Following Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday, local Jewish leaders are expressing deep apprehension about their future status in a city facing the prospect of being led by a man who has been accused of antisemitism and made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career.

Mamdani, the 33‑year‑old state assemblymember and proud democratic socialist, defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other candidates in a lopsided first‑round win in the city’s Democratic primary for mayor, notching approximately 43.5 percent of first‑choice votes compared to Cuomo’s 36.4 percent.

Voters in New York City rank their choices in order of their preference. While Mamdani declared victory and Cuomo conceded defeat, the race’s ultimate outcome will technically be decided when every vote is tallied, taking into account the ranked choice count. Mamdani’s victory is all but assured.

Some observers have speculated that Mamdani’s win over an older, high-profile Democrat signifies growing frustration with the party’s status quo and represents a generational change.

The election results have also alarmed members of the local Jewish community, who expressed deep concern over his past criticism of Israel and defense of antisemitic rhetoric.

“Mamdani’s election is the greatest existential threat to a metropolitan Jewish population since the election of the notorious antisemite Karl Lueger in Vienna,” Rabbi Marc Schneier, one of the most prominent Jewish leaders in New York City, said in a statement. “Jewish leaders must come together as a united force to prevent a mass Jewish Exodus from New York City.”

Avital Chizhik-Goldschmidt, who along with her husband Rabbi Benjamin Goldschmidt co-founded the Altneu, an Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, suggested that Mamdani’s political ascendance indicates that antisemitism might actually be a political “asset” these days. 

“Perhaps soft antisemitism is not a liability for a NYC politician. It’s an asset,” Chizhik-Goldschmidt wrote. “Perhaps New York City is not the city we thought it was.”

Former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who later founded the organization Americans Against Antisemitism, similarly repudiated Mamdani and encouraged New Yorkers to consolidate behind a single candidate to oppose the presumptive Democratic nominee in the general election in November.

“Mamdani has won the Democratic primary,” he said in a video posted to social media. “It is pathetic, it is sick, it is painful for people who care about the future of New York and in particular the Jewish community.”

Hikind added in a written post accompanying the video: “NYC must unite to defeat the dangerous antisemite Mamdani.”

A little-known politician before this year’s primary campaign, Mamdani is an outspoken supporter of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination.

Mamdani has also repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, falsely suggesting the country does not offer “equal rights” for all its citizens, and promised to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York.

Most recently, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada”— which references previous periods of sustained Palestinian terrorism against Jews and Israels and has been widely interpreted as a call to expand political violence — by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.”

The same week, an old X/Twitter post from 2015 by Mamdani resurfaced online showing him appearing to threaten that a “third intifada” was coming.

Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis, warned that Mamdani’s victory represents a well-known pattern that starts with hatred of Israel and ends with violence targeting Jews.

“Zohran Mamdani’s win in #NYC feels deeply familiar to #Europe’s #Jewish community. We’ve seen where radical politics — especially cloaked in ‘justice’ rhetoric — can lead. It starts with slogans. It ends with violence,” Goldschmidt, the former chief rabbi of Moscow, posted on social media.

“In Europe, we’ve learned the hard way: when far-left ideologues and radical Islamists turn Israel into a symbol of absolute evil, it quickly becomes a weapon — not against a state, but against Jews. ‘Anti-Zionism’ becomes the mask. Exclusion and incitement follow,” the rabbi continued. “This isn’t about legitimate critique of Israeli policy. It’s about obsession. Israel becomes a dog whistle — a coded target on synagogues, schools, and Jews in public life.”

Europe, like New York, has experienced a surge in antisemitism since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre, with antisemitic incidents often liked to animus against Israel.

“The safety of all New Yorkers — including Jewish New Yorkers — is the single greatest responsibility of the mayor of New York,” said Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.

“That safety has been deeply impacted by the rhetoric and actions of those whose opposition to Zionism has driven them to work to instill fear and intimidation in Jews who support Israel,” he added.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), called for Jews in New York to immigrate to Israel.

“As an American Jew and as a human, I am truly frightened that an antisemitic communist Mamdani has actually promoted murdering Jews by supporting and legitimizing the antisemitic rally cry ‘globalize the intifada,’ refuses to accept the Jewish state of Israel as a Jewish state, states he will arrest PM Netanyahu if he comes to NYC, and is friendly with Israel bashing Jew-haters – and yet has been mainstreamed in the most important Jewish city in America,” he posted. “Is it time to make aliyah to Israel.”

The post New York City Jews Sound Alarm After Anti-Israel Socialist Zohran Mamdani Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

A Jewish teenager was threatened at knifepoint and called a “dirty Jew” in an antisemitic attack in France — the latest in a growing wave of hate crimes targeting the country’s Jewish community.

Last week, a 15-year-old boy was violently attacked in Colomiers, southwestern France, after attending a meetup arranged with a girl over social media, French media reported.

When the boy arrived at the meeting point, two men were waiting for him at the entrance to a basement. They held him at knifepoint, humiliated him, and shared the assault on social media.

One of the attackers, armed with a knife, forced him to remove his shirt and dance, then grabbed him by the neck and forced him to kneel.

Then, the attacker reportedly told him to “beg and pray,” repeatedly calling him a “dirty Jew” because he attended a private Jewish school. He also threatened to kill him if he tried to contact the police.

