Part 2: Packaging Hate as Social Justice
How Zohran Mamdani has turned “universal rights” into a weapon for Jewish erasure.
Yesterday in Part 1: Antisemitism is the Oldest Rebellion Against Universal Justice, we traced antisemitism to its core: political warfare against the moral law of universal dignity that tyrants fear most. Today we expose how that ancient hatred is being repackaged for modern consumption as “justice” and “empathy.” Tomorrow in Part 3, we turn to the counteroffensive and how we turn the tide of rising antisemitism.
Antisemitism is a shape shifting virus. It is evolving and metastasizing in real time. In the NYC Mayoral election, we have witnessed an insidious and subversive form of antisemitism that proved to be alarmingly effective. Its strategy is simple: recode Jewish identity into a universal moral category, then dissolve it.
Zohran Mamdani has successfully turned the postcolonial theory of his parents, into a political force that garnered more than 1 million votes in the recent NYC Mayoral election. It’s worth noting that is more than any Mayoral candidate since John V. Lindsay ran back in 1969.
Mamdani’s insidious brand of intersectional politics cloaks antisemitism in the language of inclusion. His rhetoric of justice and equity sounds compassionate but functions as erasure. It reframes Jewish security as privilege and recasts Zionism (the movement for Jewish self-determination) as oppression. Under his approach, antisemitism is not confronted; it is redistributed.
He attempts to dissolve antisemitism into “all forms of hate,” stripping Jews of the right to define their own persecution. Mamdani’s rhetoric is as precise as it is deceptive. He never says “Jews have too much power.” Instead he says “ethno-nationalism is wrong” and then, as we will discuss below, he defines Jewish self-determination as the world’s only example. He never says “Jews should not have safety.” He says “no state should have hierarchy” and then falsely claims Israel has one. He never says “violence against Jews is acceptable.” Yet he refuses to condemn “Globalize the Intifada” claiming “I won’t police speech.”
But to conclude that Zohran Mamdani believes in “universal human rights” is to believe a very well curated lie.1 Zohran Mamdani represents the tip of the spear in a global fight to destroy America.
I know that is a strong accusation. But the proof is hiding in plain sight. I am sure that some will accuse me of spreading anti-muslim rhetoric and assert that I am being “Islamaphobic.” But my critique of Zohran is not a critique of all Muslims. It’s a critique of this man, his toxic views and the strain of radical Islam to which he adheres.
Islamophobia is a Sword, not a Shield
In discussions of rising antisemitism, particularly in academic and activist circles following the events of October 7, 2023, the term “Islamophobia” has been strategically deployed to obscure the truth.
It’s worth addressing an obvious irony. Many people will hear this and think it sounds similar to the argument that anti-Zionism is antisemitism. That both sides are claiming moral cover from criticism. But they move in opposite directions. When anti-Zionism denies Jews the right to self-determination, it erases a people. When “Islamophobia” is used to silence scrutiny of Islamist ideology, it protects an ideology, not a people. One erases identity; the other evades accountability.
Unlike anti-Zionism, “Islamophobia” is deployed as a shield that collapses scrutiny of Islamist politics into a charge of bigotry against Muslims. This pattern extends far beyond one election. This often serves to deflect scrutiny from ideologies that frequently incorporate antisemitic elements, such as certain strains of political Islam or Islamist extremism.
The term “Islamophobia” did not originate from grassroots Muslim communities in the West but gained prominence in the 1990s through organizations associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, later amplified by NGOs and academics. While its etymology is debated, some trace it to earlier 20th-century French scholarship or 1970s Iranian contexts, its modern usage functions as a rhetorical device that conflates legitimate criticism of Islamist ideology with prejudice against Muslims as individuals. This conflation shields political movements that employ civil rights rhetoric while permitting antisemitic narratives, such as justifications for violence against Israel or alignments with groups like Hamas, to evade examination.
Recent data highlight the disparity in religious hate crimes and underscore this ironic dynamic.
