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How Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani’s politics shaped New York City’s new mayor
(New York Jewish Week) — When he sat down for an interview in November with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Mahmood Mamdani offered one parameter: “Let’s not talk about the mayor thing.”
It was just two days after the Columbia University professor had taken the stage alongside his wife and daughter-in-law after his son Zohran had been elected mayor of New York City, winning more than 50% of the vote in a three-way race.
Zohran Mamdani, a 34-year-old democratic socialist with a long track record of pro-Palestinian activism, has said he counts his father as one of his political inspirations.
But Mahmood Mamdani preferred to talk about his own record, as a professor of anthropology and international affairs and a longstanding pro-Palestinian activist who was the first faculty member to address the Gaza war encampment on his campus.
His wife, filmmaker Mira Nair, and Zohran’s wife, the artist Rama Duwaji, likewise are respected in their fields and well known for their pro-Palestinian advocacy and adherence to the movement to boycott Israel.
Zohran Mamdani has described the BDS movement as “consistent with the core of my politics,” and in 2023 introduced a bill while serving as an assemblymember that sought to block nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
While it is unclear the extent to which Mamdani will pursue BDS policies during his upcoming mayoral term, his politics and those of his parents reflect a shared alignment with pro-Palestinian causes.
“When you’re the kid of two parents who are very involved in social justice, a lot of times what you remember as a playdate was you being at some rally or some march,” Mamdani recalled in an interview with City & State in April 2023.
Now, as Zohran takes the city’s reins, here’s what you need to know about his immediate family.
Mahmood Mamdani, viewing Israel through an anti-colonial lens
Long before his son’s mayoral campaign, Mahmood Mamdani, 79, was known widely as one of the foremost scholars on colonialism and postcolonial politics in Africa. Born in India in 1946, Mamdani was raised in Kampala, Uganda at a time when the country was racially segregated. After receiving his bachelors, masters and doctorate from universities in the United States, Mamdani was expelled from Uganda in 1972 after Ugandan President Idi Amin ordered all Asians to leave the country.
Since 1999, he has been a professor of government at Columbia University, and has published several books and essays on colonialism and political violence including “Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism” in 1996 and “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror” in 2004.
As a scholar, Mahmood Mamdani is best known for his analysis of colonial rule and how it shapes the identities of both the occupied and occupiers. In his 2020 book, “Neither Settler nor Native: The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities,” he uses case studies that include Nazi Germany, Israelis and Palestinians and post-apartheid South Africa.
Mamdani has spoken directly and repeatedly about how his broader scholarship shapes his thinking on Israel and Palestinians. “The issue is not settlers, but settler colonialism,” he wrote in “Neither Settler nor Native.” In 2021, during an 11-day outbreak of violence between Hamas and Israel that was sparked by tensions in Jerusalem, Mamdani wrote on X, “Palestinians have a right to resist. This is a colonial occupation, not a conflict!”
Three days later, as Hamas and Israel exchanged missiles and airstrikes, Mamdani wrote that the conflict was not between Israel and Hamas, but rather the resurgence of a third intifada.
“The resistance this time began in Jerusalem and spread to Gaza, now the West Bank and Palestinian communities beyond. This is not a conflict between Israel and Hamas,” wrote Mamdani in a post on X. “We are witnessing something far more meaningful, the birth of the Third Intifadah against settler colonialism!”
In 2002, as the second intifada was in full force, Mamdani signed onto a petition calling for Columbia University to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel, saying at the time his support for the petition was to make a “moral statement registering concern over the exercise of power by Israel.”
In the Chronicle of Higher Education interview, Mahmood Mamdani spoke about being the first faculty member to address the pro-Palestinian protesters who set up an encampment at Columbia in 2024. He said his talk focused on “lessons of the divestment movement in South Africa.”
In a 2022 Zoom lecture at the Carter G. Woodson Institute of the University of Virginia, Mahmood Mamdani argued that while there was reason to give “full and enthusiastic support” to the BDS movement, he cautioned against the movement extending its boycotts against the breadth of “Israeli society and not just to its Zionist sectors.”
