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On final visit to Israel as mayor, Adams makes a closing argument against Mamdani
JERUSALEM — Outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams embarked on a multi-day swing through Israel, billed as both a show of solidarity amid rising antisemitism and a farewell visit. But it was also something else: likely the last international trip a New York City mayor will take for years, a point Adams wanted to underscore.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, a strident critic of Israel, has pledged not to visit the country, breaking with a tradition upheld by every mayor since 1951 to demonstrate solidarity with Jewish constituents at home. He has also vowed to end the city’s decades-long practice of investing millions in Israeli government debt securities and has said he would order the arrest of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he lands in New York.
“I think he has to have the level of political maturity to understand that government is not protesting,” Adams said in a fireside chat at an event hosted in his honor by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) in Tel Aviv on Sunday evening. “And all those who are in his midst, like the Democratic Socialists of America, he needs to explain to them that he’s now the mayor. He’s no longer someone that is just protesting in the city of New York. He has to protect the city of New York.”
In the 30-minute conversation, moderated by Sacha Roytman, chief executive of CAM, Adams repeatedly alluded to the impact of Mamdani’s political rise and victory in the mayoral election earlier this month. The outgoing mayor said he told his team a year ago that Mamdani was on track to win the Democratic primary and that he expected to face him in a general election showdown, believing he could beat him.
Adams made combating antisemitism central to his reelection effort. Elected as a Democrat in 2021, he later lost key support after striking a deal with the Trump administration to drop his corruption case, prompting him to run for a second term on an independent line dubbed “End Antisemitism.” He became popular in Israel after delivering a forceful speech at a New York City rally in the days following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, in which he declared, “We are not alright.” He also resisted progressive pressure to distance himself from Israel and faced backlash for his crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests at colleges and across the city. Adams recently signed an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which labels most forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitic.
Mamdani, who attended some of the pro-Palestinian protests, faced the most scrutiny for refusing to outright condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” and for saying he doesn’t recognize Israel as a Jewish state.
At the Sunday event, Adams took several shots at Mamdani, calling his election “abnormal” and questioning whether outside actors had influenced the race by shaping social-media algorithms. He suggested that the seeds of Mamdani’s campaign, powered by youthful energy and a promise of unconventional change, were planted during the protests against Israel.
“He had a ready-made army,” Adams said. “He had the Free Palestine movement that was heavily in place. He had the war that was going on, and then he had a group of angry youth on our college campuses. So when he emerged and said he was going to run on one issue, the Free Palestine movement, he already had the army that responded to him.” (Mamdani also ran on issues of affordability, universal childcare, and free buses.)
Adams said the Jewish community in New York “must prepare itself” to respond to any antisemitic attacks that might come. “I think this is a period where they need to be very conscious that there’s a level of global hostility towards the Jewish community,” he said, adding, “If I was a Jewish New Yorker with children, I would be concerned right now.”
Speaking with the Forward on Monday, Adams said he is being truthful about the situation. “I’m not going to lie to New Yorkers, I know what I’m seeing,” he said. “Other people will sugarcoat this moment, and I’m not going to do that. I’m not going to lie. I’m not going to pretend as though everything is fine.” To his critics, Adams said, “Those who want to interpret my candid view of what’s playing out now in our city and across the globe, they can do so. That is not up to me to try to convince them of what I am seeing and what I am hearing and what is playing out.”
The outgoing mayor is expected to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at his office on Tuesday. Netanyahu said in an interview last week, commenting on Mamdani’s win, “If that’s the future of New York, I think New York has a very dim future.” Adams said he’ll assure Netanyahu and other leaders he is meeting with the “49% of New Yorkers did not buy into the rhetoric of the hatred towards Israel.” Madani won with 50.4% of the more than two million votes cast.
Other highlights of Adams’ Israel trip
Earlier in the day, Adams held an emotional 30-minute meeting with three former Israeli hostages — Yarden Bibas, whose wife Shiri and young sons Kfir and Ariel were murdered in captivity; Sagi Dekel-Chen, an American-Israeli released in a ceasefire deal in January; and Bar Kuperstein, who was among the last 20 living hostages freed last month.
