By The New York Post Editorial Board
For anyone with doubts, Vanity Fair’s new profile of Zohran Mamdani makes it explicit: His campaign is driven, perhaps more than anything, by an overriding hatred of the Jewish state. And a perverse need to destroy it.
Writer James Pogue reports that Palestine is Mamdani’s “formative issue” — and a big part of his success.
“The Palestinian issue has helped draw Muslim candidates and voters into left-wing politics,” writes Pogue.
Palestine is “rapidly becoming, like Vietnam before it, the key issue for a wider anti-establishment left-wing movement.”
Mamdani himself claims the issue reveals “hypocrisies” about “universality” and “equal rights.”
“It is genocide” that has “ripped at the very fabric of so much of what so many thought about this world.”
True, the candidate has pushed socialist policies — free buses, free child care, etc. — and that’s all part of his “equality” beat.
But it all comes back to Israel, which he claims he’d support if it weren’t specifically a Jewish state.
Of course, that would defeat the whole purpose of the country.
Pogue is right that Mamdani’s hostility toward Israel is drawing supporters, as a shameful anti-Israel sentiment grows.
A New York Times/Siena poll this week showed sympathy for Palestinians over Israelis has jumped sharply since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre, with slightly more Americans now siding with Palestinians (35%) than Israelis (34%).
Yet if fighting for “equal rights” is truly your priority, Palestinians in Israel wouldn’t be anywhere near the top of your target list.
Surely Uyghurs in China would be higher. Or gays in, say, Mamdani’s former country, Uganda.
Or, heck, Jews and Christians in Muslim nations.
Yes, Palestinians in Gaza are suffering today, but that’s because the leaders they voted for — Hamas — ignited a war with Israel when they perpetrated the worst horrors against Jews since the Holocaust.
Remember: Israel had no control over Palestinian “rights” in Gaza before Oct. 7.
Mamdani’s claim of “genocide” is nothing but a vile lie that by all rights should bar him from getting any fair-minded New Yorker’s support.
The irony is even more bitter given Jewish history: For 2,000 years, Jews throughout the world suffered horrific antisemitism, were treated as second-class citizens, subjected to slaughters and pogroms — all capped by an actual Nazi genocide that wiped out a full third of them.
Now they have a state to protect themselves, which, unlike its neighboring states, is a true democracy that does offer equal rights to everyone, regardless of religion or ethnic background.
Mamdani’s focus on erasing Israel is the very definition of antisemitism. That it’s the driving force of his campaign makes it all the uglier.
Mamdani’s perverse need to destroy the Jewish state is driving his campaign https://t.co/3ZluIdchUO pic.twitter.com/Oc26MkNQGY
— NY Post Opinion (@NYPostOpinion) September 30, 2025
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