According to the FBI’s 2024 hate crime statistics, there were 11,679 reported hate crime incidents nationwide, a slight decrease from 11,862 in 2023. Single-bias incidents motivated by religious bias fell by about 5% overall from 2023 to 2024. Within this category, anti-Jewish incidents numbered 1,938, accounting for nearly 70% of religious bias crimes and marking a 5.8% increase from 1,832 in 2023 and marks the highest ever recorded by the FBI. In contrast, anti-Muslim incidents were 228, comprising about 8% of religious hate crimes and representing a modest decrease from 236 in 2023. Anti-Sikh incidents stood at 142, while attacks on other groups, such as Christians (including vandalism of Catholic churches), have in recent years numbered around 150-200, though exact 2024 figures for these subcategories are not detailed in the primary summaries but remain comparable to anti-Muslim levels in prior reports. The anti-Muslim figure remains relatively stable and roughly aligns with the U.S. Muslim population share.
Public perceptions further contradict narratives of rampant, escalating Islamophobia. Pew Research Center surveys from 2017 showed a “feeling thermometer” rating of about 48 for Muslims, indicating modest but steady improvement in favorable views since the early 2000s. More recent data, while not directly updating this metric, reveals that 70% of U.S. Muslims self-report increased discrimination since the Israel-Hamas war began in October 2023. However, this self-perception does not align with a broad surge in reported hate crimes, suggesting that while individual experiences of bias warrant attention, claims of pervasive anti-Muslim hatred in the U.S. are not fully supported by empirical evidence.
It is crucial to acknowledge that genuine instances of anti-Muslim discrimination, profiling, and harassment exist and must be condemned unequivocally harassment based on faith is wrong in any form. Programs like post-9/11 surveillance (e.g., NSEERS) have contributed to structural biases.
Yet, unlike prejudices rooted in myth or historical power imbalances, apprehensions about Islamism arise from documented events: The pattern of Islamist violence against Western targets is not abstract—it is a matter of record.
In 1993, a truck bomb detonated beneath the World Trade Center in New York, killing six people and injuring more than a thousand. Less than a decade later, the September 11, 2001 attacks destroyed the Twin Towers and struck the Pentagon, murdering 2,977 men, women, and children from more than 90 nations.
In March 2004, coordinated explosions on Madrid’s commuter rail system killed 191 and wounded nearly 2,000. The following year, July 7, 2005, four suicide bombers targeted London’s transit network during rush hour, killing 52 commuters and injuring over 700.
France has endured repeated assaults: the 2015 Charlie Hebdo and Hypercacher attacks left 17 dead, followed months later by the November 2015 Paris massacres, in which ISIS gunmen and bombers murdered 130 people across the city, including at the Bataclan Theatre. In 2016, a Tunisian-born terrorist drove a cargo truck through Bastille Day crowds in Nice, killing 86 and wounding more than 400.
Belgium suffered its own coordinated suicide bombings in Brussels in March 2016, killing 32 civilians and injuring more than 300. Germany saw similar atrocities: the Berlin Christmas market attack in December 2016 killed 12 and injured 56 when a radicalized asylum seeker rammed a truck into the crowd. In 2019, a radicalized assailant stabbed and killed four police employees inside Paris police headquarters.
Even smaller-scale attacks like Westminster Bridge (5 killed, 2017), Manchester Arena (22 killed, mostly children, 2017), the Vienna shootings (4 killed, 2020) underscore that Islamist extremism remains a persistent, cross-border threat to open societies.
These acts of terror were not theoretical, nor were they responses to personal discrimination. They were ideological campaigns targeting civilians precisely because of their freedoms, their pluralism, and their refusal to submit to theocratic power.
These acts, perpetrated by extremists invoking Islamic justifications, represent a sustained ideological assault, not isolated crimes. Framing such concerns as irrational bigotry constitutes a moral inversion: legitimate alarm is recast as prejudice, positioning aggressors as victims and defenders of liberal values as oppressors.
Western institutions, in their pursuit of tolerance, have often adopted the term without critical examination, allowing it to shield extremist rhetoric.
This is particularly evident in contexts where antisemitism proliferates under the guise of anti-Islamophobia advocacy.
Consider this op ed entitled: Zohran Mamdani said the quiet part out loud. Finally. In this article, the author attempts to portray Mamdani as an innocent Muslim promoting peace amid prejudice.
In reality, it exemplifies how “Islamophobia” redirects criticism from a public figure’s record such as statements advocating “resistance by any means,” which echo militant interpretations rather than the Quran’s emphases on mercy and justice toward the supposed biases of critics.
By emphasizing Mamdani’s personal faith and emotional pain, the piece supplants evidence-based scrutiny with guilt, shaming opponents into silence. Mamdani’s rhetoric and alliances align with movements that justify violence against Israel and mirror radical Islamist narratives, raising valid concerns about fanaticism, not bigotry.
This tactic fosters a civic culture that prioritizes emotional appeals over accountability. The author claims Mamdani “moved her to tears,” but politics grounded in sympathy rather than truth risks enabling divisive ideas.
True justice requires moral clarity: condemn bias against Muslims as people while rigorously critiquing ideologies that perpetuate hate, including antisemitism. This distinction safeguards individuals without excusing extremism. When public figures exploit charges of Islamophobia to demand silence on radical beliefs, they undermine tolerance rather than advance it.
Compassion must not become denial, and emotional blackmail should never masquerade as equity. Only through such honesty can we address the real threats to a free and just society.
The Truth about Zohran Mamdani.
It doesn’t take long researching Zohran Mamdani to conclude that he has been explicit about his ideological commitments and they are not “universal human rights.”
When you look beyond the polished image of his campaign, his rhetoric and record align with the very same postcolonial political framework of his parents that reframes antisemitism as justice, recoding Jewish self-determination as oppression. The evidence is clear from his own words and affiliations. Consider the following:
Support for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS): At a 2023 rally outside New York City Hall, Mamdani led chants of “BDS! Not on our dime!” while promoting his “Not On Our Dime” bill, designed to cut tax-deductible funding for Israeli institutions. He defended academic boycotts, stating, “Israeli universities are complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms.”
Rejection of Israel’s Right to Exist as a Jewish State: In a 2025 NY1 mayoral debate, Mamdani declared, “I will not recognize any state’s right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race or religion.” This framing falsely equates Jewish nationhood with racial supremacy, ignoring that Israel grants full civil and political rights to all its citizens, including Arabs, Druze, and Christians.
Use of “Genocide” Rhetoric: Mamdani routinely accuses Israel of genocide. In October 2024, he asserted in a video statement, “Israel is committing a genocide.” He repeated this in a 2025 Spectrum News interview, calling it “the most accurate description” of Israeli operations in Gaza—language condemned by genocide scholars as propaganda rather than legal fact.
Promotion of Antisemitic Tropes: In a September 2023 Democratic Socialists of America panel, Mamdani said: “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” This recycles the antisemitic trope that Israel corrupts American institutions, a modern variation of the “dual loyalty” myth.
Refusal to Condemn Violent Slogans: In June 2025 interviews, Mamdani refused to denounce the phrase “Globalize the Intifada,” which glorifies the extension of violent uprisings against Jews worldwide. He stated, “The role of the mayor is not to police language,” effectively normalizing extremist rhetoric.
Praise for Convicted Hamas Financiers: In his 2017 rap song “Salam,” performed under the alias “Mr. Cardamom,” Mamdani rapped, “My love to the Holy Land Five, you better look ’em up,” referring to members of a charity convicted in U.S. federal court for funneling funds to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.
Call for the Arrest of Israel’s Prime Minister: Mamdani repeatedly pledged to have Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested by the NYPD if he were to visit New York City. Citing an International Criminal Court (ICC) warrant for alleged war crimes, Mamdani stated, “As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a city that our values are in line with international law.” This statement, which he vowed to fulfill despite its legal impossibility for a mayor and its conflict with US federal foreign policy, is political theater designed to criminalize and delegitimize the democratically elected leadership of the Jewish state.
Organizational Affiliations: Mamdani co-founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a group banned on multiple campuses for promoting harassment and violence against Jewish students. He remains a dues-paying member of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), whose foreign policy platform includes only one issue: the elimination of the State of Israel.
Taken together, Mamdani’s record represents not a moral awakening, but a calculated ideological project to shift the center of gravity in Western politics from the defense of Jewish self-determination to its delegitimization under the banner of “justice.” His politics of empathy operate as politics of erasure turning the vocabulary of human rights into the grammar of exclusion.
Mamdani’s positions are framed by his supporters not as antisemitism, but as principled anti-colonial activism rooted in a universalist human rights ethic. This perspective attempts to re-cast his statements as consistent with a broad, secular political philosophy demanding equality, peace, and adherence to international law for all. In this reading, his support for BDS is a non-violent, grassroots tactic; his rejection of a “Jewish state” is a principled stand against all ethno-nationalism; and his accusation of “genocide” is a moral alarm bell intended to halt mass suffering and force accountability. He is seen not as targeting Jews, but as strategically targeting a powerful U.S. ally and a primary manifestation of the settler-colonial system that his ideology opposes.
However, this universalist defense collapses under the weight of selective application and intellectual dishonesty. A genuinely universalist ethic must apply its moral scrutiny indiscriminately, yet Mamdani’s condemnations and the organizational focus of the two groups that he is associated with, the DSA and SJP, are obsessively directed only at Israel.
This singular focus stands in stark contrast to the numerous nations committing human rights abuses, gender apartheid, and mass murder that Mamdani routinely ignores.
To maintain this narrative, his ideological framework resorts to contortion of core concepts: selectively defining the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as the world’s unique case of “settler colonialism“ (thereby erasing Jewish indigeneity and the right to self-determination) and applying the term “genocide“ by substituting political outrage over observable consequences for the legally required element of specific intent (dolus specialis).
The universalist language is, therefore, a deliberate rhetorical veneer - taqiyya - a tool of “virtuous exclusion” that weaponizes moral terminology to isolate, delegitimize, and ultimately seek the dissolution of the world’s only Jewish state while simultaneously congratulating itself for acting on behalf of justice.
It is incumbent on everyone to educate themselves on the DSA, the political party of AOC, Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani. This video discusses the DSA’s history and its shift toward a stridently antisemitic position on Israel.
Blood Libel: A Jewish “Ethnostate”
Let’s examine the heart of Mamdani’s criticism of Israel. He calls the world’s only Jewish democracy, an “ethnostate” claiming that this the accusation is because he believes in universal justice.
The entire accusation that Israel is an “ethnostate” is a rhetorical weapon, but it shatters against every definition of the word.
It is not an analysis; it is an indictment dressed as scholarship. The charge is not descriptive; it is ideological.
In its strictest, most damning sense, an “ethnostate” is a political system built for a single ethnic group that actively denies equal rights and citizenship to others. It’s a system of legal supremacy like apartheid South Africa or Nazi Germany, where race defined citizenship and power.
By this standard, the claim against Israel is not only wrong; it is absurd. Over twenty percent of Israeli citizens are Arab, Muslim or Christian, who vote, serve in parliament, on the Supreme Court, and in the military. Arabic holds a “special status” in Israel. It is widely used in official contexts such as on road signs, product labels, and government documents and is spoken by about 20% of the population. Israel’s Declaration of Independence guarantees equality stating that the State of Israel “will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture.”
The selective application of this charge exposes the double standard. If we truly sought states that deny fundamental rights based on ethnicity or religion, we would condemn:
Myanmar, which denies citizenship to its Rohingya minority.
Iran, where Persian Shia supremacy defines the state.
China, which imprisons Uyghurs for their faith and culture.
Pakistan, which declares non-Muslims constitutionally unequal.
Critics also ignore a glaring contemporary example of a true ethnocracy: Malaysia, whose Constitution permanently privileges ethnic Malays over Chinese and Indian citizens in education, land ownership, public contracts, and government posts. It is an explicitly race-based legal order. Yet Malaysia has never been subjected to global boycotts, UN condemnations, or campus protests branding it a “racist state.” Only Israel, the lone democracy in its region, where minorities enjoy full rights is singled out for delegitimization. The standard is not moral; it is selective, and applied uniquely to the Jewish state.