Held at the World Jewish Sports Museum at Kfar Maccabiah, Dekel-Chen described his time in captivity and the slow and painful process of healing. Bibas described his life in grief, adding that his only purpose is “to stay alive and remember my wife and kids.”
Adams, visibly shaken, told the former hostages that he admired their resilience and that New Yorkers needed to hear these stories firsthand. He offered to host them for the ball drop in Times Square on New Year’s Eve.
At the museum, Roy Hessing, deputy CEO of the Maccabiah movement, invited Adams to serve as an honorary guest at the next Maccabiah Games, now scheduled to resume in June, after delays due to the war. The event is expected to draw 30,000 participants, including 15,000 from abroad.
Adams also paid a visit to the Western Wall on Sunday night, where he placed a note in the wall and prayed. In the guestbook, Adams wrote that “God is real and life has shown us this.”
Shortly after landing on Saturday, Adams walked through the Nachalat Binyamin neighborhood with Tel Aviv’s deputy mayor, Asaf Zamir, who was Israel’s consul general in New York from 2021 to 2023. Zamir was outspoken against Mamdani throughout the mayoral campaign. Adams has long referred to New York as the “Tel Aviv of America.”
In tours closed to the press, Adams visited the IMI Academy, where Israeli instructors provide tactical and emergency-response training, and the Aerial Systems facility, where he was shown the latest drone and surveillance technologies. He also addressed the annual mayors’ conference hosted by the American Jewish Congress at Jerusalem’s King David Hotel.
At many of his stops, Adams said about his farewell: “I’m not just the mayor that’s leaving office, I’m your brother.”
The post On final visit to Israel as mayor, Adams makes a closing argument against Mamdani appeared first on The Forward.
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Most Jewish voters backed El-Sayed, but many Michigan Democrats crossed party lines, early exit poll shows
Nearly one in four Jewish voters in Michigan who supported Democratic Sen. Elissa Slotkin in 2024 crossed party lines to vote for Republican Mike Rogers instead of Democratic Senate nominee Abdul El-Sayed this year, according to an exit poll of early voters. The findings highlight El-Sayed’s struggle to win over Jewish Democrats amid concerns about his views on Israel and his association with an influencer accused of antisemitism.
The Mercury Public Affairs survey of 482 Jewish voters who cast ballots before Election Day found that El-Sayed received 60% of the early Jewish vote in the Senate race, compared with 79% for Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jocelyn Benson. Rogers received 36% and another 5% of respondents said they left the Senate race blank.
The poll sponsored by The Jewish Majority, an advocacy group led by AIPAC veteran Jonathan Schulman, was conducted from Oct. 25 through Oct. 31 via text and had a reported margin of error of plus or minus 5 percentage points.
Among Jewish voters who said they backed Slotkin in 2024, 23% voted for Rogers this time, and among those who voted for Kamala Harris in the presidential election, 18% crossed over to Rogers, while another 11% voted for someone else or skipped the Senate race.
More than 2.3 million voters cast ballots by Monday morning, including 743,450 in person and nearly 1.57 million by mail, according to the Michigan Secretary of State. Jewish voters make up an estimated 1.4% of Michigan’s electorate, but both parties viewed them as an important voting bloc in the closely contested Senate race. Slotkin defeated Rogers by fewer than 20,000 votes in 2024.
The election followed months of tension between El-Sayed and Jewish Democrats, who voted for his primary rival, Rep. Haley Stevens. His outspoken opposition to Israel, ties to left-wing commentator Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitism, and his initial response to the March attack on Temple Israel upset some Jewish voters. El-Sayed apologized for his remarks about the attack and sent mailers to Jewish households promising to fight antisemitism, but did not moderate his positions on Israel. He even doubled down on his criticism of the Jewish state.
The Republican Jewish Coalition spent $2 million targeting about 50,000 Jewish voters, primarily in Oakland County, hoping to persuade Democrats frustrated with El-Sayed to cross party lines.
The findings suggest that El-Sayed’s struggles were not the result of a broader shift toward Republicans. Among Jewish voters who voted for Rogers, 61% said they voted mainly against El-Sayed rather than for the Republican. Another 23% said both factors mattered equally. And 88% of those who did not vote for El-Sayed said they would have been very likely to vote for a different Democratic nominee.
