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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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Years after a boycott fight, Ben & Jerry’s Israel debuts a flavor celebrating Israeli resilience
(JTA) — Ben & Jerry’s Israel operation has come up with a flavor that does not leave much to interpretation. Called “Milk and Honey,” a nod to the biblical description of the Land of Israel, its namesake ingredients are supplied by Israeli cows and bees and its chocolate fudge pieces come shaped like Stars of David.
The company, which split from its American counterpart after a contentious 2021 boycott fight, is billing the new pint as its “most Israeli flavor ever” and, on its website, as a “symbol of hope, rehabilitation, and positive action” after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack.
Its ingredients and production come from southern Israeli communities most affected by the massacre and the war that followed. The company, based in the southern city of Kiryat Malachi, said it “felt a responsibility to take an active part in the region’s recovery process.”
The milk and cream come from the dairy in Kibbutz Alumim, one of the Gaza-border communities infiltrated by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. The honey comes from the beehives of Kibbutz Yad Mordechai. The chocolate Stars of David are made by hand at the Korint factory in Beersheba, part of the Shkulo Tov social enterprise, which helps integrate people with disabilities into the workforce.
Even the wrapper is local: the pint is adorned with “Fields of Light,” a painting by Rivi Doron-Gerloy, a southern Israeli artist who was killed in a Miami car accident last year.
The flavor was developed in partnership with the Ayalim Association, a nonprofit that works to strengthen Israel’s periphery. The company said royalties from sales of the new flavor will go to Ayalim’s rehabilitation and educational initiatives in the south.
The Israeli and American Ben & Jerry’s operations are now completely separate, a split that followed one of the more improbable diplomatic dramas ever to involve ice cream. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s said it would stop selling in Israeli settlements in the West Bank, saying sales there were “inconsistent” with its values.
The move set off an uproar in Israel. President Isaac Herzog called the boycott a “new kind of terrorism,” while Benjamin Netanyahu, then opposition leader, retweeted the company’s announcement that it would stop selling in the “Occupied Palestinian Territories,” writing, “Now we Israelis know which ice cream NOT to buy,” alongside Israeli flag and flexed-bicep emojis.
The original founders, Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, who no longer control the company but remain its best-known faces, also came under fire after the decision. In an interview, they were asked why the boycott logic did not extend to places such as Georgia and Texas, despite their opposition to those states’ voting rights and abortion laws.
“Why do you still sell ice cream in Georgia? Texas?” Axios reporter Alexi McCammond asked in a video that went viral on pro-Israel platforms.
Clearly stumped, Cohen shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said, laughing. “You ask a really good question and I think I’d have to sit down and think about it for a bit.”
Unilever’s then-chief executive, Alan Jope, also appeared to suggest that Israel had become an inconveniently sticky scoop of activism. “There is plenty for Ben & Jerry’s to get their teeth into in their social justice mission without straying into geopolitics,” he reportedly said in a quarterly earnings review at the time.
The standoff ended, at least commercially, when Unilever, Ben & Jerry’s parent company, sold the Israeli business in 2022 to Avi Zinger, the longtime Israeli licensee and owner of American Quality Products. The sale was accompanied by a legal fight that was inflamed when Zinger told an Israeli news outlet that, once he took control of the company in Israel, he could rename the signature flavor “Chunky Monkey” to “Judea and Samaria,” the Hebrew term for the West Bank.
Under the ultimate deal, Ben & Jerry’s could continue to be sold throughout Israel and in Israeli settlements, under Hebrew and Arabic branding, while the Vermont-based company said it disagreed with the move and would no longer profit from Israeli sales.
The split left the Israeli operation in an unusual position: carrying one of the most recognizable American ice cream names, while openly defying the political stance associated with that name abroad.
But the corporate restructuring has not been enough to cleanse the palate for everyone. On social media, the new flavor drew curiosity and praise, but also lingering resentment from those who said the brand name still carried too much baggage, even under Israeli ownership.
“I really don’t care if it’s owned by someone other than Ben and Jerry in Israel. Those two clowns’ names are still associated with the brand. I wouldn’t spend a penny for this ice cream regardless. That brand is done,” one person wrote on Instagram.
“We’ve been eating Häagen-Dazs since October 7th,” another said.
Last year, Cohen announced that he planned to produce a “flavor for Palestine” independently after Unilever blocked Ben & Jerry’s from creating one, soliciting suggestions about what should accompany watermelon, a symbol of Palestinian solidarity, in his concoction.
“Milk and Honey” has come to market faster. So does the new flavor deliver a taste of the Holy Land?
One food influencer, who called the new flavor a “statement,” offered a less scriptural verdict on the taste, shrugging that it “tastes like vanilla with chocolate chips” — a conclusion echoed by others in Israeli food aficionado groups, who lamented that the honey was barely noticeable.
