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How Zohran Mamdani’s Ambiguous Words Echo in the Digital Sphere
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
When politicians speak out about Israel, antisemitism, or the Holocaust, what they omit can matter as much as what they say. In the digital arena, where nuance collapses within seconds, ambiguity often becomes ammunition.
The case of New York politician Zohran Mamdani, a progressive rising star who will likely become the mayor of New York City, illustrates this dynamic vividly. His statements about Israel, antisemitism, and the war in Gaza have sparked heated debate — not only for their content, but for the way strategic ambiguity allows them to be interpreted in starkly different ways.
Our research analyzed Mamdani’s rhetoric across multiple platforms — from television interviews to TikTok and YouTube — and traced how his words were reframed by influencers and audiences online.
The findings reveal how ambiguous political language can fuel polarization, distort Holocaust memory, and invite antisemitic readings that the speaker may never have intended.
The Power — and Peril — of Ambiguity
Ambiguity functions as a rhetorical strategy: it allows politicians to gesture in several directions at once, offering different audiences the interpretations they prefer. This flexibility provides plausible deniability, yet also creates an opening for distortion and hate.
Mamdani’s communication style is a textbook case. His remarks on Israel and antisemitism frequently hover between empathy and insinuation, critique and deflection — giving the impression of moral seriousness while avoiding clear commitments.
The effect is twofold: admirers see courage and compassion; critics see evasion and coded hostility. But the real consequences emerge online, where ambiguous statements are picked up by content creators, reframed through ideological lenses, and amplified to millions — often in ways that intensify division and resentment.
Omissions That Speak Volumes
Following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre, in which terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and abducted more than 250, Mamdani issued a statement that conspicuously omitted any mention of Hamas or its victims.
Instead, he accused the Israeli government of preparing a “second Nakba.”
Such omissions are not neutral. In political communication, what is left unsaid shapes interpretation just as powerfully as explicit statements. By focusing solely on Israel’s alleged actions, Mamdani’s message erased the context of terrorism and Jewish suffering — effectively reframing a massacre as an act of “resistance.”
This pattern continued in later comments. Mamdani publicly repeated claims — later shown by independent investigations to be caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket — that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza and that pro-Israel students at New York protests had used “chemical weapons.” Both claims spread rapidly online before being debunked. Yet even after corrections, the emotional narrative — Israel as aggressor, Jews as oppressors — remained intact.
When asked about these inaccuracies, Mamdani rarely corrected himself. Instead, he shifted attention to alleged efforts to silence him. In one speech, he attacked the lobbying group AIPAC as “undermining American democracy.” In the version later posted to his social media, that line was quietly edited out — an omission that further invited speculation and conspiratorial readings.
The pattern is consistent: statements are made, outrage follows, then a revised version appears — leaving both supporters and detractors to project their own meanings onto the ambiguity.
Reframing and Decontextualization
Much of Mamdani’s rhetorical power lies in reframing contentious slogans. During debates and interviews, he defended the chant “From the River to the Sea” as an expression of “universal human emancipation,” detaching it from its historic associations with the destruction of Israel. Likewise, when confronted about the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” he called it “a call for justice,” likening it to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
In the Bulwark podcast, he cited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s translation of “intifada” as “uprising” — implying moral equivalence between Jewish resistance during the Holocaust and Palestinian militancy today. Such analogies, presented as scholarly nuance, flatten historical distinctions and convert Holocaust memory into a tool of political comparison.
This decontextualization serves two purposes: it universalizes Jewish suffering (suggesting it belongs equally to all oppressed peoples) and downplays antisemitic violence within the Palestinian movement.
The result is a moral narrative where Jewish trauma becomes a universal metaphor, detached from Jewish history — a rhetorical move with deep emotional resonance and troubling implications.
“Right to Exist” — With Conditions
Mamdani’s statements about Israel’s right to exist are similarly ambivalent. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he affirmed support for Israel “as long as it abides by international law” — a condition that effectively renders recognition provisional. In a later debate, he reiterated that Israel has “a right to exist” but declined to say “as a Jewish state,” instead describing a hypothetical state “with equal rights.”
These formulations sound reasonable, but they subtly shift the premise: from defending Israel’s right to exist as the world’s only Jewish homeland — a right enshrined after the Holocaust — to questioning the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination altogether.
Such framing enables both deniability (“I said they have a right to exist”) and accusation (“but they are violating it”).
