I've had people say to me, "If Mamdani wins, I won't feel safe." Every New Yorker has the right to BE safe. But FEELING safe? That's on you. Work it out with your friends, your family, your therapist. Or have a talk with God. But don't weaponize it.
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I have multiple Jewish friends who won’t rank him at all because they feel he’s an antisemite. Not even feel unsafe just feel he’s an antisemite. Meanwhile he met with some senior fellow from *Chabad* who said “dunno, seems nice enough guy”.
I think he will lose because of all this. It is a huge machine and not specific to antisemitism that has been turned on to go after him, though even the ones who don’t care at all about antisemitism are happy to use it as an attack on him.
Mamdani has now of course foolishly played into it even more by defending “globalize the intifada” on some wonky linguistic grounds which is insane and not good. Annoying.
He did it in a sufficiently ham handed way that he got criticized by the Holocaust Museum and you don’t want to get near that with a ten foot pole, that’s just an unmitigated blunder
It doesn’t matter if it means different things to different people. If all Jews, even ones sympathetic to him and even his own cross endorser Lander, are very uncomfortable with the phrase, you have to just accept the connotation of it
This particular statement was moronic because *the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was an armed struggle.* Trying to reassure people by telling us the Holocaust Museum uses the word intifada to describe an armed struggle is just stupid.
The publication you quote, the Jewish Insider, has a terrible headine and doesn't tell us that M is right about that Holocaust Museum having that translation until recently. Here is the Forward confirming that (but also criticizing him) Whatever your view, honest journalism would include that.
As a liberal Jew who believes in Israel’s right to self-determination, I find it hard to imagine voting for an explicitly anti-Zionist candidate. It’s not that I would feel personally threatened or that the Mayor has any say in foreign policy. I just don’t want to hear that shit and the people…
cheering it on. I have a hard time imagining voting for Cuomo either, given his personal behavior and frustrating tenure as Governor (not unmitigated bad, but not good either!). It may not matter - if either wins, the other is likely to remain on the ballot as either WFP or independent…
Then complain about the opposing forces that keep bringing up an irrelevant foreign policy issue in a municipal election to tar a Muslim candidate in the most transparently bigoted way possible
I couldn’t care less what he thinks about anything not directly related to running the city. He clearly doesn’t have any issue with individual Jewish people and his main cross endorser is Jewish. Just seems childish but whatever
It’s not a foreign policy issue, nor does it have anything to do with him being a Muslim, at least for me. Obv. there’s racism for some. I’d feel the same if he were from JVP. I believe DSA-NYC and other orgs that are his base have a huge antisemitism problem and he has not reassured.
There’s a real chance this could lead to another term of Adams or even Curtis Sliwa. It’s a shame and a shitshow that these two have sucked up all the oxygen and (because of ranked choice) none of the others have emerged. Lander, Myrie, Stringer, A Adams all have the makings of fine candidates…
And the choice seems to boil down to the Socialist vs the narcissistic, vindictive sexual harasser. Glad I moved to Jersey a few years back (although as a city public defender the outcome will affect my bottom line).
And you feel "safe" as ICE thugs, masked and carrying loaded weapons, troll the sidewalks and neighborhoods of the city, looking for victims to kidnap and disappear???
How many women have been taken by predators wearing ICE merch sold on Amazon for about $20? How many kids have been grabbed?
I don’t trust his statements on Israel, but given that the mayor of NYC has no influence on foreign policy, I don’t think it’s a reason not to rank him in this election.
I think his cross-endorsement with Lander is brilliant, and I hope it works. Cuomo should crawl back under a rock in Westchester!
Bunch of babies. I'm schizoaffective and never feel safe no matter what the circumstances are but I still manage to function without invoking a bunch of racist tropes about a Muslim man.
I don't know how old you are but this has literally been the pivotal discussion in every NYC mayoral race of my lifetime. It's how the city ended up with Adams, Bloomberg, and the once-lionized Giuliani. For all I know it's how Fiorello La Guardia got elected. "He'll keep us safe".
See, I’m Jewish and I think Mamdani is an antisemite. I also happen to believe there’s no genocide in Israel (just a terrible war - because you have to look at the facts and not Hamas propaganda). I’m wishing anyone but Mamdani. It would be a catastrophe.
He's not, but putting that aside, a catastrophe for whom? What specifically do you think is going to happen to Jewish New York City residents if he's elected?
Thanks got replying Mark. First it’s gonna foster an anti-Jewish climate same as Trump with other minorities where bullies and agressors will feel vindicated. Then he could defund Jewish private schools, make kosher meat harder to obtain, lower security for synagogues and Jewish events, etc.
There’s a hundred ways like this to make life impossible for Jews. And can you imagine the so called pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia and elsewhere with more chants of “globalize the intifada - which he said he approves- and other antisemitic slogans?
Yeah, I can imagine campus protests regardless of who's mayor. You're discussing him as if he's some sort of stealth Jew-hater who's just smiling until he gets to enact his secret Jew-hating agenda! I'm sorry, but none of this is real. It's a dark fantasy based on nothing but baseline distrust.
Also, the only Jewish schools that the city has attempted to defund are a couple of ultra-Orthodox yeshivas that were so defiantly refusing to give their students an actual education that it was almost a form of abuse.
Was just reminiscing that the first time I heard that comment was, "If Kerry wins, I won't feel safe." It was a coworker/friend of mine. After asking her to explain, I basically never spoke to her again. Everything is apparently a 2004 flashback now.
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How many women have been taken by predators wearing ICE merch sold on Amazon for about $20? How many kids have been grabbed?
I think his cross-endorsement with Lander is brilliant, and I hope it works. Cuomo should crawl back under a rock in Westchester!