One commented, referring to dairy-free desserts made to comply with kosher laws prohibiting the mixing of milk and meat: “Not the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten, but not as bad as a pareve dessert either.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Mamdani calls AIPAC ‘monsters’ in rally ahead of NY primaries
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday night accused the American Israel Public Affairs Committee of spending “millions in dark money” to ensure pro-Israel candidates win seats in tthe November midterms.
Mamdani made his remarks at a rally headlined by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) at Kings Theater in Brooklyn ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic primaries for progressive congressional candidates. He called on the crowd to help elect Jewish former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, State Assembly member Claire Valdez and former Columbia encampment organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier.
In a fiery 30-minute speech, Mamdani took aim not just at AIPAC but also Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his handling of the war in Gaza. He claimed that “The monsters that we are up against, they take many different forms,” and then singled out AIPAC.
He described the major pro-Israel lobby as an organization “for whom the only thing more frightening than democracy being allowed to run its course is an end to genocide and Netanyahu’s wars.”
Mamdani continued by alleging that AIPAC moves “millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary.”
AIPAC did not respond to a request for comment about Mamdani’s remarks.
The lobby, whose endorsement was once heavily sought by politicians on both sides of the aisle, has increasingly come under fire for its campaign tactics. Pro-Israel Democrats are particularly struggling to hold onto seats as voters on the left increasingly turn against the Jewish state.
Sanders, for his part, doubled down on criticism of AIPAC when he took the stage. “The American people understand that a large part of our horrific foreign policy is impacted by AIPAC funding,” he said.
Turning to the local races, Mamdani voiced support for Valdez for her opposition to Israel. “When other Democrats chose to look the other way as Netanyahu committed war crimes, Claire didn’t just name the genocide,” he said. “She organized for a ceasefire.”
In a change of tone, Mamdani emphasized unity, including an appeal to Jewish voters.
“Whether you worship at shul, at a mosque, in a church, a gurdwara, a temple, or you don’t worship at all, we share a belief that our city deserves leaders who lead with hope and not fear,” the mayor said.
He added, “No matter where we live, how old we are, what train we take in the morning, or what bagel we order, we are New Yorkers and we want the same things,” including “a city that belongs to all of us.”
Reaction on social media was swift. One self-described mom from New York City posted on X of the rally and the Democratic Socialists of America there: “It’s pretty transparent and vile how Zohran Mamdani and the DSA are using ‘AIPAC’ as a euphemism for Jews, and how Brad Lander is going right along with it.”
Jewish writer Dovi Safier also criticized the comments, writing, “The mayor of the city with the world’s largest Jewish population is pushing conspiracy theories about ‘money men’ who ‘move millions in dark money’ to ‘turn us against one another’ — and calling them ‘monsters.’ Subtle.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Mamdani calls AIPAC ‘monsters’ in rally ahead of NY primaries appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish groups push back against Trump’s Iran deal — but more quietly so far than in 2015
(JTA) — A growing number of Jewish groups are pushing back against the new memorandum of understanding brokered between President Donald Trump and Iran.
At least for now, however, their responses are more muted than when the same groups publicly opposed former President Barack Obama’s own Iran deal in 2015. And at least one major Jewish group that opposed Obama’s deal is backing Trump’s framework.
“Trust President Trump,” the Republican Jewish Coalition told its followers Thursday, becoming the most notable Jewish group to support Trump’s memorandum of understanding.
“President Trump has earned the trust of the Jewish community as he and his team work towards a final agreement,” RJC CEO Matt Brooks and chair Norm Coleman said in a statement. They praised the MOU, saying it “envisions a horizon of economic stability for the United States, the region, and the world,” and that it “provides an opportunity for potential new pathways to greater peace.”
The RJC cautioned that “a final deal must avoid the flaws that doomed Obama’s,” specifying that there should be “no sunset clauses” on Iran’s nuclear program and other proposals. In the days before its own statement, the group had been reposting praise of the MOU from other Trump allies, including Sen. Lindsey Graham.
Meanwhile, the American Jewish Committee and the pro-Israel lobbying giant AIPAC took a different tack. They became the largest Jewish organizations to voice concern with the new Iran deal on Thursday, issuing public objections following requests for comment from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The MOU “raises significant questions,” AIPAC said in a lengthy statement that urged Congress to intervene ahead of “a final nuclear agreement,” claiming that the terms of the MOU don’t match “President Trump’s stated objectives for the war.”
The AJC outlined what it said were seven “concerns” it had with the MOU. Like most of the other Jewish groups that responded to JTA for this story, the AJC also expressed hope that the terms of the deal could be changed to be stricter on Iran and more favorable to Israel before it is finalized. (In 2015, in response to Obama’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the AJC said it “overwhelmingly” would “oppose this deal.”)