How Digital Amplification Works
Our team analyzed hundreds of YouTube and TikTok videos discussing Mamdani’s remarks, focusing on content creators with large followings such as Hasan Piker, Kyle Kulinski, Sam Seder, Guy Christensen, and Vaush.
Across these channels, we coded the creators’ framing of Mamdani’s rhetoric and examined the first 200 comments per video.
The pattern was unmistakable: ambiguity in Mamdani’s statements invited radical amplification online. Influencers portrayed him as a victim of “smears,” “Islamophobia,” and “AIPAC propaganda.”
In turn, comment sections erupted into open antisemitic conspiracy theories.
- Denial and Inversion
Creators like Piker dismissed accusations of antisemitism as “fake nonsense,” claiming they were “weapons” to silence pro-Palestinian voices. Commenters echoed this denial, insisting that “antisemitism is a made-up shield” and calling the Anti-Defamation League the “Apartheid Defense League.”
This rhetorical inversion — portraying those who identify antisemitism as aggressors — transforms legitimate concern into alleged oppression. It blurs the line between defending free speech and trivializing hate.
- Competing Victimhood
Another recurring pattern was reversal of victimhood. Influencers framed criticism of Mamdani as evidence of Islamophobia, arguing that “Muslim politicians are automatically branded antisemitic.” In comment sections, this morphed into claims that Jewish concerns about antisemitism are “privileged” over Muslim experiences of discrimination.
This competitive framing pits minority groups against one another, eroding solidarity and obscuring the specific nature of antisemitism as a distinct, historically rooted form of hate.
- Conspiracy and Servility Tropes
When Democratic leaders criticized Mamdani, content creators claimed they were “doing AIPAC’s bidding.” Commenters took this further: “The Zionists control every dimension of life,” one wrote. Others invoked classic antisemitic imagery — “Follow the $$$ … puppets of Israel” — or even violent fantasies, predicting Mamdani would be “JFK’d” if he continued defying “the lobby.”
These narratives recycle centuries-old myths of Jewish financial and political control, now reframed in the language of internet populism.
- Normalizing Anti-Israel Rhetoric
Creators like Kulinski claimed Mamdani’s stance represented “mainstream Democratic opinion,” suggesting most Americans — even Jewish ones — share his criticisms of Israel. Commenters adopted this as fact, declaring that “the only thing Zionists fear is losing power.”
This normalization transforms hostility toward Israel into a marker of political authenticity. Within this logic, accusing someone of antisemitism becomes proof of their moral courage — a dynamic increasingly visible across progressive movements.
- Holocaust Inversion and Dehumanization
The most alarming finding was the reversal of Holocaust imagery. Influencers compared Israel to Nazi Germany; commenters fused the terms into slurs like “Zionazi” or “Isra-heil.” Some even glorified violence, cloaking assassination fantasies in gaming metaphors: “Trump and Netanyahu in NY? Perfect 2-for-1 moment for the Mario Brothers.”
While such remarks may seem fringe, they accumulate into a broader culture of digital derision — a climate where violent and dehumanizing speech becomes normalized through humor, irony, or moral outrage.
From Ambiguity to Escalation
The progression across these layers — Mamdani’s original statements, influencers’ reinterpretations, and audience reactions — shows how strategic ambiguity can spiral into participatory hate.
- Primary discourse: Mamdani’s words, open-ended and self-protective, avoid explicit antisemitism while enabling multiple readings.
- Secondary discourse: Influencers reframe his critics as tools of oppression, inverting accusations and legitimizing resentment.
- Tertiary discourse: Audiences collapse nuance entirely, producing overt antisemitic language and violent fantasies.
As meaning travels outward from the politician’s mouth to millions of screens, moral ambiguity collapses into moral abdication. This discursive spiral is not unique to Mamdani. It reflects a broader trend in digital politics, where rhetorical vagueness is weaponized by audiences seeking validation rather than understanding.
The Broader Challenge
Mamdani’s case highlights a growing dilemma for democracies: how to handle rhetoric that inflames division without crossing into illegal hate speech. Platforms and policymakers still struggle to address this “gray zone,” where statements remain technically permissible yet have corrosive downstream effects.
Democracy depends not only on freedom of speech but also on responsibility in speech. Politicians who wish to champion justice cannot outsource the meaning of their words to online mobs. Clarity is not censorship; it is accountability.
As the digital public sphere amplifies every utterance, the boundary between rhetoric and radicalization narrows. Mamdani’s example should serve as a warning: when ambiguity becomes a political habit, amplification becomes inevitable — and the cost is borne by those targeted in its echoes.
