In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, more than 2 million Jews arrived in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. This mass immigration turned New York into the cornerstone of Diaspora Jewry and cemented its status as the largest Jewish city in the world. From this vast community emerged a long line of Jewish politicians with historic influence. Chief among them is Sen. Chuck Schumer.
Schumer currently serves as Senate minority leader, after serving as majority leader from 2020 to 2024 under the Biden administration. He is the Jew elected to the highest office in American history and for many years placed the cultivation and strengthening of U.S.-Israel ties at the top of his agenda. In recent years, however, Schumer has been forced to contend with growing pressure inside his party, leading him to adopt more cautious positions.
Zohran Mamdani
(Photo: Reuters)
In recent years, we have witnessed a troubling and dangerous shift in New York City. Beyond the broader rise in hostility toward Israel, there is a growing trend of candidates being elected to public office precisely on that ticket. The driving force behind this profound change is the radical wing of the Democratic Party, especially the Democratic Socialists of America, or DSA.
The peak of this radicalization process was reflected in the election of DSA figure Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. Mamdani has pursued a hostile and extreme line against Israel, including a conspicuous refusal to take part in the Israel parade.
The mayor-elect has called for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s arrest, and his policies are reflected on the ground in his veto of municipal legislation intended to prevent intimidating protests outside Jewish schools.
His attitude toward Israel and the Jewish community is clearer than ever, as seen in the sharp attack he launched last week against the AIPAC lobby, which he called a “monster.”
Despite these positions, he continues to enjoy enormous popularity. Mamdani bet on support for radical candidates such as Claire Valdez, Brad Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier. The long line of people waiting in a park to take selfies with him after the Knicks won the NBA championship shows the depth of his support. In effect, New York underwent a political upheaval overnight: Mamdani’s candidates won, and supporters of Israel received a warning sign.
The danger of Chevalier
The most worrying focal point is Chevalier, who defeated veteran Rep. Adriano Espaillat in District 13. Chevalier’s background, including her conversion to Islam, dovetails with her extreme political positions against Israel. At the same time, the hostile atmosphere directed at Jewish elected officials is evident, and troubling footage shows her organizing the pro-Palestinian protest held just two days after the October 7 massacre.
This toxic atmosphere is seeping into the city’s streets and creating the painful sense that Jews are no longer welcome in their own home, as reflected in reports of growing feelings of insecurity.
The case of Jewish Rep. Dan Goldman, who lost the primary to Brad Lander, offers a glimpse into the loss of a sense of safety among Jewish figures in the public sphere. Lander, identified with the far-left wing, has become a vocal critic of Israel and has led a sharply oppositional line against its policies. Goldman was disgracefully expelled this week from a cafe in his own city, an incident that illustrates the depth of the rupture.
The current election campaign centered in large part on the demand to halt arms sales to Israel, a watershed issue for the winning candidates who sanctified their hostility. From the outside, New York, the city that created the Israel parade in the 1960s, is now becoming the spearhead of the fight against it.
Dr. Kobby Barda Photo: Tal GivonyAnyone who sees all this as an inevitable “demographic process” is wrong and misleading others. This is cold, calculated political engineering. In midterm primaries, candidates are elected on the basis of just tens of thousands of votes in safe seats. This system allows for the relatively easy takeover of districts, flooding Congress and local authorities with radical representatives, just as the Tea Party did to the Republican Party, only in the opposite and more extreme direction.
This is a systematic attempt, from within, to change the DNA of the Democratic Party and turn it into a fringe party. Americans watching from the sidelines understand that this is a culture war over the character of America. If the Democratic Party does not stop this internal radicalization, it may find itself not only out of power in 2026 and 2028, but completely disconnected from the American public in whose name it claims to speak.
- Dr. Kobby Barda, Holon Institute of Technology, is a senior research fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute.