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I won’t vote for Democrats who backed Mamdani. I know I’m not the only one.
There must be consequences when politicians endorse and campaign for unpalatable candidates for public office in order to court that candidate’s political base. I am just one voter, but I am ready to commit to issuing some.
I am a lifelong Democrat and consider myself a centrist liberal on most issues. The last times I recall voting for a Republican were in 1992 — 33 years ago! — when I supported Bill Green in his unsuccessful campaign for reelection as the U.S. representative from New York City’s largely Upper East Side congressional district, and then in 2001 when I voted for Mike Bloomberg for mayor of New York City.
But, like many other centrist Democrats, I have been watching with ever-increasing concern as the party I once considered my political home has moved further and further away to the left — indeed, often to the extremist far-left — on an issue I care about deeply.
The fundamental right of the State of Israel to exist — its geopolitical and moral legitimacy, as it were — is one such pivotal issue. Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Mario and Andrew Cuomo, Chuck Schumer, and Kirsten Gillibrand all identified and identify as supporters of Israel even while they may have criticized particular policies of one Israeli government or other.
This is not true of Zohran Mamdani. The Democratic candidate for mayor of New York City is a declared and uncompromising anti-Zionist. He comes by his inflexible antagonism toward the Jewish homeland honestly — his father, Mahmood Mamdani, Columbia University’s Herbert Lehman professor of government, has demanded for years that Israel divest its endowment from companies that invest in Israel, and his mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, pointedly refuses to attend Israeli film festivals.
Zohran Mamdani considers the likes of the anti-Zionist academics Edward Said and Rashid Khalidi as his intellectual mentors. While at college, he founded the Bowdoin chapter of the radical Students for Justice in Palestine.
All this is known. Mamdani never made a secret of his hatred of — as opposed to disagreement, even harsh disagreement, with — Israel and Zionism. As a result, he engages in some of the most extreme, bordering on the absurd, antisemitic conspiracy theories imaginable. In 2023, we learned this week, he told a far-left group that alleged violence on the part of New York police officers is somehow masterminded by the Israel armed forces: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”
If ever there was a clear incitement to antisemitic violence, violence against Jews, this is it. And yet a host of prominent New York Democrats, rather than distancing themselves from if not affirmatively repudiating Mamdani, have not only endorsed him but are actively campaigning for him.
Among this lot are New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, State Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and State Sen. Liz Krueger. All of them purport to be appalled by the surging antisemitism around them, and yet they stand by their candidate.
Mamdani claims not to be antisemitic, only pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel, and his above-listed supporters assist him in threading this particular noxious needle.
I’m not the first Jewish voice to say they’re attempting an impossible task. “Mamdani’s distinction between accepting Jews and denying a Jewish state is not merely a rhetorical sleight of hand or political naivete — though it is, to be clear, both of these,” warned Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove in his courageous sermon. “He is doing so to traffic in the most dangerous of tropes, an anti-Zionist rhetoric.”
But I might be the first Jewish voice to say publicly that I will never again cast a vote for any of the Democrats who have endorsed Mamdani. For me, at least, his supporters have crossed a moral and ideological Rubicon, and they have forced me, with not inconsiderable trepidation and reluctance, to do the same.
While Nadler, who announced that he will not seek reelection in 2026, is a lame duck, many of Mamdani’s other acolytes appear to still want to have a political future beyond Nov. 4. I will not countenance that.
Politicians by definition tend to make strategic decisions they deem to be in their self-interest. The more high-minded, not to say ethical, ones among them draw the line when it comes to issues of principle. More likely, or perhaps, more frequently, they will balance competing considerations and opt for what they consider to be their most advantageous pragmatic option.
It’s true that supporting Mamdani may seem like a rational, if not especially ethical, choice. Numerous polls have shown that support for Israel has diminished, especially among younger voters. Thus, the cynical calculation behind some of the Mamdani endorsements may well have been that the future support of such anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian voters would more than make up for any loss of disaffected pro-Israel Democrats like me.
Still, Hochul’s early endorsement of Mamdani’s candidacy could well end up being an albatross around her neck next year when she seeks reelection. Especially if the now prevailing anti-Israel sentiment recedes once the Israel-Hamas war is in the rearview mirror. The same goes for Mamdani’s other cheerleaders. Pendulums have a way of swinging back toward the center.
I, for one, will not vote for Hochul again. And yes, that means that I am open to supporting a palatable Republican nominee for New York governor. It’s not an easy conclusion for me to reach or decision to make, but I don’t see how I can do otherwise — and while I might be the early in declaring it publicly, I hardly think I will be alone.