Dr. Matthias J. Becker is a Researcher in discourse studies at the University of Cambridge and New York University, and Research Lead at AddressHate. He directs the “Decoding Antisemitism” research project, which analyzes how antisemitic ideas spread in digital communication.
Gabrielle Beacken is a PhD student in Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on propaganda, disinformation, and online antisemitism across social media and emerging technologies. She is a Research Assistant at the Center for Media Engagement’s Propaganda Research Lab.
Liora Sabra is a PhD student in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Her research explores antisemitism, Holocaust memory, and propaganda, focusing on definitional debates and their reflection in public discourse. She works at NYU’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism, contributing to research on prejudice and political communication.
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On Columbus Day, remember Abraham Zacuto, the Jewish astronomer history forgot
(JTA) — Every October, Christopher Columbus returns not only as history but as controversy. The voyages associated with his name transformed the world, but their legacy is inseparable from conquest, coercion and the destruction that followed European expansion.
Yet the same Iberian age also produced a quieter and far less controversial revolution: advances in astronomy, mathematics, cartography, instruments and practical navigation that made sustained oceanic voyaging possible. Its protagonists included scholars, translators, mapmakers, instrument makers and pilots whose names are far less familiar than those of the captains who commanded the ships.
Among them, one figure deserves particular remembrance on Columbus Day: Abraham Zacuto, a Jewish astronomer born in Salamanca around 1452. Zacuto belonged to the same Iberian world as Columbus, but experienced its monarchies very differently. In 1492, Columbus sailed west under the patronage of Ferdinand and Isabella. That same year, the Catholic monarchs ordered the Jews of their realms to convert or leave. Zacuto left Castile and continued his work in Portugal. The celebrated maritime discoveries and the expulsion of Iberian Jewry were therefore not distinct historical worlds; they unfolded under the same rulers, at the same moment, within the same culture of ambition, knowledge and power.
Zacuto stands out within that larger scientific story. He was a rabbi, astronomer, mathematician and historian whose astronomical work helped give oceanic navigation a new degree of precision and practicality. His contribution belongs not at the margins of the Age of Exploration but within the scientific infrastructure that made long-distance navigation increasingly systematic.
Around 1478, Zacuto completed his great Hebrew astronomical work, “Ha-Hibbur ha-Gadol,” the “Great Composition.” Working within a long scientific conversation that included Greek, Islamic, Jewish and Christian astronomy, he refined and organized astronomical calculations in forms of exceptional practical value.
After the expulsion from Spain, Zacuto entered Portugal at precisely the moment when the kingdom was pushing maritime exploration farther into the Atlantic and down the African coast. Zacuto’s pupil, José Vizinho, a Jewish adviser to Portuguese King John II, was associated with the practical Latin and Castilian presentation of Zacuto’s astronomical material. In 1496, Zacuto’s Almanach Perpetuum was printed at Leiria in four known issues – three with Latin preliminary matter and one with Castilian.
The importance of those tables was intensely practical. They supplied precise, ready-to-use values for the changing position of the sun through the year. For a pilot on the high seas in daylight, far from recognizable coastlines, this meant that a noon observation of the sun could be combined with solar-declination data to determine latitude — the ship’s north-south position. The difficult astronomical calculations had already been embodied in the tables. What remained aboard ship was an operational procedure: Observe the sun, consult the appropriate value and calculate latitude. That combination of precision and usability greatly facilitated daytime position-finding at sea. Solar tables derived from Zacuto’s work entered early Portuguese navigational manuals and became part of the practical scientific culture of oceanic travel.
The clearest measure of Zacuto’s importance may be what happened next. The Almanach did not remain a local Portuguese publication. Its tables were reprinted repeatedly in Venice in 1498, 1502, 1525 and 1528. A work first printed in Leiria moved into one of Europe’s great publishing centers and continued to circulate for decades. That publishing history alone tells us something about the standing Zacuto’s astronomy acquired.
Its reach extended farther still. Zacuto’s astronomical material was translated and adapted into Arabic. One Arabic version was produced, likely in Istanbul, in 1505-06; another, associated with Ahmad ibn Qasim al-Hajari in Morocco around 1624, survives in several manuscripts. The work of a Jewish astronomer writing in Hebrew in 15th-century Salamanca had crossed into Latin, Castilian and Arabic scientific cultures.