During his lecture, Mamdani also argued that Israel must learn from the dissolution of the South African apartheid, saying that the only way forward in the region was if there was an “epistemic revolution” in Israel where they realized the “flourishing of Jews and Jewish life does not require a Zionist state.”
“Whites did not need to monopolize political power to have a home in South Africa. It is this lesson that needs to be driven home to Israelis, as many as possible, that Jews do not need to have a Jewish state to have a secure home in Israel-Palestine,” said Mamdani. “Indeed, Jews are more secure in New York City than they are in Israel.”
Asked whether he supports a one-state solution, Mamdani recently told The Chronicle, “I’m sympathetic to only one type of one state, a state which is based on rule of law and guarantees equal rights,” a position his son echoed on the campaign trail. “I’m opposed to any kind of discrimination. I’m opposed to any form of apartheid which I understand to be a legally enforced distinction between two groups in society, where one benefits and the other is penalized.”
In an interview with The Nation in January 2024, Mamdani criticized the public response to the pro-Palestinian protests erupting across the U.S., saying that conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism was a danger to democracy.
“To conflate the critique of a state with the critique of a people poses a challenge to a democratic culture,” he said. In his recent Chronicle interview, Mamdani pointed favorably to the Jerusalem Declaration definition of antisemitism, signed by over 200 mostly Jewish scholars, which insists that the movement to boycott Israel is not in and of itself antisemitic. The declaration, he said, “makes a very clear distinction between the State of Israel and the people of Israel,” as opposed to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition.
In a January 2024 letter published in the Columbia Spectator, Mahmood Mamdani criticized the school for dissuading the use of the words “intifada” and “from the river to the sea,” arguing that excluding them would “rule out any meaningful dialogue on Israel and Palestine on this campus.” (He told the Chronicle that the “river to the seas” concept appears in the Likud party manifesto, which declares that “between the [Mediterranean] Sea and the Jordan [River] there will only be Israeli sovereignty.” He also claimed that he had not actually heard “from the river to the sea” chanted in Columbia’s quad, and had only read about it.)
Zohran Mamdani similarly downplayed rhetoric that many Israel supporters consider incendiary. In June he declined to condemn the phrase “globalize the Intifada,” arguing that the phrase symbolized a “desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” (Mamdani later said he would “discourage” the use of the phrase, which many supporters of Israel, recalling two violent uprisings of Palestinians in 1987 and 2000 that killed hundreds of Israelis, see as a call to violence.)
At an appearance on the encampments, Mamdani described charges of antisemitism as “part of the currency the administration uses to demonize protests like this,” according to the Columbia Spectator.
Critics of the elder Mamdani say he underplays Jewish historical vulnerability and antisemitism, minimizes Palestinian political agency and their internal divisions, and ignores the way Zionism differs from European colonialism. But like his son, he believes even younger Jews are increasingly adopting his critique of Israel and Zionism.
In a December interview with Peter Beinart for Jewish Currents, a leftist magazine, he said he believed the Jewish diasporic community would play an “important role” in discussions over the “Palestinian question” in the future.
“Jewish children in New York City have become increasingly skeptical of the direction in which Israel has been moving, and increasingly disillusioned with both the moral and the political efficacy of that route and increasingly open to explore an alternative,” said Mamdani.
Mira Nair, a supporter of cultural boycotts
Nair is an award-winning Indian-American filmmaker whose debut 1988 film, “Salaam Bombay!,” earned her an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. She also directed several acclaimed films including “Mississippi Masala” in 1991, “Monsoon Wedding” in 2001 and “The Namesake” in 2006.
Born in India, she met Mahmood Mamdani in Uganda in 1989, and they married two years later. Nair was also married to the Jewish photographer Mitch Epstein from 1981 to sometime before 1989; he has declined JTA’s requests for an interview.
Nair has also been an outspoken critic of Israel and a supporter of petitions backing the Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement.
In 2013, Nair declined an invitation to the Haifa International Film Festival. “I will not be going to Israel at this time. I will go to Israel when the walls come down. I will go to Israel when occupation is gone,” she tweeted at the time. In a subsequent post, she added that she stood with the BDS movement.
