Progressives’ rise to power in New York’s Democratic Party also means soaring anti-Semitism.
The latest is the bill from Democratic Socialist lawmakers Jabari Brisport (D-B’klyn) and Zohran Mamdani (D-Qns.) that would punish New York-based charities that supposedly engage in “unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”
Watch out if you aim to help Israelis in any but the ways these two permit.
Legislative leadership in both houses has made it clear that the bill is DOA — for now. But what if progressives continue to knock out moderates in low-turnout primaries?
Brisport and Mamdani blew their dog-whistles hard on this one, trafficking in age-old anti-Semitic tropes of deception and disguise: The Jewish outfits in their crosshairs “masquerade as charities” and “funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to ethnic cleansing.”
Note the single-minded, punitive focus on the Jewish state and its alleged crimes. Neither puts anywhere near same energy into defending actual victims of current and ongoing genocide, like China’s Uyghurs.
Indeed, this monomania drives fanatics like Brisport and Mamdani into uttering palpable absurdities, such as the claim that “white supremacy” by Israel’s (multiracial!) Jewish community somehow drives (nonexistent!) “apartheid” there.
The bill is a clear warning about just how wedded the next generation of New York Democrats is to anti-Israel rhetoric and policies. It’s adjacent to open Jew-hatred.
And Mamdani and Brisport are far from the only examples here.
Late April saw City Council lefties Shahana Hanif and Sandra Nurse (both D-B’klyn) vote “no” on a resolution to establish an “End Jew Hatred” day.
Can’t get any more blatant than that, despite Hanif’s gyratory explanations: Not a single other minority group gets disrespected this way.
Heck, when far-left Rep. Jamaal Bowman — hardly a friend to the Jewish state — dared merely to meet with then-PM Naftali Bennett, it threw woke kingmaker Democratic Socialists of America into an ugly internal quandary about whether to expel him.
Hard to imagine that happening if Bowman had met with literally any other head of government, from Xi Jinping to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — no matter how vile.
State Sen. Julia Salazar concocted a 100% false story about having Jewish heritage, likely in order to stave off accusations of anti-Semitism for her own obsessive criticism of Israel (or even to add extra oomph to said criticisms).
For her, Jewishness is valid only as a political instrument.
And let’s not forget Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: AOC not long ago joined her Squad buddies in (briefly) stopping US support for Israel’s purely defensive Iron Dome, and falsely claimed Israel cages Palestinian children.
The old guard is checking the young progressives for now, but time is on the haters’ side unless sane Democrats start taking back their party.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
