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Is Mamdani bad or good for Jews? Here’s how not to tell
What will Zohran Mamdani’s mayoralty mean for New York City’s Jews?
Much ink was spilled on that question during Mamdani’s campaign. But now that he is actually in office, there are two approaches we can use in assessing his performance in tackling antisemitism.
The first involves focusing on signals. We saw this method used extensively in expressions of concern during Mamdani’s campaign. His refusal to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” on a podcast, for example, was taken as a signal that he would not be serious about fighting antisemitism.
The second involves looking at how the new mayor actually shows up for Jews — a tactic that means taking a longer view of his ability to navigate the complicated and painful issues facing Jewish communities.
The first approach has already been used widely in Mamdani’s first days in office.
On Jan. 1, Mamdani overturned a host of executive orders that his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, had put into place, some of which were relevant to antisemitism and Israel. This included revoking the city’s use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism.
Critics of that definition say that it threatens to chill legitimate criticism of Israel. (The IHRA definition includes, among possible examples of antisemitism, actions like “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”) And some Jews argue that it insists on a limited understanding of Jewish identity for political purposes.
But to some, Mamdani’s revocation of the Adams order enshrining that definition was an important signal — one that cemented a sense that he does not take Jewish safety or wellbeing seriously.
“Removing protections is a dangerous move, especially on day one. Jewish New Yorkers deserve security, not a delete button,” ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt posted. “Despite the eloquent rhetoric, actions like this speak far, far louder than words.”
Israel’s foreign ministry wrote, “This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire.” And William Daroff, head of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish organizations, said Mamdani’s move was “a troubling indicator of the direction in which he is leading the city, just one day at the helm.”
But there is little evidence that adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism has done anything to actually quell antisemitism, despite a broad push to have it embraced by universities, states and the federal government.
Which raises the question: When we broadly interpret individual acts as symbols of a deeper intention, what do we miss?
At the same time Mamdani overturned every executive order signed by Adams since late September 2024, when Adams was indicted on corruption charges, he announced that he will keep the Office to Combat Antisemitism — which Adams founded — open. That office liaises between the city and its Jews on safety and security, and will make recommendations to Mamdani on public education efforts around antisemitism.
What if we asked practical, rather than symbolic, questions in response to those day one actions?
Not “how outraged should we be by the revocation of the IHRA definition?” but “will that revocation actually change how safe Jews are?” Or: What will the functions of the Office to Combat Antisemitism actually look like under Mamdani? How will the office track antisemitism? What will it do differently under Mamdani than under Adams? What will public education on antisemitism in Mamdani’s New York look like?
Mamdani revoked an Adams order that gave the police commissioner — currently Jessica Tisch — the responsibility to evaluate proposals for regulating protests outside houses of worship. (Mamdani was criticized for his response to a November protest outside Park East Synagogue.) But he put in place a new order that authorized the Police Department and Law Department to conduct similar reviews.
Concerned Jews could ask how those departments will handle this role differently, and what the new mayor will do with their proposals.
And beyond that: Which Jewish communities will Mamdani engage with, and what will he offer them in terms of practical action? How will he demonstrate a commitment to Jewish New Yorkers, in all their pluralism and diversity? If other officials in New York engage in antisemitic conspiracy theories, how will he react to them?
What will it look like when he celebrates holidays with Jewish New Yorkers? When he inevitably disagrees with various Jewish New Yorkers, how will his administration try to communicate across differences?
Taking this second approach could come with downsides. Polling shows that New York Jews continue to be deeply anxious about their future under Mamdani, and are eager for quick answers on what they can expect for the next four years. Evaluating the real impact of his performance does not offer concise opportunities for a headline or a statement offering those responses. It’s a slower and more boring kind of proof to collect.
But it has upsides, too. The answers would be slower to come, but they would reflect not just strong feelings around what could happen, but what is actually happening. They would be nuanced. And maybe they would lead to a stronger sense of safety and security, too.
The post Is Mamdani bad or good for Jews? Here’s how not to tell appeared first on The Forward.
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U2’s New EP References Holocaust, Hitler, Women’s Rights Protests in Iran, Deceased Palestinian Activist
The Irish rock band U2. Photo: BANG Showbiz
The Irish rock band U2 released an EP on Wednesday titled “Days of Ash” that addresses a wide range of topics, including the “Women, Life, Freedom” uprising in Iran, the Holocaust, the killing of a Palestinian activist, ICE raids in the United States, and the Russia-Ukraine war.