The following day, the teenager found out that the assault had been filmed and circulated on social media. Using the attackers’ TikTok accounts, the victim was able to file a formal complaint.

On Friday, local police arrested one of the suspects who posted the video, according to the French broadcaster Europe 1. He was taken into custody on charges of aggravated assault motivated by religious hatred.

As of this week, the investigation is ongoing, with authorities actively searching for the remaining suspects.

The brutal assault is the latest antisemitic incident amid a troubling surge in anti-Jewish violence sweeping the country since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Antisemitism in France continued to surge to alarming levels across the country last year, with 1,570 incidents recorded, according to a report by the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) – the main representative body of French Jews.

The total number of antisemitic outrages in 2024 was a slight dip from 2023’s record total of 1,676, but it marked a striking increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022.

In late May and early June, antisemitic acts rose by more than 140 percent, far surpassing the weekly average of slightly more than 30 incidents.

The report also found that 65.2 percent of antisemitic acts last year targeted individuals, with more than 10 percent of these offenses involving physical violence.

The post Jewish Teen Threatened at Knifepoint in France Amid Surge in Antisemitic Attacks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

US Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) mocked recent arguments against the US intervening in Iran promoted by populist-nationalist podcaster Tucker Carlson during a closed-door meeting with legislative colleagues this week, according to a new report.

On Tuesday at the Senate Republican lunch closed to reporters, Cotton provoked laughter among attendees when he listed a number of Carlson’s predictions about the Iran-Israel conflict which had thus far failed to materialize, Axios reported.

The Arkansas politician reportedly insisted that fellow Senate Republicans should marginalize the former Fox News host. He also encouraged them to ignore online advocates of isolationism — going so far as to compare them to the left-wing opinion hosts of the cable news network MSNBC — while pointing to polling demonstrating solid Republican support for the US bombings of Iranian nuclear facilities.

Cotton did not identify Carlson by name; however he did reportedly read items from a 768-word X post the podcaster shared on June 4 and which has now received 7.8 million views.

“So why is [conservative media personality] Mark Levin once again hyperventilating about weapons of mass destruction? To distract you from the real goal, which is regime change — young Americans heading back to the Middle East to topple yet another government,” Carlson wrote earlier this month. “Virtually no one will say this out loud. America’s record of overthrowing foreign leaders is so embarrassingly counterproductive that regime change has become a synonym for disaster.”

Carlson proclaimed that “it goes without saying that there are very few Trump voters who’d support a regime change war in Iran. Donald Trump has argued loudly against reckless lunacy like this.”

A CNN poll released on Tuesday showed that 56 percent of respondents disapproved of the Iran strikes while 44 percent did; likewise, 60 percent feared the attacks would increase the Iranian threat to Americans, while 27 percent believed the opposite. On the broader question of deploying ground troops into Iran, only 9 percent favored such a move, with 68 percent opposing and 23 percent unsure.

Partisan divides also appeared in approval of US President Donald Trump’s decision, with 60 percent of independents and 88 percent of Democrats disapproving while 82 percent of Republicans backed the president. Differences in ages among Republicans also signaled greater skepticism for the strikes with only 20 percent of under-45 Republicans strongly approving compared to 53 percent of older Republicans. The younger cohorts of the GOP also believed more that the bombings increased the Iranian threat to America, and they doubted Trump’s military judgment in the conflict.

Carlson also predicted a US strike on Iran would lead to a third world war.

“The first week of a war with Iran could easily kill thousands of Americans,” he wrote earlier this month. “It could also collapse our economy, as surging oil prices trigger unmanageable inflation. Consider the effects of $30 gasoline. But the second week of the war could be even worse.”

Trump announced a ceasefire between Iran and Israel less than 48 hours after the US military bombed three of Iran’s key nuclear facilities. The war between the two Middle Eastern adversaries had lasted for 12 days, with Israel decimating much of Iran’s nuclear program, military leadership, and ballistic-missile capabilities.

On Monday, Cotton appeared on Fox News to defend Trump’s decision to attack Iran.

“Iran did not become a terrorist state because Donald Trump bombed their nuclear bunkers,” Cotton wrote on X. “Donald Trump bombed their nuclear bunkers because they are a terrorist state, and they cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons.”

The Algemeiner contacted Cotton’s office for comment and did not receive a response at press time.

On Tuesday, reports emerged of an early intelligence assessment suggesting that the three US strikes may not have completely destroyed the Iranian nuclear program, only delaying development of a nuclear weapon back a few months.

The White House pushed back, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt telling CNN that “this alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as ‘top secret’ but was still leaked to CNN by an anonymous, low-level loser in the intelligence community. The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a criminal investigation to uncover the identity of the leaker of the intelligence assessment.

Trump said of his attack on Iran that “it was very severe. It was obliteration.”

On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio explained to Politico that “the bottom line is, they are much further away from a nuclear weapon today than they were before the president took this bold action.”

“That’s the most important thing to understand — significant, very significant, substantial damage was done to a variety of different components, and we’re just learning more about it,” Rubio emphasized.

Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) told CNN that “I’ve been briefed on this plan in the past, and it was never meant to completely destroy the nuclear facilities, but rather cause significant damage.”

He added, “It was always known to be a temporary setback.”

The post US Sen. Tom Cotton Calls Out Failed Iran Predictions of Isolationist Online Influencers: Report first appeared on Algemeiner.com.