In March of this year, Nair signed onto a petition calling for the Academy Awards to remove Israeli actress Gal Gadot from its ceremony, accusing her of showing “support for Israel’s military actions against Palestinians,” according to an Instagram post by the group.
Following the election of her son, Nair has also declined to discuss Mamdani’s attitudes towards Jews and Israel in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter.
“What I love so much about Zohran is that he embraces the multiplicity of our lives in the most natural way — this mosaic that is our city but that no one has seen until this young man came along,” Nair told The Hollywood Reporter of her son.
Rama Duwaji, an artist with a political vision
Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji, whom he married this year, has also made pro-Palestinian advocacy a focal point of her work in ceramics, animation and illustrations.
While Duwaji has largely refused interviews with the press and did not appear at campaign events or fundraisers, last month she sat for her first interview post election with The Cut.
“Speaking out about Palestine, Syria, Sudan — all these things are really important to me,” Duwaji told The Cut. “I’m always keeping up to date with what’s going on, not just here but elsewhere. It feels fake to talk about anything else when that’s all that’s on my mind, all I want to put down on paper.”
“Everything is political; it’s the thing that I talk about with [Zohran] and my friends, the thing that I’m up to date with every morning, which is probably not great for my mental health. It’s what I talk about when I check on my family back home,” continued Duwaji.
During the interview Duwaji also discussed the meaning behind part of her election night outfit —- a black top designed by Zeid Hijazi, a London-based Palestinian-Jordanian label.
“It’s nice to have a little bit of analysis on the clothes because, for instance, during the general-election night, it was nice to send a message about Palestinians by wearing a Palestinian designer,” said Duwaji.
Duwaji, 28, who is ethnically Syrian and grew up in Texas and Dubai, also frequently posts illustrations that advocate for pro-Palestinian causes on her Instagram account. Her art has been featured in The New Yorker, The Washington Post, the BBC, and VICE, according to her website.
https://www.instagram.com/p/DNQ85ehpSo6/?hl=en
In August, she posted an animation of the Palestinian flag along with the words “end the genocide,” and posted another last month depicting the Global Sumud Flotilla.
In March, she posted an illustration of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian student activist at Columbia University, calling for his release after he was detained by the Trump administration amid its campaign to purportedly combat campus antisemitism.
“This is an attack on freedom of speech, and sets a scary f—king precedent for anyone who speaks up for what’s right. Resist,” wrote Duwaji.
“He’s his own person”
In an interview with the New York Times in June, Mahmood Mamdani spurned suggestions that his politics had an outsized impact on his son’s political views.
“He’s his own person,” Mamdani said. “Now, of course what we do as his parents is part of the environment in which he grew up, and he couldn’t help but engage with it. That doesn’t mean anything is reflected back on us.”
But Nair was quick to disagree, telling the Times that her son had “very much absorbed” his parents’ politics, which largely center on anti-colonialism.
“I don’t agree!” Ms. Nair said. “Of course the world we live in, and what we write and film and think about, is the world that Zohran has very much absorbed.”
The post How Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani’s politics shaped New York City’s new mayor appeared first on The Forward.
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German Court Drops Antisemitic Motive in Attack on Jewish Student, Sparking Outcry Over Reduced Sentence
A protester wrapped in an Israeli flag at a rally against antisemitism at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner
More than two years after the brutal attack on Jewish student Lahav Shapira, a German court has acquitted the perpetrator of antisemitic-motivated charges and handed down a reduced sentence, in what appears to be yet another case of the justice system in Europe dismissing antisemitism as a driving factor in violent crime.
On Monday, the Berlin Regional Court sentenced Shapira’s 25-year-old classmate to two and a half years in prison for aggravated assault, delivering a lighter punishment than the one handed down during the initial ruling last year.
However, the court found no antisemitic motive behind the attack, overturning the previous ruling that had concluded otherwise, a decision that has prompted outrage and renewed criticism over how such cases are interpreted and prosecuted.
