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When Standards Disappear: What the Mamdani Reversals Reveal About Jewish Political Vulnerability
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani delivers a speech during his inauguration ceremony in New York City, US, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
When New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office, he pledged to “protect our Jewish neighbors.”
Within hours of taking power and very deliberately, he reversed two policies that many Jewish New Yorkers had reasonably understood as core safeguards: New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, and restrictions barring city officials from participating in boycotts or divestment campaigns against Israel.
The reversals were framed as an administrative reset — a clearing away of a prior administration’s preferences. But their effect was unmistakable. They removed explicit institutional commitments to defining and confronting contemporary antisemitism and to affirming Israel’s legitimacy within city governance.
The public reaction followed a familiar script: condemnation, statements, reassurances, and calls for calm.
What has been missing is a clear-eyed assessment of what this episode actually reveals and what it demands of the Jewish community going forward. This is not primarily a story about tone, intent, or interpersonal trust. It is a story about power, incentives, and institutional design.
As a professor of political science, nothing about this outcome is surprising. Decades of research reveal that democratic governance is often shaped less by stated intentions, than by incentive structures. Elected officials respond to organized pressure, coalition management, and political cost. Policies that are discretionary — rather than embedded in durable institutional constraints — are inherently vulnerable to reversal when political alignments shift. Goodwill is not a governing mechanism. Constraints are.
The IHRA definition mattered not because it resolved every possible case, but because it translated moral concern into an operational standard. It provided guidance to institutions tasked with distinguishing between legitimate political speech and discriminatory conduct. It constrained interpretive drift. It limited the ability of political actors to redefine antisemitism opportunistically when ideological pressure mounted.
Its removal did not merely alter language; it shifted authority. Decisions about what constitutes antisemitism were moved from a widely recognized framework into a discretionary space shaped by coalition politics.
This shift matters, especially because antisemitism today rarely presents itself in its older, easily recognizable forms. Contemporary antisemitism is more often expressed through the delegitimization of Jewish collective identity, through moral exceptionalism applied uniquely to Israel, or through the attribution of collective guilt to Jews as a people.
These forms of antisemitism are harder to name, precisely because they cloak themselves in the language of politics, justice, or critique. That is precisely why definitional clarity matters. Without agreed-upon standards, antisemitism becomes whatever the most powerful actors in the room say it is — and Jews are once again placed in the position of having to prove harm after it has already occurred.
In practice, the removal of IHRA has concrete downstream consequences. City agencies, educators, and law-enforcement officials are left without clear guidance. Complaints become harder to adjudicate. Incidents that previously would have been recognized as discriminatory risk being dismissed as mere political disagreement. Ambiguity does not produce neutrality; it produces inconsistency — and inconsistency predictably disadvantages minorities whose harms are already contested.
Supporters of the reversal argue that definitions like IHRA chill speech. This objection deserves to be addressed directly. Standards do not regulate speech; they guide institutional response once speech crosses into discrimination or harassment. That distinction is foundational to civil-rights law.
Universities, workplaces, and governments have long relied on definitions to enforce equal protection without policing opinion. The alternative to standards is not free expression; it is discretionary enforcement, which is far more susceptible to political bias.
To understand why this matters so deeply in New York, one must take seriously how urban politics actually work. The city is not a neutral forum adjudicating claims in the abstract. It is a competitive ecosystem of organized interests: labor unions, housing advocates, immigrant coalitions, civil-liberties groups, ethnic and religious communities, and pro- and anti-Israel movements, all pressing their claims. Groups that exert influence in this environment tend to be cohesive, disciplined, and capable of imposing consequences — electoral, reputational, or financial — when their core interests are ignored. Groups that rely primarily on access, symbolic recognition, or rhetorical reassurance tend to lose influence over time, even when their concerns are legitimate.
The Jewish community has encountered this structural problem before.
In the late 1960s and 1970s, formal Jewish quotas in elite universities were dismantled. Many Jewish leaders understandably celebrated what appeared to be the end of explicit discrimination. What replaced quotas, however, were “holistic admissions systems” that sounded neutral and humane — yet operated with enormous discretion.
Over time, and without enforceable constraints, Jewish representation declined in some institutions — not because of overt hostility, but because the rules no longer anchored Jewish inclusion in durable standards. Once discretion expanded, Jewish objections carried less weight.
