Tim Lawrence

Zohran and the end of Israel

The mayor-elect's victory amounts to an epic defeat for the Zionist state

12 November 2025

One day Israel will come to an end. Ilan Pappé says that when repressive apartheid regimes collapse the penultimate phase can be the most brutal yet also tends to unfold rapidly. Maybe Israel’s final implosion will come in fifty years, maybe five, maybe less. Whenever it happens, the election of Zohran Mamdani may come to be seen as a seismic turning point.

The reasons to celebrate Zohran’s victory are already legendary. He came from seemingly nowhere to win the Democratic primary. He exudes charisma, intelligence, energy, authenticity and good vibes. He’s a proud democratic socialist. He ran a stunning campaign based on affordability and taxing the rich and the super-rich. He knows how to work with others while defining the zeitgeist.

There’s no precedent for a democratic socialist to hold such a leadership position in the United States. The closest we’ve come in the UK was when Ken Livingstone served as mayor of London, first in the early 1980s, then under Blair. The Zionist establishment crushed Jeremy Corbyn’s chances by smearing him as an antisemite. The Zionist establishment in the US tried to get rid of Zohran the same way. Zohran stood up to the onslaught with a smile and the truth and he won.

Other elected leaders and governments have made a stand. The South African government took Israel to the ICJ and is now backed by Norway. Spanish leader Pedro Sánchez has issued an arms embargo on Israel and called for a sporting boycott. Colombian president Gustavo Petro has introduced sweeping pro-Palestinian policies. Ireland’s new president-elect Catherine Connolly has labelled Israel a terrorist state. Michigan mayor Abdullah Hammoud has been vocal about the genocide.

Even if I’m forgetting some names, the point is that so far only a handful of leaders have taken a meaningful stand, making Zohran’s boldness overdue and especially welcome. The hope is that the mayor-elect will govern successfully and contagiously, becoming a turning-point figure who helps democratic socialists in the US and Europe finally grasp how to do left-wing populism while holding onto their critique of Israel.

That Zohran achieved his victory while showing very public support for the Palestinians remains particularly stunning. Admittedly some antizionists have questioned his commitment to the liberation movement. After speaking out in favour of a global intifada he moved away from that rhetoric. He didn’t exactly go out of his way to discuss Palestine during the campaign. But I also never got the impression he relaxed his core commitment. His campaign was always going to focus on the immediate needs of New Yorkers. If anything he kept Palestine more alive as a foreign policy issue than any mayoral candidate since John Lindsay upped his opposition to the US invasion of Vietnam when seeking reelection in 1969.

When Palestine came up during the campaign Zohran didn’t flinch. Instead he smiled—always that incredible smile—and made his case with clarity, precision and simple humanity. The other candidates didn’t know what had just hit them. Nobody was supposed to do politics like that and most certainly not in the Democratic party.

In one debate Zohran spoke of his ongoing support for a ceasefire as well as his belief that a ceasefire can only hold if it the the ongoing problems of occupation and apartheid are resolved. In another, held on 4 June, the candidates were asked which foreign country they would first visit as mayor. Like dummies stuffed with Zionist foam they all replied Israel, only Israel, Israel forever and ever, whereas Zohran said he’d stay in New York and he would meet Jewish New Yorkers in their synagogues and in their homes. Asked he supported a Jewish State of Israel he replied that he believed that Israel had a right to exist “as a state with equal rights”.

These exchanges confirmed everything. The other candidates didn’t want to govern New York in the interests of its citizens. They wanted to govern New York in the interests of corporations, the rich and Zionism. They were most willing to mix their attacks on Zohran with Islamophobia while gaslighting every aspect of the Palestinian experience. In a delicious twist, they also really believed that Zohran’s criticism of Israel would prove to be his undoing.

Along the way the Democratic and Republican establishment demonstrated that they no idea what’s going on in New York and many other parts of the US right now—no idea that the Zionist conformity that’s been relentlessly imposed since 1967 is disintegrating, not merely with with voters who are young or progressive but also vast numbers of America First voters, among them Tucker Carlson, and countless evangelical votes, among them until recently Charlie Kirk, transparently the victim of a Zionist sniper, who’ve belatedly started to wonder if the genocide that also happens to include the mass murder of Palestinian Christians really coheres with the teachings of Jesus. Amen.

Because I live in London and have been focusing more on Palestine than New York I wanted to try and get a clearer idea of just how deep Zohran’s commitment to Palestine really runs—to see if the doubters have good reason to doubt—so I did a bit of research. The results demonstrate that even a cursory look at Zohran’s history confirms that his solidarity runs as deep as the Jordan River and to the Mediterranean Sea. Even if he paced his interventions to take account of the mountainous challenge of running for mayor and remaining focused on the job of tackling inequality in a city that’s home to more billionaires than anywhere else on the planet, his activism runs so deep it’s impossible to think that will be anything but lifelong.

Bowdoin College and BDS

* While studying at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts college located in Brunswick, Maine, Zohran started to wear a keffiyah, stuck an “End Israeli Apartheid” sticker on his laptop and co-founded the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.


* During his senior year in 2014 he campaigned for Bowdoin to begin to boycott Israeli academic institutions and wrote in the school student newspaper: “Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms. Israeli universities give priority admission to soldiers, discriminate against Palestinian students, and have developed remote-controlled bulldozers for the Israeli Army’s home demolitions.” He added that the boycott aims to “put pressure on Israeli institutions to end the oppressive occupation and racist policies within both Israel and occupied Palestine.” He also noted that the boycott doesn’t target individuals.


* Zohran described the US as the “primary accomplice in the Israeli occupation of Palestine.” He added: “It’s becoming a mainstream issue. You can’t be progressive anymore on everything but Palestine.” He said of the campaign to introduce BDS: “I went from having Facebook arguments and long back-and-forths with friends about it, never making any headway, to realizing that just an active group of ten people can totally change the discourse on a campus.”


After Bowdoin

* Zohran said that his involvement in BDS led him to become an activist in the Democratic Socialists of America.


* In 2015 he started to work with a Pakistani American lawyer, Ali Naomi, and joined the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, where he insisted that Palestinian politics be incorporated into local campaigning.


* In a 2017 rap titled “Salam” Zohran rapped: “My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up,” a reference to the heads of a former US Islamic charity organisation who were convicted of aiding Hamas on thin evidence.


* He raised Palestine at a concernwhen he first ran for Assembly.


New York Assembly

* After being elected to the New York Assembly in 2020 Zohran appeared on the Talking Palestine podcast and said: “If you were to look at the lens of BDS and how it applies here in New York City, you would say that Cornell-Technion is something you would be talking about.” He was referring to the partnership between Cornell and the marquee Israeli school on New York City’s Roosevelt Island.


* In a 2021 interview with the Muslim Democratic Club of New York he said: “Speaking up for Israel comes with everything you might want, and we need to show that it’s not that way anymore. There are consequences for speaking up in favor of apartheid.”


* He attended a demonstration outside Israel’s mission to the UN in May 2021 and said: “Every single one of us who is committed to dignity in Greenpoint has to be committed to dignity in Gaza. We will hold every single person who has power in this city, in this state and in this country accountable for their incomprehensible fealty to the Israeli state.”


* On 11 May 2021 he said at a BDS rally in Greenpoint: “We have elected officials who are taking paid for trips to Israel. They are going there paid for by your tax dollars! They show up to Israel day parades and they say ‘We stand in solidarity.’ We want to let them know that there are three letters that we have as an answer to what is happening in Palestine: And it’s B-D-S! B-D-S! B-D-S!”


* At a Jewish Voice for Peace rally in the spring of 2021, stated in front of the Brooklyn home of Senator Chuck Schumer, the country’s highest-ranking Jewish leader, Zohran called the Assembly “a bastion of Zionist thought.” He expressed concern that some colleagues could not see “that separate laws for separate people is not all right in this country or in any country.”


* The first Muslim woman on the City Council, Shahana Hanif sat down with Zohran before her election in 2021. She later commented: “I remember very clearly him saying, ‘The issue I don’t compromise on is Palestine.’”


* At a Democrats Socialists of America panel in 2021 Zohran said: “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” He was referencing a 2018 Jewish Voice for Peace exposé.


* In May 2023 he introduced a bill titled “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act.” The legislation aimed to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.” He wrote in an email to the Forward: “charities should not fund war crimes—it’s that simple. The stated US foreign policy is that settlements are illegal—this bill seeks to bring New York state policy in line with that goal.”


Post-7/10

* On 8/10 Zohran posted on X: “I mourn the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours. Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza, and Knesset members calling for another Nakba will undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering in the days and weeks to come. The path to a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”


* He also said of 7/10: “My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life. I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally seeking to make light of such deaths.


* On 13 October 2023 he posted on X: “We are on the brink of a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza right now—and the manufacturing of consent for sending even more US arms to Israel. Now is the moment for all people of conscience to call for a ceasefire and no more military funding.”


* Since 7/10 he has repeatedly accused Israel of perpetrating a genocide and said that the US is “subsidizing a genocide”.


* In November 2023 Zohran travelled to Washington to visit a hunger strike outside the Whitehouse to support a ceasefire.


* In May 2024 Zohran introduced state legislation that threatened to strip NY nonprofit organisations of their tax-exempt status if their funds were used to support Israel’s military and settlement activity.


Mayoral race: on 7/10

* During the mayoral race, which he joined on 22 October 2024, Zohran often cited Noy Katsman, an Israeli whose brother, peace activist Hayim Katsman, was killed by Hamas militants in the Al-Asqa flood. Speaking at the Manhattan synagogue B’nai Jeshurun Zohran quoted Noy Katsman’s words “we must never give up on the conviction that all life, Israeli and Palestinians, jewish and Arab, is equally precious.”


* In April 2025 Zohran told Forward: “I would say that I very clearly condemned the killing of civilians and the celebration of that killing, or any rhetoric that did so. When Politico asked me about that Oct. 8 rally, I said that it was in no way befitting of a politics that is looking to support universal human rights. And I’ve been clear in calling Oct. 7 what it was—a war crime, a horrific war crime.” He added: “The occupation and apartheid must end. Peace must be pursued through diplomacy, not war crimes, and our government must act to end these atrocities.”


Mayoral race: on Israel’s genocide

* In November 2024 Zohran told Mehdi Hasan: “As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. This is a city that our values are in line with international law.”


* At the B’nai Jeshurun synagogue Zohran repeated his pledge to arrest Netanyahu if the Israeli leader visited New York: “My answer is the same whether we are speaking about Vladimir Putin or Netanyahu. I think that this should be a city that is in compliance with international law.”


* In April 2025 he explained to Forward how he concluded that Israel was perpetrating a genocide so soon after 7 October: “Genocide is not just a crime of action, it’s also a crime of intent. And what led me to make that remark [that Israel is perpetrating a genocide] was a fear based on the statements we received from a number of Israeli leaders that characterized Palestinians in language more befitting animals than people, and actions that had been taken to shut down civilian access to basic goods such as electricity, for example. That was a fear that I had, and that many other New Yorkers had.”


Mayoral race: on BDS and solidarity

* Zohran said if elected he would assess the Cornell-Technion partnership.


* He told a UJA-Federation [United Jewish Appeal—Federation of Jewish Philanthropies]: “My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement the you are seeking to find compliance with international law.”


* In June 2025 he said in a PIX11 mayoral forum that if elected he’d discontinue a council created by Eric Adams to strengthen economic ties between the US and Israel.


* After his primary victory in June 2025 he joined Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian protest leader detained by ICE.


* In a recent interview he said the way Nelson Mandela “would speak about Palestine in the sense of universality” was “a compass.”


Mayoral race: on “Israel’s right to exist”

* Zohran has repeatedly said that Israel has a right to exist “with equal rights for all” (meaning no preferential treatment for Jews and a the right of return extended to Palestinians). For instance in June 2025 he said in an interview on “Good Day New York”, a morning show on WNYW Fox 5, a Fox-owned station, “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”


Mayoral race: on globalise the intifada

* Asked about the term “globalise the intifada”, Zohran said: “To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights. And I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic. It’s a word that means struggle.” A week later he added: “I was speaking about the word itself and the ways in which that word… has a variety of meanings to a variety of people. That is not language that I use. The language that I use is that of clarity, and I do not believe it is the mayor’s position to be policing language.” He also said that “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” He has since said he would “discourage” the term. He explained that a conversation with a rabbi led him to shift his perspective. After noting that some use the term to reference “civil disobedience and protests that call to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land” the rabbi told him that she interpreted it differently and more as a reference to bus bombings in Haifa. After that he stopped using the phrase.


Mayoral race: on antisemitism and inclusivity

* Just before the primary poll in 2025 Zohran noted: “antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about—it’s something that we have to tackle. We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.” He said he’d be “proud” to appoint a senior adviser to tackle antisemitism in New York.


* In October 2025 he told synagogue Congregation Beth Elohim: “I am not a Zionist, and I’m also not looking to create a City Hall or city in my image. I do not want any Jewish New Yorker to think that their safety, their belonging, their identity as a New Yorker, is dependent upon what they think about Zionism.”