Almost all of them — 92% — cited El-Sayed’s positions on Israel and concerns about antisemitism as a main reason for their decision, while just 22% said they wanted to send a message to the Democratic Party.
The survey may not reflect last-minute developments. It was completed before Stevens endorsed Rogers on Sunday, in a rare break with her party. Later that day, leaders of Nonnegotiable, a group of Jewish Democrats opposed to El-Sayed, urged voters who could not support either candidate to write in Emma Lazarus, the Jewish author whose poem appears on the Statue of Liberty, instead of leaving the Senate race blank.
The post Most Jewish voters backed El-Sayed, but many Michigan Democrats crossed party lines, early exit poll shows appeared first on The Forward.
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Georgia voters decide the future of Jon Ossoff, a Jewish Democrat who increasingly criticizes Israel
(JTA) — Jewish voters in Georgia went to the polls on Tuesday to choose between Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has increasingly criticized Israel, and Republican Rep. Mike Collins, his pro-Israel challenger with ties to white nationalists.
Ossoff, who is Jewish, called Collins a “notorious bigot, antisemite, and extremist” during the bitterly fought election. Collins said that Ossoff “caved to the radicals” by voting to halt certain arms shipments to Israel.
Ossoff’s voting record on Israel has captured a shift in the Democratic party. While he has supported measures to boost Israeli defense systems, he also became one of the first Senate Democrats to vote for blocking offensive weapons sales to Israel in 2024, as the country’s military conduct in Gaza drove mounting opposition.
In contrast, Collins has pledged continued military support for Israel and described the country as “a frontline partner against Iran and their partners in terror” in the Atlanta Jewish Times. A self-described “born again Christian,” Collins added that he supports Israel because “my faith tells me to and because it is the right policy for America.”
Collins’ campaign was mired in controversies surrounding his associates. One of his former staffers posted images of a swastika and a Ku Klux Klan robe online, while another partook in a group chat with prominent white nationalists that aimed to help an accused Holocaust denier. Collins’ son-in-law is a social media influencer who has promoted conspiracy theories that “Jews control our government” and called to deport all Muslims.
Ossoff took aim at those associations during the candidates’ two debates, saying that Collins “hired half the Third Reich to staff your congressional office” and was “unable to stop someone under your own roof from disseminating neo-Nazi propaganda while you run for the Senate.” Collins has said that he condemns antisemitism and does not support his son-in-law’s views.
Meanwhile, Ossoff’s vote against offensive weapons for Israel in November 2024 divided Georgia’s Jews. In an open letter, a coalition including Georgia synagogues, the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, the local Anti-Defamation League chapter and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee told Ossoff they were “deeply disappointed” and the vote demonstrated that his “commitment to Israel’s security is not ironclad.”
An opposing letter from over 100 Atlanta Jewish leaders, including rabbis and heads of liberal organizations, thanked Ossoff for his vote. They said his position represented “a growing portion of the American Jewish community that believes that the US-Israel relationship should be grounded in our laws, national security interests and shared values.”
AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby, attacked Ossoff and other senators who supported the bill in an advertising blitz. But Ossoff was backed by J Street, a liberal Jewish Middle East advocacy group, which spent $3 million on ads attacking Collins and other AIPAC-supported Republicans.
Ossoff subsequently voted for further measures in 2025 and 2026 to block sales of rifles, bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs to Israel. Collins repeatedly attacked Ossoff for those votes, accusing the senator of giving in to “radicals” in the Democratic party who were “pushing the anti-Israel agenda.”
Ossoff has walked a tightrope between criticizing Israel and distancing himself from his party’s staunchest left flank. In his Oct. 8 debate with Collins, he was asked whether Israel committed genocide in Gaza, a charge made by a growing chorus of progressives. Ossoff cited Israeli war crimes while deferring to international courts.
“The question of genocide is a question of whether a government has the specific intent to destroy a national or ethnic group, and that is a question for the International Criminal Court,” Ossoff said. “There is no doubt in my mind that Israeli forces prosecuting the war in Gaza violated the law of armed conflict and international humanitarian law.”