I am writing in advance of the Tuesday’s election, which I hope may yet turn out to be a surprise, come-from-behind win for Andrew Cuomo. I am also doing so in advance of the inevitable attempts at fence-mending that will follow, regardless of the result.
I know New York’s centrist Democrats will try to win me back, and I know that the forces acting on Republicans may well make a return attractive. But I am making this vow now because I am distressed that while Mamdani’s mainstream allies may not have consciously written off the New York Jewish community, they are hoping for collective short memories on our part. I know, even if they do not, that Jewish security and survival have always depended on remembering.
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German Antisemitism Commissioner Targeted With Death Threat Letter After Arson Attack on Home
Andreas Büttner (Die Linke), photographed during the state parliament session. The politician was nominated for the position of Brandenburg’s anti-Semitism commissioner. Photo: Soeren Stache/dpa via Reuters Connect
Andreas Büttner, the commissioner for antisemitism in the state of Brandenburg in northeastern Germany, has been targeted the second attack in under a week after receiving a death threat, sparking outrage and prompting local authorities to launch a full investigation.
According to the German newspaper Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (PNN), the Brandenburg state parliament received a letter on Monday threatening Büttner’s life, with the words “We will kill you” and an inverted red triangle, the symbol of support for the Islamist terrorist group Hamas.
State security police have examined the anonymous letter under strict safety measures, determining that a gray substance inside was harmless. Authorities are now probing the incident as part of an ongoing investigation into threats against the German official.
Ulrike Liedtke, president of the Brandenburg state parliament, condemned the latest attack on Büttner, describing the death threats and harassment as “completely unacceptable.”
“Threats and violence are not a form of political discourse, but crimes against humanity,” Liedtke said. “Andreas Büttner has our complete support and solidarity.”
A former police officer and member of the Left Party, Büttner took office as commissioner for antisemitism in 2024 and has faced repeated attacks since.
On Sunday night, Büttner’s private property in Templin — a town located approximately 43 miles north of Berlin — was targeted in an arson attack, and a red Hamas triangle was spray-painted on his house.
The home of Germany’s antisemitism commissioner, Andreas Büttner, was set on fire overnight in a targeted attack.
His family was inside the house at the time.
This is the second attack against Büttner in the past 16 months. His car was previously vandalized with swastikas. This… pic.twitter.com/cAbFnMIwQ7
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) January 5, 2026
According to Büttner, his family was inside the house at the time of the attack, marking the latest assault against him in the past 16 months.
“The symbol sends a clear message. The red Hamas triangle is widely recognized as a sign of jihadist violence and antisemitic incitement,” Büttner said in a statement after the incident.
“Anyone who uses such a thing wants to intimidate and glorify terror. This is not a protest, it is a threat,” he continued.
Hamas uses inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. The symbol, a common staple at pro-Hamas rallies, has come to represent the Palestinian terrorist group and glorify its use of violence.
In August 2024, swastikas and other symbols and threats were also spray-painted on Büttner’s personal car.
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Harvard President Blasts Scholar Activism, Calls for ‘Restoring Balance’ in Higher Ed
Harvard University President Alan Garber speaks during the 374th Commencement exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
Harvard University president Alan Garber, fresh off a resounding endorsement in which the Harvard Corporation elected to keep him on the job “indefinitely,” criticized progressive faculty in a recent podcast interview for turning the university classroom into a pulpit for the airing of their personal views on contentious political issues.
Garber made the comments last week on the “Identity/Crisis Podcast,” a production of the Shalom Hartman Institute, a Jewish think tank which specializes in education research.
“I think that’s where we went wrong,” Garber said, speaking to Yehuda Kurtzer. “Because think about it, if a professor in a classroom says, ‘This is what I believe about this issue,’ how many students — some of you probably would be prepared to deal with this, but most people wouldn’t — how many students would actually be willing to go toe to toe against a professor who’s expressed a firm view about a controversial issue?”
Garber continued, saying he believes higher education, facing a popular backlash against what critics have described as political indoctrination, is now seeing a “movement to restore balance in teaching and to bring back the idea that you really need to be objective in the classroom.”
He added, “What we need to arm our students with is a set of facts and a set of analytic tools and cultivation of rigor in analyzing these issues.”