Zacuto’s name also became entwined with the memory of the great navigators. Accounts have long connected his tables with Columbus and Vasco da Gama, including the famous 1504 lunar eclipse in Jamaica. In this episode, Columbus intimidated Indigenous Jamaicans by predicting the disappearance of the moon, relying on Zacuto’s almanac, which he had on board. A manuscript connected with the Almanach also survives in Seville’s Biblioteca Colombina, the library created by Columbus’s son Hernando. Taken together, these associations reveal the stature Zacuto’s work acquired in the historical memory of the Age of Exploration.
Perhaps the most striking part of Zacuto’s story is what happened to the man himself. Portugal valued the kind of expertise he represented. Yet in December 1496, King Manuel I ordered Portugal’s Jews to leave unless they converted, and in 1497 the crown subjected the Jewish population to mass forced conversion. Zacuto left Portugal as well.
Exile did not end either his travels or his scholarship. From Portugal he moved through North Africa, including Tunis, before eventually reaching Jerusalem. There, late in life, he returned once more to the astronomical work that had made his name known across the Mediterranean, recalculating and updating his earlier tables for the Jewish calendar and the meridian of Jerusalem. The strongest recent reconstruction of his life places his death in Jerusalem in Tevet 5274, or late 1513 or very early 1514 — commonly given as 1514.
Zacuto’s story is therefore larger than a footnote to Columbus. It joins two strands of Sephardic history too often told apart: persecution and exile, and the transmission of knowledge, texts and technologies across borders.
Zacuto’s own tables and 15th-century procedures are now obsolete, but their underlying navigational logic endures. Modern celestial navigation still determines position by combining observations of the sun, moon, planets or stars with authoritative astronomical data. The U.S. Naval Academy requires all midshipmen to study navigation, and its current curriculum includes celestial navigation alongside electronic methods. The U.S. Naval Observatory still describes celestial navigation as a critical independent backup to GPS and other electronic systems. And the Nautical Almanac, first published in 1855, remains the standard U.S. Navy resource for marine celestial navigation. The instruments and calculations have changed, but the essential logic remains: Observe the heavens, consult reliable astronomical data and determine position.
Zacuto’s scientific reputation also survives in an unexpected place. In 1935, the International Astronomical Union formally adopted the name Zagut for a lunar crater honoring Abraham ben Shmuel Zacuto. Modern astronomy has, quite literally, written his name onto the Moon.
Columbus remains a household name because voyages leave dramatic images: ships, landfalls, encounters and conquest. The calculations, tables, instruments, translations and printed books that made such voyages possible are easier to forget. Remembering Zacuto widens the story: His tables brought greater precision and practicality to daytime navigation; his work crossed languages and continents; and his life traced the routes of Sephardic exile from Iberia to Jerusalem. The age of maritime discovery was also an age of scientific discovery, and some of the knowledge that carried Iberian ships across oceans was created by scholars whose communities those same monarchies expelled.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JTA or its parent company, 70 Faces Media.
The post On Columbus Day, remember Abraham Zacuto, the Jewish astronomer history forgot appeared first on The Forward.
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Recorded anti-Jewish hate crimes rise 10% in England and Wales
(JTA) — Hate crimes targeting Jewish people in England and Wales rose by 10% in the year ended in March, according to the latest data released by the British government.
Police-reported hate crime — including crime influenced by other factors such as race and sexual orientation — overall increased by 7% compared with the previous year, according to the Home Office data released last week.
British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband posted on X on Monday, “Antisemitism has no place in our society. This morning, I hosted a crucial discussion with the J7 Global Task Force to discuss how we can work together across countries to stamp out the scourge of antisemitism.”
Following the meeting, the Board of Deputies of British Jews issued a statement explaining that Miliband and the task force had discussed, among other things, “the sharp rise in global antisemitism” and the “continued demonisation of Israel.” Representatives from the U.K., the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, Argentina and Australia make up the task force.
“In the meeting, the J7 proposed a new international intergovernmental ministerial task force on antisemitism, comprising the countries represented in the J7 and taking on the key themes discussed. We were pleased that the Foreign Secretary agreed to host an inaugural meeting of J7 countries’ ministers to start this process,” the statement sent to JTA said.
The Community Security Trust, a charity that protects the Jewish community and monitors antisemitism, said on X that the new data show “that antisemitic hate crime remains at an unacceptably high level.”
