Especially when it comes to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
After all, was it not proof of Israel’s vibrant democracy when Israelis took to the streets to protest Bibi’s judicial coup?
American Zionists have made clear that just because they stand with Israel in its war on Hamas doesn’t mean they defend the premier, proving that patriotism doesn’t mean government loyalty.
Josh Shapiro, an observant and pro-Israel Jew who is a Democratic Party governor of Pennsylvania, once called Bibi “one of the worst leaders of all time”.
Things changed after New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced that while he did not have the power to execute Netanyahu’s International Criminal Court arrest warrant, Bibi was still wanted for genocide and should pay the price.
Mamdani didn’t call out Israelis or criticise Zionism. He cited one man, the head of the Israeli government, to be tried for what happened in Gaza, as so many other leaders have been for crimes in Bosnia, Cambodia, the Philippines and elsewhere.
Now, the Jewish establishment loves Netanyahu again. Publicly accusing him is no longer a statement against one man.
The bigwigs have decided that Bibi, who has been at the centre of Israeli state power on and off since the 1990s, represents the entirety of the Jewish people, in Israel and elsewhere.
The takeaway: we should all be afraid that Mamdani would take time away from promoting new grocery stores to vilify someone who has taken on the position of the unelected leader of world Jewry.
Here are three examples from the Jewish press illustrating the breadth of this view that the mayor’s call is Antisemitic:
Dave Rich, at the Jewish Chronicle: A mayor’s first job ought to be to look after the needs and interests of the residents of their city and the citizens of their country. Mamdani and [London Mayor Sadiq] Khan both know that they have no authority to enforce the ICC warrant, but that isn’t the point. There are votes at stake, clicks to harvest, and a Zionist power structure to dismantle. Even if they do not intend to encourage the antisemites who feed off every allegation of genocide – the alternative would be unconscionable – right now, when Jews are being stabbed in the streets of London and New York, the impact of their words is more important than their intentions.
Zvika Klein, at the Jerusalem Post: Israel was targeting neonatal care centers. It was starving countless people. It was gunning down hundreds of aid workers and journalists. Americans were paying for the bombs that do the killing. Netanyahu was the architect of a horrific genocide, a war criminal, not welcome in New York City. Washington should arrest him instead. October 7 did not come up. There is only one “bad” country outside the United States, and it’s Israel. Not China. Not the Islamic Republic of Iran. Not North Korea. Only Israel.
William Daroff and Betsy Berns Korn, the CEO and chair, respectively, of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, at the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: Presenting genocide as established truth is not serious analysis; it is a defamatory libel, false and dangerous. By stripping away Hamas, the hostages, Israel’s military objectives and the extraordinary difficulties of fighting terrorists embedded among civilians, Mayor Mamdani transforms a complex war into a morality play in which Israel represents absolute evil. Nor was this an isolated episode. Last month, Mayor Mamdani referred to AIPAC as “monsters” and spoke of “dark money” being used to preserve political power. Whatever his intent, describing those with whom he disagrees on Israel as monsters while invoking familiar themes of hidden financial influence echoed some of history’s oldest anti-Jewish tropes.
It doesn’t take much to unite these minds.
Netanyahu cannot be criticised, and his record cannot be aired, as it will frighten all Jews regardless of their stance on him. Never mind his corruption indictments and massive security failures on 7/10.
Bibi’s devoted servant, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, was quoted as saying “Enough with the blood libels.” That’s enough to equate Bibi with world Jewry, apparently.
Predictably, major Jewish organisations rallied behind the prime minister. And American Jews are starting to fall in line. We are all Netanyahu, or so his overpaid PR team have convinced us to believe. Never mind our educations and tradition of questioning.
If you’re a journalist who has documented the killing that has gone on under Bibi’s watch, then you must be committing blood libel, because unlike other monsters who must answer to justice– say Bashar al-Assad or Vladimir Putin– Netanyahu is Israeli.
That’s a get-out-of-the-Hague card for America’s Jewish establishment.
A report from the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA) offered a passage that summed things up nicely:
“The community says over and over again, ‘It’s fine to criticize Israel, it’s fine to criticize Bibi,’” said Mik Moore, a board member of the progressive Jewish advocacy group New Jewish Narrative, in an interview. “And then there’s a very long list of exceptions: not too much, or not in this way, or not if they’re not also going to say it about other people, or not if your job is New York City mayor.”
He added, referring to a traditional rabbinic concept that creates extra rules to prevent people from breaking a biblical commandment, “I think the community is just creating fences around fences around fences, so that the idea that you can criticize Israel has become meaningless.”
These tantrums also fly in the face of American public opinion. An Economist/YouGov poll found that when asked whether the US should enforce an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant for Netanyahu, 49 per cent of respondents said “yes”, while 27 per cent said “no” and 23 per cent were unsure, The Hill reported.
It has become tiring to point out the shallowness of such thinking. Calling the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia Mohammed bin Salman “Mohammed bin Bonesaw” isn’t Islamophobic.
Documenting Israeli war crimes under Benjamin Netanyahu isn’t Antisemitic either.
Photograph courtesy of Joel Schalit. All rights reserved.
