roots….
Blood Brothers: Palestinians and Jews Share Genetic Roots – Science & Health
So I guess the ancestral homeland of the Palestinians is Israel?
Shocking Scarborough challenged Greenblatt. Joe, Mika, Willie some of the most publicly bigoted anti Palestinian’s going. Have barely ever touched the facts about the decades long illegal occupation. Over these two years they have persistently covered the hostage issue and repeated Netanyahu and apartheid team’s views. Barely ever covered the slaughter of Palestinians taking place,
Some communications professional or a Media Matters kind of group could dig into the hours Scarborough and team covered the issue and what they focused on the majority of time. How often they mentioned the now at least 70,000 Palestinians slaughtered. The children slaughtered, the families. Children left with no parents. The majority of that “Morning Joe” team are verifiable bigots. Totally value Israeli Jewish lives far, far more than Palestinian’s lives. Never, ever did I hear them mention a Palestinian man, woman, child’s name who had been killed in that genocide. Always mentioning hostages names and their families names. Always.
Never forget Greenblatt made sure the definition of “anti-semitism” became much more broad and all inclusive of any kind of discussion about the facts on the ground so that the numbers of what he considers “anti-semitic” acts were included in the numbers.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2024/jan/05/adl-pro-israel-advocacy-zionism-antisemitism
Anti-Defamation League staff decry ‘dishonest’ campaign against Israel criticsThis article is more than 1 year old
ADL has only doubled down on initiatives defending Israel and the policies of the Israeli government amid criticism and staff resignations
Jonathan Guyer and Tom Perkins
Fri 5 Jan 2024 06.00 EST
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The Anti-Defamation League CEO, Jonathan Greenblatt, sparked controversy in 2022 when he placed opposition to Israel on a par with white supremacy as a source of antisemitism.
“Anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” Greenblatt said in a speech to ADL leaders. He singled out Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace as groups that “epitomize the Radical Left, the photo inverse of the Extreme Right that ADL long has tracked”.