{"id":893921,"date":"2026-06-26T10:30:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:30:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/893921\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T10:30:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T10:30:53","slug":"mamdanis-anti-israel-candidates-victory-speaks-volumes-on-israel-us-relations","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/893921\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s anti-Israel candidates’ victory speaks volumes on Israel-US relations"},"content":{"rendered":"

The results of the New York House primaries that took place on Tuesday were an alarming wake-up call for supporters of Israel and any Jewish Democrats concerned about the future of their party.<\/p>\n

Three candidates with bona fide animosity toward Israel, backed and endorsed by New York City\u2019s Israel-hating Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, won their primaries.<\/p>\n

Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander defeated Rep. Dan Goldman in a Lower Manhattan-area district, Assembly member Claire Valdez beat Brooklyn Borough President Antonio Reynoso in an open seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez, and activist Darializa Avila Chevalier took out five-term Rep. Adriano Espaillat.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will continue to call for Palestinian liberation,\u201d Valdez said during her victory speech, to cheers. \u201cWe will stand up to the genocide. We will refuse to abide by apartheid. And we will use our money to improve lives here instead of destroying them abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chevalier has unequivocally condemned Israel as an \u201capartheid state,\u201d accused it of committing a \u201cgenocide\u201d against Gazans, and has denied Israel\u2019s right to exist.<\/p>\n

\"BRADBRAD LANDER, candidate for New York\u2019s 10th Congressional District, Congressional candidate Claire Valdez and Congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier attend the Get Out the Vote rally in Brooklyn, New York, US, June 18, 2026. (credit: REUTERS\/EDUARDO MUNOZ)<\/p>\n

Lander<\/a>, who is Jewish and describes himself as a \u201cliberal Zionist,\u201d frequently and publicly uses the term \u201cgenocide\u201d to describe the post-war situation in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Mamdani’s candidates favor ending US support for Israel<\/strong><\/p>\n

All three of Mamdani\u2019s candidates, who are pegged to win their races in November, have ties to the Democratic Socialists of America \u200cand favor ending US support for Israel. The future of the Democratic Party\u2019s relationship with Israel has never been more in question.<\/p>\n

Mamdani, at a rally last week backing his preferred candidates, compared pro-Israel lobbyists AIPAC to \u201cmonsters<\/a>,\u201d a statement that organizations such as the Union for Reform Judaism and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) criticized.<\/p>\n

Mamdani\u2019s statement preceded a much-publicized outrage last week when a Brooklyn cafe rejected the business of Lander\u2019s opponent, the Jewish incumbent Goldman, on the grounds that his money for a cup of coffee was \u201cprobably coming from AIPAC,\u201d since it had endorsed Goldman.<\/p>\n

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, warned about the immediate and physical dangers posed to Jews in New York as a result, calling out Mamdani\u2019s \u201cmonsters\u201d statement as crossing \u201cthe line into antisemitic tropes about sinister Jewish political influence.\u201d<\/p>\n

The takeaway from Tuesday\u2019s results is that in the biggest concentration of Jews in the world aside from Israel, candidates, including Jews, are winning elections by taking a page out of Mamdani\u2019s playbook and demonizing Israel.<\/p>\n

Of course, denouncing Israel is only one of many issues that the primaries\u2019 winners agree on. And it may be low \u2013 or not even appear \u2013 on the list of voters\u2019 priorities, trailing the socialist, anti-establishment, economic reform planks that directly affect them and have propelled these candidates and their ilk to the mainstream of the Democratic Party.<\/p>\n

It goes hand-in-hand with that most American term, \u201cintersectionality,\u201d that has infected US culture, which dictates that if you believe in liberal, humanist values, then you think Israel is evil.<\/p>\n

Those Democrats \u2013 Jewish or otherwise \u2013 who voted for Mamdani\u2019s candidates either buy into that philosophy or don\u2019t care one way or the other about Israel.<\/p>\n

Jewish Democrats must choose between anti-Israel, Republican candidates<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jewish Democrats who support Israel in general, even if they might have issues with some of its policies, have an impossible choice in November: voting for anti-Israel Democratic candidates whom they agree with on most issues or Republican candidates whom they agree with on only one issue: Israel.<\/p>\n

Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, expressed the sense of frustration, saying after Tuesday\u2019s results, \u201cWe know that Jewish voters feel very conflicted about the issue of Israel and the role that it\u2019s now playing in Democratic politics.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happened in New York is being played out in other areas of the United States, providing evidence that the anti-Israel tremors in the Democratic Party extend beyond the biggest US city.<\/p>\n

In Denver, Colorado, a virulently anti-Israel candidate, Melat Kiros, is poised to win in a primary against 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette. And in Maine, Graham Platner<\/a>, the genocide-calling, Nazi-tattoo-wearing, Democratic senatorial candidate, handily won the party\u2019s nomination earlier this month. And that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg, and negates the claim of some Democrats who say the results in New York are an anomaly.<\/p>\n

Taken together, it doesn\u2019t augur well for the short-term US-Israel relationship, the future of the Democratic Party, or long-term support for Israel in the halls of power in Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The results of the New York House primaries that took place on Tuesday were an alarming wake-up call…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":893922,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[110582,5229,17263,40896,7033,5249,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":["post-893921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-aipac","tag-america","tag-anti-israel","tag-democratic-socialists-of-america","tag-democrats","tag-manhattan","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116815954665014995","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=893921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/893921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/893922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=893921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=893921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=893921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}