Trump’s MOU is not a final agreement, unlike Obama’s JCPOA. Rather, it marks the start of a 60-day negotiating period that aims to end the Iran war about to enter its fourth month. It does not yet outline any clear commitments regarding Iran’s nuclear program, which had been at the heart of the JCPOA and which is of particular concern to Jewish groups, who are roundly opposed to Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon in large part because of the risk to Israel. Many had objected to Obama’s deal in part because of its “sunset clauses” that would have phased out nuclear restrictions starting at the 10-year mark.
Regardless, many analysts across the political spectrum are concluding that Trump’s framework is a worse deal than Obama’s, in part because it provides a pathway for Iran to stage an economic recovery.
The Israeli government, which sent Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to personally lobby Congress in 2015 to oppose Obama’s deal, is also strongly opposed to Trump’s — in part because it would require Israel to withdraw from fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. A new poll by Israel’s Channel 12 found that 71% of Israelis don’t trust Trump to look out for their country’s interests in negotiations with Iran.
Hawkish pro-Israel think tanks, including the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, issued papers knocking Trump’s deal.
“In some ways, the MOU is even weaker than President Barack Obama’s,” JINSA said. “This new deal authorizes the transfer of far more money and lifts many more sanctions on Iran than the JCPOA ever did.”
Trump and his top surrogates, including Vice President JD Vance, are increasingly signaling a lack of patience with Israel and a willingness to prioritize ending the war over stopping Iran’s nuclear program.
Some groups are waiting before weighing in. Nathan Diament, head of the Orthodox Union, declared Obama’s deal “not kosher” in 2015. On Thursday, he told JTA that the question of how to respond to Trump’s deal “will be a central topic of discussion” at the group’s leadership advocacy mission in Washington, D.C., taking place early next week. O.U. representatives are scheduled to meet with members of the Trump administration, as well as members of Congress.
JTA reached out Thursday to a wide range of Jewish groups that publicly opposed Obama’s Iran deal in 2015 to ask them their views on Trump’s. Many others, including the Anti-Defamation League and the Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly, did not respond by press time.
Of those who did, only Morton Klein, head of the right-wing Zionist Organization of America, castigated the MOU outright. Klein told JTA he was “extremely upset with this deal” — and with Trump.
“I find this deal just astonishing,” Klein said. “Helping out a country that Trump himself said, if they’d gotten nukes, they’d have used them on Israel and killed millions of Jews? So that mentality, now you’re helping them rebuild?”
He added, “Trump has done many wonderful things for Israel, so we’ve praised Trump for that. But now he’s doing something very bad for Israel and America.”
Such level of forceful public opposition to the deal, though, is rare in Jewish circles at present — especially in contrast with the extent of Jewish mobilization against Obama’s deal in 2015.
Back then, in addition to the usual Jewish advocacy groups, dozens of local Jewish federations across the country pushed their communities and representatives to fight it, in a sweeping and sustained show of opposition.
“This Iran deal threatens the mission of our Federation as we exist to assure the continuity of the Jewish people, support a secure State of Israel, care for Jews in need here and abroad and mobilize on issues of concern,” one typical statement, from the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles, read at the time.
Three years later, during Trump’s first term, he tore up the JCPOA, calling it “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made.”
The lack of similar opposition today for Trump’s deal, Klein said, was glaring: “Nobody is taking issue with this agreement in the Jewish world.”
Among local Jewish groups, the initial reaction to Trump’s MOU has struck a measured tone. The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington, one of dozens of local Jewish communal groups that publicly opposed the 2015 JCPOA, told JTA it was “concerned” that Trump’s deal “has granted Iran a new leverage point to use in the future to inflict pain on the world’s economy.”
Ron Halber, the JCRC’s head, blasted the MOU for being crafted without Israel’s input, and for requiring Israel to withdraw from its offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon. Similar to AIPAC, Halber said his organization would continue to push for “a final U.S.-Iran agreement” that is more favorable to Israel and takes harsher measures against Iran.
In its statement, the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia, which also opposed the JCPOA, did not directly weigh in on the new MOU. Instead, the federation said, “Any agreement involving the Iranian regime should be judged by its ability to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran,” among other factors.
JTA reached out to six other major Jewish federations that opposed the 2015 JCPOA, including Combined Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston, which was the first federation to oppose that deal and whose leader wrote, in 2021, “We were right.”
CJP of Boston did not respond to a request for comment. The Jewish United Fund of Chicago declined to comment, while several other federations that opposed the JCPOA — including Los Angeles, Miami, Phoenix and Detroit — did not respond by press time.
In its own statement opposing the MOU, AIPAC did not outline an advocacy plan to combat it, in contrast to its full-court press against the JCPOA. An AIPAC spokesperson did not return a JTA request for comment on whether, or how, it planned to advocate against Trump’s MOU.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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