This is not to claim that history repeats mechanically. The analogy is not that today’s New York mirrors yesterday’s campuses. It is that the same structural error — substituting discretion for durable standards — predictably produces vulnerability over time. When protections are treated as administrative preferences rather than institutional commitments, they become reversible.
What, then, should the New York Jewish community do?
First, it must reorient its strategy away from reassurance and toward institutionalization. Executive orders and informal commitments are inherently fragile. Jewish leaders should be pressing for protections embedded in municipal law, administrative code, and binding procedures that cannot be undone unilaterally by a single mayor. Standards that survive political turnover matter more than promises offered in moments of controversy.
Second, the community must move beyond consensus statements to coordinated escalation. Unity is valuable, but unity without consequences signals disappointment rather than resolve. Effective political actors develop escalation ladders: clear benchmarks for action, followed by predictable increases in pressure if those benchmarks are ignored. That means legislative engagement, legal review, donor accountability, voter mobilization, and sustained public argument — not episodically, but over time.
Third, Jewish leaders must be clear-eyed about coalition politics. Coalitions are not moral communities; they are transactional alignments. When interests diverge, coalitions realign. Coalitions that require Jews to accept weakened protections in exchange for continued inclusion are not partnerships; they are asymmetries. Participation in pluralistic civic life does not require surrendering the authority to define antisemitism or abandoning institutional safeguards that Jews have repeatedly said they need.
Fourth, the community should frame this issue not as a narrow Jewish concern, but as a rule-of-law problem with broader implications. A city that abandons clear standards for identifying and addressing bias weakens protections for all minorities. Discretion may feel humane in the short term, but it is precisely discretion that allows enforcement to be politicized when pressure mounts. Equal protection requires standards that do not fluctuate with ideology.
Finally, Jewish institutions must invest in long-term political capacity rather than episodic crisis management. This moment exposes a collective-action problem, not a moral failure. Influence is cumulative. It is built through persistence, clarity, organizational discipline, and a willingness to tolerate conflict when core protections are at stake.
This is not a moment for panic, but for sobriety. The lesson of the past weeks is not that Jewish concerns lack legitimacy, but that legitimacy must be secured through structure.
Protections that rely on tone, trust, or reassurance will fail under pressure; protections that are codified, enforced, and defended endure. For Jewish communal leaders in New York, the task is clear: stop treating safeguards as favors, stop confusing access with influence, and build constraints that survive political change. In democratic politics, what is not institutionalized does endure.
Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
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UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes
(JTA) — JERUSALEM – The United Kingdom threatened to sanction Israelis involved in West Bank settlement expansion after the Jewish state’s Lands Authority opened bids for 1,234 homes in the largely underdeveloped E1 section of the West Bank settlement of Ma’aleh Adumim.
Construction in E1 “would cut across the heart of Palestine and risks separating the West Bank from East Jerusalem, which would endanger the viability of a two-state solution,” the British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said in a special statement he posted on X on Thursday.
Targeted sanctions, Miliband wrote, would be part of a series of measures his government would take. His office also summoned Israel’s charge d’Affaires Thursday to demand a closure of the bidding process, which first opened on Tuesday, and a withdrawal of the construction project altogether.
“Britain will not stand back and accept the destruction of the two-state solution,” he wrote. Miliband has held his position for a month and is part of the new leadership Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham appointed when he took office in July.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar attacked Miliband on X, stating that Britain’s “decision to damage the relationship between our countries is deeply unfortunate.”
He said that the U.K. government’s “systematic policy of blaming only Israel while ignoring Palestinian extremism has already contributed to a massive wave of antisemitic hatred and attacks against the British Jewish community.”
The Jewish people have the same right to “live throughout the Land of Israel” just as the British people have a right to live anywhere in the U.K., Sa’ar wrote.
Plans to expand the built-up area of Ma’aleh Adumim settlement by constructing some 3,400 housing units on a largely underdeveloped hilltop within the city’s boundaries have been in place since 1994 when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister.
Israel mostly froze those plans under pressure from the international community, including the U.S., with many countries warning that building homes in E1 would harm their diplomatic ties with Israel.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu began to advance the project in earnest in 2012 to protest the United Nations General Assembly decision to grant the Palestinians the status of a non-member state and has since pushed the project forward in spurts, particularly during election seasons.