“Days of Ash,” which was released on Ash Wednesday and is now available on all streaming platforms, is the first time U2 is releasing a collection of new music since 2017. The EP features five new tracks – “American Obituary,” “The Tears Of Things,” “Song Of The Future,” “One Life At A Time,” and “Yours Eternally” (ft. Ed Sheeran & Taras Topolia) – and the recitation of the poem “Wildpeace,” written by Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai. The poem is read on the EP by Nigerian artist Adeola Fayehun. It begins with the following lines: “Not the peace of a ceasefire / not even the vision of the wolf and the lamb / but rather as in the heart when the excitement is over / and you can talk only about a great weariness.”
In a new interview with the U2 fanzine “Propaganda,” which is being relaunched as a one-off digital zine to accompany the new EP, lead singer Bono talked about the music referencing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, concerns about antisemitism, his condemnation of the Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for how he is managing the Israel-Hamas war.
The title for “The Tears of Things” is a reference to the 2025 book by Richard Rohr titled The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage. The book is about the Jewish prophets and imagines a conversation between Italian sculptor and artist Michelangelo and his marble statue of the Bible’s King David.
“If you put a man into a cage and rattle it long enough/A man becomes the kind of rage that cannot be locked up … The tears of things/Let the desert be unfrozen,” Bono sings in the track. He also sings about “six million voices silenced in just four years,” which is a reference to the six million people killed in the Holocaust. Bono told “Propaganda” the same song includes a reference to a true story about Mussolini and Hitler meeting. Hitler’s name in the song is replaced by the word “shadow,” Bono explained.
“Mussolini came to see me/A shadow by his side,” Bono sings. “Church bells ring, a vanishing/Then the vanishing denied/Six million voices silenced in just four years/The silent song of Christendom/So loud everybody hears.”
The track concludes with the lyrics: “River, sea and mountain/Desert, dust and snow/Everybody is my people/Let my people go.”
Bono told “Propaganda” it is “the moral force of Judaism that helped shape Western civilization.”
“Some of my favorite bits … some of the greatest hits of Western civilization … were gifted to us by brilliant Jewish minds … mathematicians, scientists … writers … not to mention singwriters,” added the singer-songwriter, who said he comes from a “Judeo-Christian tradition.”
“There has never been a moment when we have needed the moral force of Judaism more than right now,” he explained. “And yet, it has rarely in modern times been under such a siege. From where I stand, as a person with a limited view, Judaism, one of the great and noble religions, is being slandered by far-right fundamentalists from within its own community … I could argue the same about Christianity or Islam.”
Antisemitism “has been a scourge for millennia,” and “was rising long before Oct. 7 and the resulting war in Gaza,” Bono said. “As with Islamophobia, antisemitism must be countered every time we witness it. The rape, murder, and abduction of Israelis on Oct. 7 was evil, but self-defense is no defense for the sweeping brutality of Netanyahu’s response,” he continued.
The musician also talked about how the Israel-Hamas war has resulted in “deep knock-on effects for the Jewish diaspora and their safety … As if all Jews are to blame for the actions of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir.” He was referring to Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
When asked later on in the interview about criticism he has faced, especially in Ireland, for not speaking out enough against the conflict in Gaza, Bono said, “I’ve written on Israel and Gaza, but in terms of actions I’ve been focused on the things I know more about.”
Bono also told “Propaganda” that the song “One Life at a Time” on the new EP is inspired by Palestinian activist and filmmaker Awdah Hathaleen, whose was killed last year by an extremist Israeli settler in the West Bank. Hathaleen was featured in the Oscar-winning documentary “No Other Land,” which focuses on Israel’s demolition of Palestinian homes in the West Bank village of Masafer Yatta and criticizes Israel’s military actions. The lyrics of “One Life at a Time” do not reference Hathaleen by name, but the band’s lyric video for the track features a picture of Hathaleen’s face, as well as image of Israel’s West Bank security barrier and the Dome of the Rock.
“Song of the Future” honors the 2022 Women, Life, Freedom movement and uprising in Iran as well as the protesters killed, including 16-year-old Iranian Sarina Esmailzadeh, who was beaten to death by Iranian security forces. Esmailzadeh is the “star of our song,” Bono told “Propaganda.”