When pressed on the facts, critics retreat to a softer definition. They argue that even if Israel does not legally discriminate, it remains an “ethnic nation-state,” one that privileges Jewish identity as the organizing principle of the state. But that is not aberration, it is the global norm. Most nations were built on precisely this model: a shared ancestry, culture, or faith.
Japan is ninety-seven percent ethnically Japanese and defines citizenship largely by descent.
Greece enshrines Orthodoxy in its constitution and considers itself the homeland of the Greek people, granting citizenship to its global diaspora.
Armenia calls itself the nation-state of the Armenian people, founded as a refuge for survivors of genocide and exile.
Ireland defines itself as the homeland of the Irish.
Pakistan was created explicitly as a Muslim homeland for the Indian subcontinent.
Each of these nations defines sovereignty in terms of a people’s right to self-determination, yet none are condemned for it. No one calls Japan an “ethnostate.” No one demands that Greece or Armenia abandon their national character or dissolve their diaspora laws. Only when the Jewish people claim that same right to live in security and self-determination in their ancestral homeland—does the accusation become moral outrage.
The double standard holds under both definitions. If an ethnostate means legal discrimination and rights denial, Israel does not qualify. If it means a democracy rooted in a people’s shared culture or faith, then half the world’s nations qualify—and yet only one is condemned.
This is the inversion at the heart of the accusation. When Greece calls itself the homeland of the Greek people, it is nationalism. When Israel calls itself the homeland of the Jewish people, it is apartheid. The difference is not legal or political; it is rhetorical and moral theater.
Israel is not an ethnostate. It is a Jewish-majority democracy built on the principle that a people who endured two millennia of stateless persecution deserve the same right as every other nation to govern themselves and defend their existence. To deny that right to Jews alone is not justice; it is prejudice disguised as progress.
They’ve Weaponized Empathy
The city that I once called home, where the Statue of Liberty once was the symbol for refuge for the oppressed, now risks becoming the prototype for how antisemitism can be institutionalized through empathy.
In Mamdani’s New York, the erasure of Jewish legitimacy is sold as moral evolution. A model so polished, so polite, that it could soon be exported to every capital in the West. It’s insidious and it can’t be ignored.
And because it comes draped in virtue, it will spread even faster than the old hatreds ever could. That is why, as we will discuss tomorrow, we must reclaim the moral high ground before it disappears.
Tomorrow, “Part 3: A Moral Counteroffensive: Winning the War for Truth and Liberty”, I will attempt to explain why we are losing the information war, and how we can mount a counter-offensive
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The doctrine of deception (taqiyya) empowers Muslims to deny their faith or commit otherwise illegal or blasphemous acts while they are at risk of persecution. It was developed to protect Shi’ite Muslims, who usually were in the minority and under pressure from rival Sunnis. For all practical purposes, however, the doctrine has been expanded to encourage any deceit that advances Islam. Qur’anic scholar Al-Tabari explains,
“If you [Muslims] are under their [infidels’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them, with your tongue, while harboring animosity for them…. Allah has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels in place of believers – except when infidels are above them [in authority].” This draws on the principle that “war is deceit” (al-harb khid’a), a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad. This strategy is used for political gain.
Islam’s dual notions of truth and falsehood further reveal its paradoxical nature: While the Qur’an is against believers deceiving other believers (for “surely God guides not him who is prodigal and a liar”) deception directed at non-Muslims, generally known in Arabic as taqiyya, also has Qur’anic support and falls within the legal category of things that are permissible for Muslims.
Let not believers take disbelievers as allies rather than believers. And whoever ˹of you˺ does that has nothing with Allah, except when taking precaution against them in prudence. Quran 3:28
Let’s be clear, the issue is not Islam as a faith or Muslims as individuals. It is the deliberate use of moral language as camouflage used by radical Islamists, a tactic visible throughout history in colonial pursuits. Exposing that pattern is central to understanding how antisemitism is re-packaged today.