“As seen previously, Jewish people continue to experience by far the highest police-recorded rate per head of religious hate crime of any faith group,” CST said. “This shows the disproportionate scale of anti-Jewish hatred and its impact on Jewish life in Britain.”
Religious hate crime rose by 13% overall in the 12 months to March 2026, the report said. The overall figure rose from 10,067 to 11,419 offenses.
The two groups most affected were Jews and Muslims, the Home Office said. Religiously motivated hate crimes against Muslims increased 15%, the report found, with spikes reported around public protests in September 2025 and the start of the U.S. war with Iran in February.
The number of recorded offenses affecting Jews rose from 2,874 to 3,162 offenses, spiking after the attack on Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester last year on Yom Kippur.
Two men, Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby, were killed on Oct. 2, 2025, after Jihad Al-Shamie, who was wearing a fake suicide bomb belt, drove into the gates of Heaton Park synagogue and began attacking congregants with a knife. Cravitz died from stab wounds; Daulby was fatally struck by a police bullet during the response.
A spate of violent antisemitic incidents followed this year, including the torching of four ambulances belonging to Jewish volunteer service Hatzola on March 23 and the stabbing of two Jewish men in separate attacks in Golders Green on April 29.
The Home Office figures, which do not include data from London’s Metropolitan Police Service because of a change in how it records crime, showed the second-highest level of religious hate crime directed at the Jewish community since the Home Office began keeping records in 2018. It was surpassed only by the year ending March 2024.
“In the last year, there were 117 police recorded religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people per 10,000 population, the highest rate for any religious group. The next highest rate was for religious hate crimes targeted at Muslims, with 13 per 10,000 population,” said the Home Office.
The report was published on Oct. 8, at a time of heightened sensitivity. Eleven people were arrested at pro-Palestinian marches in London a day earlier, despite calls by the Metropolitan Police to avoid demonstrating on the anniversary of Hamas’ deadly 2023 raids inside Israel.
Police reported 20 arrests at Saturday’s pro-Palestinian protest in London, where many demonstrators were wearing kaffiyehs, waving Palestinian flags and brandishing banners.
The level of hate directed at the Jewish community has remained at an “elevated level” since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict, the report stated.
The CST said, “There is an urgent need to reduce the amount of incitement connected to conflict overseas,” adding that “much more needs to be done across society to tackle this problem.”
Over the summer the government announced a major funding boost to support the Jewish community, promising £250 million ($335 million) over the next three years for increased policing and protection of Jewish communities.
More remains to be done, according to community organizations.
A spokesperson for the Board of Deputies of British Jews said the report’s publication “confirms the need for rigorous prosecution to ensure deterrence, and a whole of society approach to tackling hatred and extremism, and to stopping conflict in the Middle East being used to incite hatred against the Jewish community.”
The Campaign Against Antisemitism said the report was evidence that the British justice system was failing the Jewish community.
“Antisemites, emboldened by the Hamas terrorist atrocity three years ago, are not only not letting up in their hatred but are doubling down,” it said in a statement. “That’s because there is no real deterrent. So really these figures are most damning for the criminal justice system, which has utterly failed to defend British Jews.
“Even as conflict in the Middle East is easing off, antisemitism in the U.K. is rising, yet there have been essentially no changes in policing policy over the past three years and nobody has been held to account for this monumental failure,” the campaign said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Recorded anti-Jewish hate crimes rise 10% in England and Wales appeared first on The Forward.
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Hasan Piker criticizes ‘opportunists’ who accused Mamdani of genocide
(JTA) — Hasan Piker called the protesters who jeered New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani at an Oct. 7 vigil last week “opportunists,” who “tarnished” the anti-Zionist movement’s message.
Piker, the popular streamer who has campaigned for a number of democratic socialist candidates, made his remarks Sunday at Jewish Currents Live, an all-day event hosted by the left-wing magazine at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Speaking on a panel titled “Can the Left Wield Power?”, he said that the protesters had “valid concerns,” including demands like firing police commissioner Jessica Tisch and disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, a heavily armed unit that often responds to protests.
But he criticized the Democratic Socialists of America — the left-wing political organization that Mamdani has called his “political home” — for not playing a bigger role in last week’s protest, which started at City Hall and later overran an Israeli peace vigil. DSA did not sponsor the protest, though some campus chapters of its student section, the Young DSA, participated.