The court found there was not enough evidence to establish that the accused had expressed antisemitic views prior to the attack, and that investigators’ discovery of anti-Israel material and a pro-Palestinian map in his apartment could not be definitively tied to him or any of his family members.
Shapira strongly condemned the verdict, describing it as a reversal of perpetrator and victim, and expressed hope that the public prosecutor’s office would appeal so the case could be reconsidered “by competent people.”
“What other motive could there have been?” 33-year-old student Shapira said when leaving the courtroom. “I’m annoyed; it’s sad.”
The attack took place in February 2024, when Shapira was out with his girlfriend and was recognized by a fellow student of Arab descent who confronted him over posters he and other students had placed around the university regarding Israeli hostages taken during the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
As the argument escalated, Shapira was knocked to the ground with punches and kicked in the face, suffering a complex midface fracture and a brain hemorrhage.
During the first trial, the public prosecutor’s office argued that “Shapira was attacked because he is Jewish and stood up against antisemitism.”
Even though the accused admitted to the assault in both trials, he consistently denied that it was motivated by antisemitism.
Shapira has also tried unsuccessfully to force the Free University of Berlin (FU) to offer stronger protection against antisemitic discrimination. However, the Berlin Administrative Court rejected his lawsuit against the university as inadmissible.
This latest case is by no means the first in Europe to raise alarm bells among the Jewish community, as courts have repeatedly overturned or reduced sentences for individuals accused of antisemitic crimes, fueling public outrage over what many see as excessive leniency.
Like most countries across Europe and the broader Western world, Germany has seen a shocking rise in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, in the wake of the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to newly released figures, the number of antisemitic offenses in the country reached a record high in 2025, totaling 2,267 incidents, including violence, incitement, property damage, and propaganda offenses.
By comparison, officially recorded antisemitic crimes were significantly lower at 1,825 in 2024, 900 in 2023, and fewer than 500 in 2022, prior to the Oct. 7 atrocities.
Officials warn that the real number of antisemitic crimes is likely much higher, as many incidents go unreported.
In one of the latest incidents, unknown perpetrators defaced a home over the weekend in Berlin’s Prenzlauer Berg district with a swastika and the slogan “Kill all Jews,” prompting an investigation by the State Security Service.
Last week, an Israeli restaurant in the German city of Munich was attacked when assailants smashed multiple windows and threw pyrotechnic devices inside in what authorities suspected was an antisemitic assault.
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Majority of Israelis Oppose Iran Ceasefire, Back Continued Campaign, Polls Find
An Israeli air defense system intercepts a ballistic missile barrage launched from Iran to central Israel during the missile attack, March 1, 2026. Photo: Eli Basri / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect
A poll released ahead of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day found that a majority of Israelis – 61 percent – oppose the ceasefire with Iran, despite nearly six weeks of missile fire, mass disruption, and repeated trips to shelters.
Some 73 percent of respondents in the poll conducted by the Institute for National Security Studies said they believe Israel will have to renew military action against Iran within the next year, while 76 percent said negotiations with the Islamic Republic would not accomplish the war’s stated aims of crippling Iran’s ballistic missile array, dismantling its nuclear weapons program, and bringing an end to the regime in Tehran
A separate survey by Agam Labs at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem pointed to even stronger opposition, with only 15 percent backing the ceasefire. Two-thirds said they oppose it.
Two other polls, by Kan and Channel 13, suggested that only a minority of Israelis believe the US and Israel have won the war. In the Kan survey, roughly one-third said they view the outcome as a victory. In the Channel 13 poll, that figure fell to a quarter, while 40 percent said they do not know.
On Lebanon, more than 61 percent of Israelis said the truce with Iran should not be extended to include the fighting with Hezbollah, a condition Tehran has pushed in its talks with Washington, according to the Agam poll.
That was broadly in line with findings from the Israel Democracy Institute (IDI), which reported that four out of five Jewish Israelis believe Israel should continue its campaign against Hezbollah.
Arab Israelis, by contrast, stood well apart in all of the polling. They overwhelmingly indicated they support the ceasefire with Iran, and only a small minority, less than a fifth according to the IDI poll, back continuing the fighting against Hezbollah.
Although missile alerts have eased across much of Israel since the halt in launches from Iran, communities in the north are still coming under sustained fire, with sirens continuing around the clock. A Hezbollah rocket that was not intercepted struck Nahariya on Monday afternoon, causing heavy damage to a residential building and lightly injuring two people. Days earlier, rocket fire hit the remains of a 1,500-year-old Byzantine church in the northern Israeli city.
The Lebanese and Israeli ambassadors to the United States are due to meet in Washington on Tuesday for discussions on the possibility of direct negotiations between the two countries. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem called on Lebanon to cancel the meeting, accusing the Lebanese government on Monday of turning itself into “a tool for Israel.”
Israel’s former national security adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat warned that expectations for the talks should be limited, arguing that “security without an agreement is preferable to an agreement without security.” Ben-Shabbat, who now heads the Misgav Institute for National Security, warned that the Lebanese government is not capable of removing the threat posed by Hezbollah and would also be unable to grant Israel the operational freedom it would need to act independently.
“The outcome of the negotiations may result either [in] an agreement lacking adequate security arrangements, or a crisis in which Israel is portrayed as refusing the demands of the Lebanese government,” he cautioned, adding that Israel should avoid making any security concessions before or during the talks.
The Israeli military said it had killed 250 Hezbollah operatives in a major operation in southern Lebanon in recent days, including more than 100 in the Bint Jbeil area alone, most of them in close-quarters combat. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said the battle for the southern Lebanese city, long considered a Hezbollah stronghold, was nearing its final stages. It added that some of the terrorists may have been preparing for an incursion into Israeli territory.
The IDF says the fighting has again exposed what it describes as Hezbollah’s entrenched use of civilian sites for military activity. According to the military, weapons are stored beneath homes and launchers are brought out into courtyards to fire toward Israel and then moved back inside. Israeli forces say they are working to identify those sites, destroy the weapons, and kill the operatives using them amid continuing clashes on the ground.
Bint Jbeil carries particular symbolic weight in the conflict. After Israel withdrew from southern Lebanon in May 2000, then-Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah delivered a triumphal address at the city’s soccer stadium, using it as a stage to cast Israel as fragile and beatable.
“Israel has nuclear weapons and the most powerful air force in the region, but in truth, it is weaker than a spider web,” Nasrallah said at the time.
Brigadier General Guy Levy, commander of Division 98, addressed troops from the ruins of that same stadium, which was hit in the latest round of fighting: “In Bint Jbeil in 2000, someone made a speech here and bragged about spider webs. Today, that man does not exist, the stadium doesn’t either, and his words are worth nothing. Now our forces control the area, destroying terror infrastructure and dozens of terrorists.”
Writing on X, IDF Arabic-language spokesman Avichay Adraee said that “glory is not built with speeches, but with the impact of soldiers’ footsteps. Controlling the Bint Jbeil stadium is not merely a military achievement, but a dismantling of its arrogant symbolism.”
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Israelis have no idea where the Iran war is going. But they know it’s part of Netanyahu’s campaign
Israelis are not used to uncertainty. This is a country where, on most questions, people hold strong opinions with remarkable confidence — about security, politics, even identity.
Yet in the aftermath of the recent war with Iran, they find themselves on unfamiliar ground: confused and in suspense.
With the suspense comes a sense of strategic paralysis. The war with Iran has nominally paused — although the United States is now blockading the Strait of Hormuz — but without the resolution or clarity that Israelis were led to expect was attainable.
For weeks, the public was primed for something decisive: a fundamental shift in the balance with Iran, perhaps via the collapse of the regime itself. President Donald Trump told Iranians that the war would set them up to reclaim their country, a message that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu reinforced. From the war’s onset they instilled the expectation that the regime, with its supreme leader and many of his adjutants assassinated, could be compelled to change its ways.