Ossoff has also excoriated Trump’s decision to join Israel in a war with Iran. Like other Democratic candidates across the country, Ossoff accuses Trump of “lying a nation into war” and sending “prices soaring with his warmongering in the Middle East.”
Ossoff’s rising popularity has spurred speculation about his potential future as a 2028 presidential contender, though he said he has “zero interest in running for president.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Georgia voters decide the future of Jon Ossoff, a Jewish Democrat who increasingly criticizes Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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Why Nick Fuentes endorsed Democrats in the midterms
Nick Fuentes is a devoted conservative, open antisemite and far-right agitator. On his Rumble show, one of the most viewed on the streaming platform, he regularly calls for mass deportations, labels women the biggest threat to America, praises Hitler, slanders Black people as illiterate and blames Jews for a host of societal ills.
So why, on the morning of the 2026 midterm elections, did he post, “Get out and vote Democrat today?”
It sounds like a joke, which wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for the shockjock humor the far-right influencer employs. Fuentes paraded with MAGA flags on Boston University’s liberal campus when he was briefly enrolled there. He went to the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. He had dinner with the then-former president Trump alongside Kanye West. He celebrated the president’s win in 2024.
But Fuentes was not kidding. In his streams on Rumble, where he runs his podcast, America First with Nicholas J. Fuentes, he has been telling his followers, often called Groypers, to vote blue no matter who. He has done the same on X, where his once-banned account was reinstated when Musk bought the platform.
What changed his mind? Well, in large part, Israel.
Fuentes has been complaining for nearly a year now about Trump, for myriad reasons. On X, Fuentes harshly criticized Trump’s refusal to release the Epstein files and his failure to deport millions. He slammed the war with Iran. And, as ever, the streamer known for his antisemitism has speculated about Jewish influence on rightwing politicians and causes.
On a stream urging his followers once again to vote for Democratic politicians in congressional races, he said that Trump had failed to end the “genocide in Gaza” and had instead broken his promises not to start any new wars — and done so at Netanyahu’s bidding no less. Angrily, he pointed out that Trump had come into office with control of both the House and the Senate, and with the support of some of the most-desired demographics of American voters: young men.
“For the first time in like a quarter of a century, it was hip to be Republican. It was cool,” Fuentes said, recalling Trump’s win in 2024. But then, he argued, the Republican leadership blew it: “You lost the comedians, you lost the podcast bros, you lost the normies! Normies don’t like war with Iran. Normies don’t like 3.7% inflation!”
But don’t take Fuentes’ endorsement of Democrats as proof that the worst antisemitism now lies with the left; the influencer has been clear that he reviles the Democratic party and is still a right-winger. Not only is he an avowed white nationalist and antisemite, he is a devout traditionalist Catholic who does not believe women should be allowed to vote. However much he dislikes anything to do with Jews, he is not truly interested in uniting with anti-Zionist progressive candidates just because they criticize Israel. (He is, however, happy to endorse Amy Action, a blonde white Democrat, over the Indian Vivek Ramaswamy, who Fuentes called an “anchor baby.”)
Instead, he has said his Democratic endorsement is a tactical one, a way to steer and influence the Republican party to come closer to his Christian nationalist, antisemitic, closed borders ideology.
“James Talarico is a Satanic wicked disgusting figure. Abdul Rahman El-Sayed in Michigan is a lying scumbag. He’s trying to maintain this facade that he’s Woke 2.0, patriotic, just wants healthcare — he’s a Muslim socialist. Pure contempt for America and whites,” Fuentes said on a stream about the midterms. “These are some of the worst Democrats ever! But maybe that is the wake up call we are going to need as the anti-left opposition to put up some legitimately good candidates.”
If there is a blue wave on Tuesday night, as Fuentes predicts, he believes the Republican party will blame him for it — and he’s ready to accept responsibility. He did, after all, urge his followers to vote Democratic. But don’t be fooled; he won’t be pushing the Democrats to become groypers. Most likely, he’ll present himself and his followers as the natural successors to lead the Republican party in 2028.
The post Why Nick Fuentes endorsed Democrats in the midterms appeared first on The Forward.