“This new EP is a response to current events, inspired by the many extraordinary and courageous people fighting on the frontlines of freedom,” U2 said. “Four of the five tracks are about individuals – a mother, a father, a teenage girl whose lives were brutally cut short – and a soldier who’d rather be singing but is ready to die for the freedom of his country.”
The first track of the EP, “American Obituary,” is dedicated to Renee Good, a mother of three and protester who was fatally shot on Jan. 7 in Minneapolis, Minnesota, by a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent during a protest.
The track “Yours Eternally” is about the war in Ukraine.
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Jewish Peoplehood Shouldn’t Be Up for Debate
Thousands of participants and spectators are gathering along Fifth Avenue to express support for Israel during the 59th Annual Israel Day Parade in NYC, on June 2, 2024. Photo: Melissa Bender via Reuters Connect
The world’s largest association of psychologists is currently debating whether Jews are allowed to describe themselves as a people.
As crazy as that sounds, this is not a joke. It is a controversy unfolding right now among members of the American Psychological Association (APA), as a group of Jewish psychologists has sought recognition similar to that enjoyed by other ethnic minority groups within the association. The APA’s governing council is set to vote on this question imminently. What should have been an uncontroversial measure has instead become an argument over identity itself — one that reveals a deeper problem in how discrimination is understood today.
We are two Jewish women who have direct, personal experiences with antisemitism, and whose families historically have been discriminated against simply because they were Jewish. Our families’ and our own experiences, as Jews who faced persecution and as advocates for other vulnerable communities, make it especially painful to see our Jewish identities and need for representation and protection questioned in this way.
The opponents from ethnic caucuses within the APA that already have formal representation argued that Jews are a “majority white” population and therefore do not need such recognition. They asserted that Jewish identity is only religious, not ethnic; that antisemitism is not a distinct concern; and that acknowledging Jewish peoplehood would somehow undermine efforts to confront white supremacy.
At a time when antisemitism has reached historic levels in the US and globally, these claims are not only deeply concerning but also evidence of a larger pattern of discrimination in professional and academic organizations and labor unions.
Like any ethnic or religious minority, Jews should not have to justify their existence to others. No one should be told that their identity is somehow invalid because it does not fit neatly into racial categories or prevailing political narratives. Yet that is precisely what is happening here.
Jewish identity has always been multifaceted, encompassing ancestry, culture, history, and, for some, religion. Jews today include families from the Middle East and North Africa, Ethiopia, Europe, and the Americas, observant and secular alike. But the specifics matter less than the principle: In every other context, communities are trusted to define their own lived experience and identity. Here, that authority is being claimed by those outside the community, ironically, inside a profession dedicated to compassionate and nuanced understanding of identity and trauma.
To understand why this moment is so troubling, one must understand something distinctive about antisemitism: It adapts to the assumptions of the era.
At times throughout our history Jews were persecuted as a religious group, forced to convert, be expelled, or be killed. At others, we were targeted as a race, culminating in Nazi racist ideology used to justify the extermination of 6 million Jews. One of our aunts (Eveline Shekhman’s), Rocha Vilenski, was forcibly transported from the Kovno ghetto in Lithuania to Stutthof and then Auschwitz. Her transport papers listed “Jude” as her race, a clear marker that she was not considered “white.”
In other periods Jews have been accused of being foreigners, disloyal to their countries of origin. And sometimes, even simultaneously, Jews are painted as the ultimate insiders, wielding outsized power to manipulate society in pursuit of some untoward end. The accusations are rarely consistent, but they do paint a pattern: Jews are blamed for whatever is most feared or condemned in society at that particular moment.
Today, in some spaces, the prevailing narrative is that Jews are overly powerful, privileged, and white. From there flows a natural conclusion: that Jews cannot meaningfully experience discrimination and therefore require no specific protections.
The logic is familiar even if the language is new.
A prejudice that changes form to match prevailing moral categories is harder to recognize. But that does not make it any less real — only adaptable. Indeed, antisemitism’s shapeshifting nature is part of what makes it so pernicious and difficult to combat.
Psychologists help shape how institutions recognize bias, how patients’ experiences are interpreted, and how discrimination is measured across society. When a field responsible for understanding prejudice treats a community’s lived experience as a definitional debate, protection becomes conditional on whether the group fits an approved framework. Such a dynamic is anathema to the discipline of psychology.
At a moment when confidence in expert institutions is fragile, credibility depends on applying principles morally, and consistently. Members of the APA Council have an opportunity to reaffirm a simple principle: Communities deserve the same respect for self-definition that psychology teaches in every other context.
Sara Colb is Director of Advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League. Eveline Shekhman is Chief Executive Officer of AJMA, The American Jewish Medical Association.
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New Location of London Bakery Founded by Israeli Vandalized With Anti-Israel, ‘Free Gaza’ Graffiti
April 4, 2025, London, England, United Kingdom: Exterior view of a Gail’s bakery in Covent Garden. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
A newly opened London branch of a popular bakery founded by an Israeli baker was vandalized on Wednesday night with anti-Israel graffiti as the chain was accused of funding “Israeli tech.”
Photos and videos shared on social media show that the new Gail’s Bakery location, which opened this week near the tube station in the Archway neighborhood, had splattered red paint on its walls and graffiti that read “Free Gaza,” along with another message that said “Boycott Gail’s Funds Israeli Tech.”
More thuggery from so-called activists.
Pro-Palestine thugs have vandalised the newest Gail’s branch in Archway.
Targeting businesses with Jewish roots belongs in the dustbin of history.@MetPoliceUK must ensure the perpetrators face consequences.pic.twitter.com/vZ8Au7cgHv
— Campaign Against Antisemitism (@antisemitism) February 19, 2026
Police were called to the scene on Wednesday night, but the vandals had fled before officers arrived, according to a spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police.
“Our bakeries are places for the community, and no one – whether that’s our bakery teams or our customers – should feel targeted or unsafe,” a spokesperson for Gail’s told The Algemeiner following the vandalism. “We are a British business with no specific connections to any country or government outside the UK. Our focus right now is on working with the authorities and making sure our people feel safe and supported.”
An anti-Israel demonstration also took place at the same Gail’s location this week, according to multiple reports. Videos online show protesters standing outside Gail’s holding signs including a massive banner that said, “Boycott Israel for Genocide and War Crimes in Gaza.” Another sign held by a protester read “No to Gail’s” and accused the American investment firm Bain Capital, which acquired a majority stake in Gail’s parent company Bread Holdings in 2021, of having “links to Israeli war-tech.”
First the vandals, then the harassment. Another scene today at Gail’s in Archway, London, the city that we all know is a “shining beacon of hope” where “everyone is loved and wanted”. pic.twitter.com/zd25zMucqR
— habibi (@habibi_uk) February 19, 2026
Bain Capital was among the more than 200 venture capital funds that signed an open letter in support of Israel following the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The company has investments in Israel, including in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, and software companies. In October 2025, CTech reported that Bain Capital had invested more than $150 million into Israeli companies over the past year.
Gail’s was founded by Israeli baker Gail Mejia in the 1990s and serves freshly handmade bread, pastries, and cakes. Its first store opened in 2005 in London’s Hampstead High Street with the help of Israeli entrepreneur Ran Avidan, and today, there are hundreds of locations in and around London. Gail’s was voted the best bakery chain in Britain last year. Meija and Avidan no longer have any involvement in the company.
The European Jewish Congress condemned the “deeply concerning” anti-Israel graffiti found on Gail’s Bakery. “Targeting a local business because of perceived Jewish or Israeli associations reflects a troubling normalization of hostility that must be firmly rejected,” the EJC wrote in a post on X. “Such acts have no place in our societies and must be unequivocally condemned.”
In a statement given to The Algemeiner, the Campaign Against Antisemitism called on London’s Metropolitan Police to ensure those responsible for the vandalism are punished for their actions.
Last summer, hundreds of people signed a petition criticizing the opening of a Gail’s in east London and several of them said they opposed the new location because of the bakery’s “Zionist” ties, according to The Jewish Chronicle. In a statement released to The Guardian at the time, the company reiterated that it is “a UK-based business with no specific connections to any country or government outside of the UK and does not fund Israel.”
In an interview with The Times in 2024, Gail’s co-founder and CEO Tom Molnar denied the “ludicrous” accusations that the company is owned by Israel or funds the Jewish state.
“Gail’s proudly has Jewish roots and there’s plenty of stuff out there celebrating our heritage and history, but it’s not true it’s Israel-owned,” he said. “There’s some just crazy stuff on the web thinking we are funding Israel, which is just completely ridiculous. We’re a wholly UK-based business, paying UK taxes, it’s just ludicrous and I think it needs to be called out.”