But the idea that fanatical jihadists can be persuaded of anything was always a stretch. So it should have come as no surprise that what emerged was something far murkier: a profoundly fragile ceasefire layered over a volatile reality, with the core threat not eliminated but merely weakened.
The result is a surly public mood. Polls suggest widespread dissatisfaction with the war’s outcome to date — in one, only 22% said that victory was achieved. Israelis sense that something was left unfinished, yet there is no consensus on what “finishing the job” would even mean, or what price they would be willing to pay to try.
A war that was supposed to be unnecessary
This directionlessness stands in marked contrast to the aftermath of the 12-day war with Iran last June.
Back then, the very idea of attacking Iran, a volatile and well-armed country of 90 million people, seemed astoundingly brazen. Israelis were amazed that for almost two weeks they controlled Iran’s skies. They were quite content to end that bout with Iran’s abilities to make trouble curtailed, and its problematic leadership perhaps chastened.
Part of that contentment came in response to Netanyahu’s promise that the brief war had eliminated Iran’s missile and nuclear threat “for generations.” This new war has shown how false that promise was. The U.S. is demanding in vain that Iran hand over enriched uranium, and Israelis who spent a sleepless month-plus living under Iranian missile strikes are fearing a resumption of that barrage.
They don’t know who or what to believe about the real threats posed by Iran, or the real goals of a resumed war, but it probably isn’t Netanyahu.
Redirected regional focus
All this confusion is compounded by what is happening beyond Israel’s borders.
The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, which began when Iran effectively restricted global shipping through the heavily used waterway, has shifted the conflict’s center of gravity away from Israel. As that’s happened, a war that began as a direct confrontation between Israel, the U.S. and Iran has evolved into something broader, more complex and potentially more dangerous. Oil prices are spiking, global powers are maneuvering and the risk of further escalation remains high.
From Israel’s perspective, this creates a strange dynamic. Since the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023, Israelis have grown accustomed to shaping the strategic environment through initiative. Some endeavors have been spectacular; some have been deemed by critics to be criminal; but Israel has always appeared to command the strategic field.
Now Israelis find themselves watching as the U.S. and Iran test each in a complex negotiation that might have already fallen apart, in which they are not directly involved. It became clear over the weekend that Iran is not prepared to accept the American terms — which they see, not unreasonably, as effective to surrender. Trump’s announcement of a total blockade of Iranian ports is a way of raising the ante in an attempt to disabuse the Iranians of their hubris — and Israel is not part of it.
This leaves Israelis on edge and feeling powerless amid the very real possibility of renewed missile fire from Iran, with hope that a resumption of the war might change anything remaining low.
Yet the reality is unsatisfactory — a form of cognitive dissonance.
A political fracturing
Domestically, this state of waiting collides with a political system already under strain. Elections, which must take place before the end of this year, loom in the background. All polls suggest that Netanyahu’s coalition would fall well short of a majority if elections were held today.
Plus, Netanyahu has just watched the stunning electoral defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán — the leading international figure of the illiberal movement with which Netanyahu has aligned.
Orban seems to have gone quietly, but Israelis know Netanyahu will not do the same. Partly it is his mania for power; partly his ongoing bribery trial. Orbán’s defeat has given many Israelis hope; it has also made the country’s political environment even more fragile.
Israelis expect Netanyahu to wheel out every conceivable trick to better his odds. They expect efforts to curb Arab political participation and attacks on the courts and media. And, sadly, one cannot rule out maneuvers attempting to delegitimize the elections themselves. Netanyahu knows how quickly emergencies can be created — or at least framed. If polls continue to point in the wrong direction, the temptation to declare some form of national emergency to delay the elections will be considerable.
Which has led, perhaps, to the most dire sign of all at this tenuous moment in the war. Many Israelis expect that Netanyahu’s decisions surrounding war and peace in Iran and in Lebanon, as well as the West Bank and Gaza, will all be made through the filter of his desperate campaign.
It’s a grim sign of how badly Israel’s democracy has deteriorated. Combine that with a paused war with no clear goals and the possibility of massive escalation to come, and those who care about the Jewish state have plenty of reasons to worry.
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