(RNS) — “Start worrying,” goes the telegram in the old Jewish joke. “Details to follow.” This week, should those details be about the election of an anti-Zionist Muslim mayor or an outbreak of antisemite coddling at a major conservative think tank?
No doubt, Jews in New York City are worrying a good deal about Zohran Mamdani, the political wunderkind who took the place by storm on Tuesday (Nov. 4). According to an exit poll, he got just 32% of the Jewish vote, while 64% went to Andrew Cuomo, the disgraced former Democratic governor whose Independent candidacy was endorsed by President Donald Trump in the waning moments of the campaign.
Truth to tell, Cuomo won the Judeo-Christian vote. Fifty-two percent of Catholics voted for him, as opposed to 33% who voted for Mamdani, and 48% of non-Catholic Christians chose Cuomo over Mamdani (43%). But Mamdani overcame them by scoring overwhelmingly with those of other faiths (71%) and those of no religion (76%).
But back to the Jews. In his rousing acceptance speech, which threw down the gauntlet to Trump and doubled down on his program to Make New York Affordable, Mamdani declared, “We will build a city hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.”
Presumably no amount of fighting will persuade many Jews to overlook Mamdani’s refusal to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada” (though he eventually discouraged it), his threat to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he shows up in New York and his support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions pressure campaign against Israel. Whether as mayor he will take steps to advance a pro-Palestinian agenda — and there are concrete steps to take — is another question.
I suspect he wants to be a two-term mayor and is a good enough politician not to want to kick to the curb the Jewish New Yorkers whose votes for him represented much of his margin of victory (5.3% of the 8.8% margin). I suppose we will find out if an anti-Zionist Muslim can be a friend of the Jews.
Which brings us to the Heritage Foundation, the Washington think tank that assembled the famous Project 2025 policy blueprint for the second Trump administration. It also happens to be an advertiser on Tucker Carlson’s YouTube channel.
After Carlson gave a friendly interview — in which he described Christian Zionists as having been “seized by this brain virus” for their unwavering support of Israel — to Nick Fuentes, America’s most notorious antisemite, and was roundly condemned for it, Heritage President Kevin Roberts posted a video in which he declared: “We will always defend our friends against the slander of bad actors who serve someone else’s agenda. That includes Tucker Carlson who remains and, as I have said before, always will be a close friend of the Heritage Foundation. The venomous coalition attacking him are [sic] sowing division. Their attempt to cancel him will fail.”
A number of prominent Jewish conservatives did not take kindly to Roberts’ defense of Carlson. The result has been a commotion inside Heritage that has included the exodus of some Jewish backers and various staffers. Whether Roberts will stay on as president remains to be seen.
As Will Sommer of The Bulwark has reported, this is the latest chapter in the so-called Groyper War, which has pitted the antisemitic likes of Fuentes and podcaster Candace Owens against a range of, let us say, non-antisemitic conservatives. The war has been sufficiently intense to draw the attention of Texas Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, who called antisemitism “an existential crisis in our party.”
The crisis would appear to be that Fuentes and his Groypers are ascendant in the world of MAGA, particularly among young activists and ideologues. Carlson and Heritage, to say nothing of Trump himself, want no enemies to the right.
Immediately after the election in New York, the Anti-Defamation League, which these days itself seems more anxious to stay on good terms with the right than the left, announced it was launching a “Mamdani Monitor” to track any signs of antisemitism on the part of the mayor-elect’s administration. Thus far, however, the organization has had nary a word to say about Heritage-gate.
Time to start worrying.