The publication of the bidding process for the homes was first announced on Tuesday and is set to close on Oct. 19, one week shy of the Israeli elections on Oct. 27. Opening the bids is a move that plays well with Netanyahu’s right-wing voter base, which opposes Palestinian statehood and believes that settlements like Ma’aleh Adumim and the E1 area should be annexed into sovereign Israel.
But the move reverberated globally, with the U.K. signing onto a joint condemnation by France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium, Sweden, Australia, New Zealand and Canada, in which they warned that settlement building in E1 distanced peace and undermined the country’s international standing.
They also reminded businesses who might bid for E1 construction that they could face legal or reputational consequences, given that such companies could be in breach of international law.
Palestinian Authority Vice President Hussein Al-Sheikh said he welcomed the condemnation, explaining on X that such a position “reflects the importance of the international role in confronting settlement activity and safeguarding the two-state solution.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post UK threatens sanctions after Israel opens bids for E1 settler homes appeared first on The Forward.
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Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first
(JTA) — An Argentine federal judge was removed from office Tuesday for a series of antisemitic posts on his social media accounts that constituted misconduct incompatible with his role, an impeachment panel ruled.
Alfredo Eugenio López, who headed Federal Court No. 4 in the coastal city of Mar del Plata, was removed by Argentina’s Jury of Impeachment, a special panel composed of judges, lawmakers and lawyers.
It is the first time in Argentina’s history that a judge has been removed over antisemitic remarks.
In López’s social media posts, the judge referred to the Jewish people as “a brood of vipers,” Israel as a “fictitious state” and Argentinian Jews as “foreigners.” He has also used such terms as “Zionist” and “gay” as insults.
According to the panel, the judge committed acts of “discrimination and the denial of equal rights against the Argentine Jewish community. For the purposes of these proceedings, it is particularly significant that, by acting in this manner, he shattered public confidence in his continued fitness to administer justice impartially.”The case reached the panel through Argentina’s Council of the Magistracy, based in Buenos Aires, the constitutional body responsible for the selection and discipline of federal judges.
The first complaint against López was filed in February 2025 by the Delegación de Asociaciones Israelitas Argentinas, which is the umbrella organization representing Argentina’s Jewish community. One month later, the Argentine Forum Against Antisemitism also filed a complaint. In July 2025, attorney Yamil Santoro from Apolo Foundation added another one.
In his defense, López argued that his messages were “ subjective and decontextualized interpretations of exchanges on social media, which in no way affect the administration of justice or his impartiality” as a judge. He added that his remarks were unrelated to any pending case and that he had never been recused or removed from any judicial case.
Neither Lopez nor his attorney were immediately available for further comment.
“He was removed because he simply would not stop engaging in hate speech,” jury member Alberto Maques said during a live interview Tuesday on the A24 news channel. “It is absolutely disgraceful for a federal judge to engage in this kind of conduct.”
Maques said there were 15 social media posts that he acknowledged, but more than 50 posts in which he said “outrageous things that are not worth repeating because they truly constituted hate speech.”
“This is not merely an issue of hate speech against the Jewish community. This is someone who lacks common sense,” he added, interviewed by A24 news channel.
Prosecutors in the impeachment proceedings argued that the messages were not isolated political comments but reflected a pattern of hostility toward Jews, Zionism, and the State of Israel.
“No position of authority can shield hatred. This is not a matter of punishing an opinion. It is about sanctioning repeated conduct involving antisemitism, hostility and dehumanization, conduct incompatible with the impartiality, dignity and public trust required of the judiciary,” DAIA said Tuesday in a statement.
“This case sets a precedent: for the first time in more than a century, DAIA initiated proceedings of this nature against a judge. No office is above democracy.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Argentina removes federal judge over antisemitic remarks in historic first appeared first on The Forward.
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California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race
(JTA) — California progressive Aisha Wahab defeated AIPAC-backed moderate Melissa Hernandez in a congressional runoff this week, capping off a contest that had become unexpectedly tight after the pro-Israel lobby entered the fray.
The Associated Press called the race between the Democrats — who were vying to replace a disgraced former Rep. Eric Swalwell — a full two days after polls closed, when Wahab secured 53.1% of votes to Hernandez’s 46.9%, with 95% of ballots tallied. The gap between them grew by four percentage points from Tuesday evening, when Wahab had held a narrow 51% lead to Hernandez’s 49%.
“We stayed focused on the people, and I will fight for this district that raised me,” Wahab said in a Thursday statement, noting her journey “from foster care to Congress” in her East Bay community.