Coming during winter recess and the Jewish and Christian holidays, Garber’s interview fell under the radar after it was first aired but has been noticed this week, with some observers pointing to it as evidence that Harvard is leading an effort to restore trust in the university even as it resists conceding to the Trump administration everything it has demanded regarding DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), viewpoint diversity, and expressive activity such as protests.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, Garber has spent the past two years fighting factions from within and without the university that have demanded to steer its policies and culture — from organizers of an illegal anti-Israel encampment to US President Donald Trump, who earlier this year canceled $2.26 billion in public money for Harvard after it refused to grant his wishlist of reforms for which the conservative movement has clamored for decades.
Even as Harvard tells Trump “no,” it has enacted several policies as a direct response to criticisms that the institution is too permissive of antisemitism for having allowed anti-Zionist extremism to reach the point of antisemitic harassment and discrimination. In 2025, the school agreed to incorporate into its policies a definition of antisemitism supported by most of the Jewish community, established new rules governing campus protests, and announced new partnerships with Israeli academic institutions. Harvard even shuttered a DEI office and transferred its staff to what will become, according to a previous report by The Harvard Crimson, a “new Office of Culture and Community.” The paper added that Harvard has even “worked to strip all references to DEI from its website.”
Appointed in January 2024 as interim president, Garber — who previously served in roles as Harvard’s provost and chief academic officer — rose to the top position at America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious institution at a time when the job was least desirable. At the time, Harvard was being pilloried over some of its students cheering Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel and even forming gangs which mobbed Jewish students wending their way through campus; the university had suffered the embarrassment of its first Black president being outed as a serial plagiarist, a stunning disclosure which called into question its vetting procedures as well as its embrace of affirmative action; and anti-Israel activists on campus were disrupting classes and calling for others to “globalize the intifada.”
Garber has since won over the Harvard Corporation, which has refused to replace him during a moment that has been described as the most challenging in its history.
“Alan’s humble, resilient, and effective leadership has shown itself to be not just a vital source of calm in turbulent times, but also a generative force for sustaining Harvard’s commitment to academic excellence and to free inquiry and expression,” Harvard Corporation senior fellow Penny Pritzker said in a statement issued on behalf of the body, which is the equivalent of a board of trustees. “From restoring a sense of community during a period of intense scrutiny and division to launching vital new programs on viewpoint diversity and civil discourses and instituting new actions to fight antisemitism and anti-Arab bias, Alan has not only stabilized the university but brought us together in support of our shared mission.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Holocaust Survivors Sent Care Packages to Oct. 7 Hostages for Hanukkah
The Menorah for Hanukkah on the Square 2025 in Trafalgar Square, London, United Kingdom, Dec. 14, 2025. Photo: Matthew Chattle/Cover Images via Reuters Connect
Survivors of the Holocaust spread holiday cheer this Hanukkah by delivering care packages to a group of 20 hostages whom the terrorist group Hamas recently released from captivity to fulfill the requirements of a ceasefire which suspended hostilities with Israel.
The gifts, dropped off at the Israeli consulate office in New York City, was made possible by The Blue Card, the only US-based charity organization which provides financial assistance and other services to survivors of the Holocaust. Originally founded in 1934 to assist Jews who had fled Germany to escape Hitler’s persecution of the country’s Jews, it has operated ceaselessly for nearly a century.
Over the past two years, the world has seen a revival of antisemitism unlike any since the period in which The Blue Card was founded, sparked by the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that claimed the lives over of 1,200 Israelis and stole years and even more lives from 251 more who were kidnapped and held hostage in Gaza.
Some of the hostages who survived captivity have been released in stages since Israel and Hamas agreed on a ceasefire in October, and on Monday, Blue Card executive director Masha Pearl said the organization felt it necessary to reach out to them due to their having experienced a plight that is painfully familiar to what its clients endured in Europe during the Holocaust. Pearl also discussed the Bondi Beach mass shooting, in which a father and son inspired by Islamism opened fire on Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah, murdering 15 people and injuring 40 others.
“Holocaust survivors and former hostages share a uniquely painful bond shaped by survival and resilience,” Pearl said. “After witnessing a mass shooting at a Chanukah event in Sydney, it felt even more urgent for our survivors to deliver these care packages now, spreading light at a moment that feels dark for the entire Jewish world. The resilience of the Holocaust survivors we assist, the former hostages, and now the survivors of the attack in Australia remind us that even in the face of hatred and violence, the Jewish people remain united.”
In a press release Blue Card said the care packages “carried profound meaning,” being filled to the brim with goods of all sorts, from blankets and water bottles to chap stick and even handwritten notes from the Holocaust survivors who sent them.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.