“The DSA not being at the forefront of the anti-Zionist mobilization in New York City is what allowed that mobilization to be tarnished by opportunists, sectarians and those who actually were calling him a genocidaire — which I obviously find to be ridiculous,” Piker said, referring to protesters’ chants of “Mayor Mamdani you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
Piker, who has drawn heat for his anti-Israel views, did not comment on the Hamas iconography displayed by numerous protesters, nor the decision to crash an Oct. 7 vigil that memorialized the 1,200 people killed in the Hamas-led attacks on that date in 2023, and the 74,000 Palestinians who have been killed since then, according to Gaza health ministry figures, which do not distinguish civilians from combatants.
Separately, Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by ICE last year, reportedly criticized those protesters’ “purity politics” during an event in Washington, D.C.
“You don’t have to agree with someone 100 percent — 85 percent is good,” he said, provided that the end goal is “liberating Palestine and ending the unconditional support of the United States.”
Where should Democrats draw the line?
Two Democratic congressional nominees from New York, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, appeared on a separate panel focused on Israel and the Democratic Party.
Lander is Jewish and Darializa Avila Chevalier helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian encampment in 2024. Peter Beinart, editor-at-large at Jewish Currents, moderated the panel, which also featured Georgia state Rep. Ruwa Romman, the first Palestinian American elected to public office in her state.
Their discussion exposed some of the gaps between Lander and Avila Chevalier, both progressives who were endorsed by Mamdani this year and who appeared in a campaign ad together alongside fellow Mamdani endorsee Claire Valdez.
Beinart asked where Democrats should draw the line on what is considered legitimate Palestinian resistance. He pointed to the pro-Palestinian protest held in New York City on Oct. 8, 2023, which Avila Chevalier attended and Lander called “abominable” at the time.
“I think international law has already drawn that line,” Avila Chevalier said, arguing that U.S. protests should target Israel, which receives U.S. support, rather than Hamas.
“We could be the biggest anti-Hamas protesters, but a protest against Hamas in the U.S. isn’t going to do anything,” Avila Chevalier said. “Because we don’t fund it. We don’t have any structural power over it, there is nothing tying us to that institution other than condemning it endlessly.”
After the event, Lander did not confirm to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency whether he had spoken about that Oct. 8 protest with Avila Chevalier.
“We have talked about these issues broadly in private, and I don’t want to characterize those conversations,” Lander told JTA. “And obviously I’ve made my feelings known in public, and I stand by them. I mean, on that day, I was in mourning.”
An attendee named Mark, 29, who declined to share his last name to avoid potential workplace complications, said he felt that Avila Chevalier “didn’t really acknowledge the criticism about perhaps disregarding loss of life; despite the power imbalance, it is lost life.”
For Lander, meanwhile, Mark said it was “politically expedient” for him to not directly address Avila Chevalier’s presence at the 2023 protest. “This is a super lefty crowd that probably would eat him alive if he went against her right now,” he said.
During the panel, Avila Chevalier repeated her call for an arms embargo against Israel while Lander stopped short of doing so, consistent with his statements in the past that Israel should be able to buy defensive ware. Both said Congress must pass the Block the Bombs Act and vote to suspend the sale of offensive U.S. military weapons to Israel. Lander was the only speaker on stage who advocated for a two-state solution in the region.
Beinart asked Romman about Jon Ossoff, the Jewish Democratic senator running for reelection in her state, and how she views his stance on Palestine. She said she was pleased that both Georgia senators have been consistently voting in favor of Bernie Sanders’ resolution to block arms sales to Israel, but added that “in terms of leading, in terms of rhetoric, there’s still a lot of work to be done.”
“We’ll get everyone to where we need them to be eventually,” she said.
‘The bund is back in town’
The Jewish Labor Bund — the early 20th-century socialist movement that fought against Bolshevism, Nazism and Zionism — came up at numerous points on Sunday. One attendee doled out fliers with a website URL and the message, “Tell your bubbe the bund is back in town.” It was also a subject of a conversation that featured Molly Crabapple, whose 2026 book “Here Where We Live is Our Country” focuses on the Bund.
Arlene Geiger, an Upper West Sider and longtime activist, told JTA that she related to those conversations.
“My connection to Judaism is not to Israel, it never has been. It’s more to Eastern Europe and the Bund, so that spoke to me,” Geiger said.
Mark, who is from New Jersey, said he doesn’t come from a “staunchly pro-Zionist” family, but that he has a new interest in leftist Jewish spaces since realizing that he could no longer comfortably distance himself from the issue of Israel, which he believes is committing a genocide.
“It’s just an education for me to be immersed in this kind of space,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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