Although Wahab ended up victorious, the narrow initial margin on Tuesday shocked California’s 14th District, given that she had secured a double-digit lead in preliminary races two months ago.
But in the past few weeks, an unforeseen variable appeared to influence the trajectories of the two campaigns: a massive spending push from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee aimed at turning the tides for Hernandez.
Since the beginning of August alone, AIPAC’s super PAC, the United Democracy Project, and other affiliated groups spent more than $2.5 million on both boosting Hernandez and denigrating Wahab with negative ads and mailers, according to Federal Election Commission filings.
“This was not a landslide for Wahab by any means,” local Democratic strategist Noah Finneburgh, who is not affiliated with either candidate, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“They narrowed the gap for sure,” Finneburgh added, referring to AIPAC. “They spent millions of dollars attacking Wahab very aggressively.”
These attacks, he explained, did not involve Israel and instead focused on divisive issues for the Bay Area, such as public safety and protecting kids.
“Negative advertising with a persuasive message can be very effective,” Finneburgh said.
In her Thursday night statement, Wahab declared that her “district cannot be bought,” describing the race as “one of the ugliest, most expensive elections we’ve ever seen.”
Prior to this influx of cash and related ads, neither AIPAC nor Israel had played a significant role in this short-lived race — which began in April following Swalwell’s resignation over allegations of sexual assault.
When the district held a special primary to seek Swalwell’s replacement on June 16, Wahab and Hernandez finished as the top-two candidates and moved on to this week’s special general runoff election.
California primaries are “nonpartisan” or “top-two” races, in which the two highest ranking candidates move on to the general election, irrespective of their parties. The top-two in this case were both Democrats, like Swalwell, in a district that the Cook Political Report deems solidly blue.
Even though Wahab will now finish the remainder of Swalwell’s term, she will have to compete with Hernandez again in the November general election for a full term that begins on January 3, 2027.
In a June 16 special primary that preceded this week’s runoff, there was still a massive gap between the two candidates, with Wahab accruing 42.8% of the votes, compared to Hernandez’s 16.8%. A separate primary for the November race, which occurred two weeks earlier, placed Wahab at 38.3% and Hernandez at 17.2%.
Wahab, who will be the first Afghan American in Congress, has focused on affordability, civil rights, education and climate change. Her campaign calls for an end to wars and “prolonged occupations” but only specifically calls out U.S. military activity in “Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and elsewhere.”
Though Wahab has been critical of Israel and its operations in Gaza, she has not been as vocal about the issue as many other progressive colleagues nationwide. She responded “yes” when asked if Israel was committing genocide in a primary debate, but she didn’t include Israel or Gaza in her campaign priorities.
During a recent appearance on far-right influencer Hasan Piker’s livestream, Wahab acknowledged that “it’s not a zero-sum game in the Middle East,” adding that “we can care for all people.” She also referenced a resolution she introduced last year in the California legislature, pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza but also condemning Hamas and demanding the release of the hostages.
“We talk about both Palestinians and the Israeli victims there,” Wahab told Piker. “We talk about holding the perpetrators accountable from both sides.”
Asked if she was in favor of “ending all U.S. aid to Israel,” she responded “yes,” while stressing that “humanitarian aid is important to me, too.”
Wahab has earned the backing of multiple labor unions, the California Democratic Party and Our Revolution, the group formed by Sen. Bernie Sanders to advance the progressive movement. The liberal pro-Israel group J Street also recently invested $108,000 in her campaign, according to the FEC. American Priorities, a pro-Palestinian PAC, also spent at least $200,000 on supporting her.
Hernandez has received endorsements from several police and fire unions, as well as Democratic Jewish Reps. Lois Frankel of Florida and Brad Schneider of Illinois.
Come November, Hernandez will gain one additional asset. Due to statewide redistricting, the 14th District will gain about 26,000 new voters from Dublin, where Hernandez previously served as mayor, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
But Finneburgh said he believes that Hernandez has only a minimal chance of winning that race, especially because Wahab will be heading into that election as an incumbent.
He also suggested that if “she plays her card right,” Wahab could even take some endorsements away from Hernandez.
“There’s going to be people who are going to probably move over from the Hernandez camp and back her,” Finneburgh added. “It’s going to be hard to unseat her.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post California progressive Wahab defeats AIPAC-backed Hernandez in close race appeared first on The Forward.
