New York Times columnist Bret Stephens devotes his column to attacking New York Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani for his views of Israel and the Palestinians. I don’t want to assess Mamdani’s views except to say that mine are somewhat different, but that I share his opposition to what Israel has become and what it has done to the Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Israel proper. What I want to comment on is a certain kind of criticism that Stephens makes in attacking Mamdani’s views — a criticism that is sometimes made of my own views.
Stephens writes, “One of the ways anti-Zionists tend to give themselves away as something darker is that the only human-rights abuses they seem to notice are Israel’s; the only state among dozens of religious states whose legitimacy they challenge is Israel; the only group whose suffering they are prepared to turn into their personal crusade is that of the Palestinians. What gives?” The question is: why has Mamdani focussed so much on the plight of the Palestinians? The answer, I’d argue, is fairly obvious: Mamdani is a Muslim, and the preponderance of Israel’s victims in Gaza and the West Bank are Muslims.
One can ask: why are members of Jewish Voice for Peace so exercised about Israel and not about the Uyghurs or Kurds? It’s because they are Jewish and feel morally implicated in what Israel is doing to the Palestinians in a way they don’t feel implicated in what China’s Communists do in Xinjiang. Why, indeed, does Stephens devote an entire column about a mayoral candidate to his views on Israel? Why doesn’t he assess Mamdani’s views on housing, transportation, and childcare? What gives? It is because Stephens cares more about this candidate’s views on Israel than he does about his views on anything else. That’s his right. But it’s also Mamdani’s right to have spent the last decade protesting Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.