Mayoral race: summing it all up

* To repeat the campaign-defining exchange of the 4 June 2025 mayoral candidate debate, when asked where he would travel first as mayor of NYC Zohran replied: “I wouldn’t go anywhere. I would stay in New York City. My plans are to address New Yorkers across the five boroughs and focus on that.” When asked if he would visit Israel as mayor he replied: “As mayor I’ll be standing up for Jewish New Yorkers and I’ll be meeting them wherever they are across the five boroughs, whether that’s in their synagogues and temples or at their homes or at the subway platform because ultimately we need to focus on delivering on their concerns.” Pressed further on whether he believed in a Jewish State of Israel he noted: “I believe Israel has the right to exist.” Not as a Jewish state? “As a state with equal rights. I believe every state should be a state of equal rights.”


In short, a quick survey of Zohran’s actions and statement confirm his consistent support for justice, his clear thinking, his intelligence, and his ability to stick to a core set of beliefs while addressing people who don’t share those beliefs in a meaningful, non-patronizing, non-dismissive way. His line that he agrees that Israel has a right to exist, just not as state where there are unequal rights, is, for me, brilliant. People who identify as Zionists must be having kittens over the gambit. They’re used to dealing with anti-brigade and relish this because it enables them to roll out the endless weaponised accusations of antisemitism while obscuring that the real aggressor in the room is ethnic cleansing, genocidal Israel along with its Zionist apologists. They tried to smear Zohran the same way but their boy-and-girl-who-cried-wolf protests didn’t get any traction.

I write this as someone who for decades supported the principle of a single democratic state solution and always argued that it was rooted not in destruction but creation, not the demolition of Israel but the creation of an advanced alternative. It wasn’t until 7/10 that I properly joined the antizionist camp and I’m not about to roll back on that. At the same time, discursively speaking, there’s something awkward about the “anti” prefix. It can be more attractive so say what you’re for than what you’re against. This is Zohran’s finesse and while the thought that a future single democratic state might be called Israel is repulsive, if that turned out to be the main compromise of such a deal I imagine many Palestinians would be overjoyed. Names can also be changed or ignored. Everyone calls Ho Chi Minh City “Saigon”.

Zohran’s stickability might be his most impressive quality of all. The chronology shows that Palestinian justice was his formative issue, the thing that led him to become involved in democratic socialism in the first place, and throughout his rise he’s stood by the Palestinians every step of the way, including on countless occasions when it would have been easier for him to cuddle up to Zionism. It’s clear: Zohran will stand by the cause of Palestinian justice for the rest of his life. This is a big deal.

The deep commitment of Zohran’s family to Palestine solidarity confirms that the chances of him shifting in a substantial way are close to zero. Zohran’s dad, Mahmood Mamdani, a professor at Columbia University has researched the genocide in Rwanda, written about Israel being a colonial-settler project, called on Columbia to divest from Israel and led a teach-in for students during the encampment. Zohran’s mum, filmmaker Mira Nair, makes politicised films that revolve around the migration and refused an invitation to attend the Haifa International Film festival. She’s commented that she’ll only travel to Israel when when the walls come down, when the occupation is over when apartheid is no more, and supports the BDS academic and cultural boycott of Israel. She told Mehdi Hasan: “I am the producer of the candidate.” What a line! It’s through his parents, both of them living as minority Indians in Uganda, both of them grounded, brainy, open-minded and progressive, that Zohran acquired his easy confidence in being a migrant, a Muslim and a pro-Palestinian who can connect with everyone, who understands justice and who can govern for all.

Then there’s Rama Duwaji, who first started to date Zohran via a dating app before they got married. Out of the blue, I and maybe others are aware that she’s a Syrian-American artist who played a significant behind-the-scenes role in Zohran’s campaign, designing his logos and I imagine providing him with whatever support she felt he needed, just as he offer rock solid support when opponents tried to turn Rama into an election issue. In a highly symbolic move, Rama wore a dress designed by Jordanian-Palestinian designer Zeid Hijazi, reputed for integrating Middle Eastern aesthetics into her designs, to Zohran’s inauguration rally.

Mostly, once again, there’s a depth an consistency to Rama’s political commitment, and once again Palestine is apparently fundamental to her entire outlook. A quick skim of her instagram page shows post after post dedicated to Palestinian justice. They go back to the distant era before Zohran’s mayoral campaign took off and veered away from nothing as it gathered momentum. They’ve called for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, noted that Israel has engaged in a campaign of deliberate starvation, urged everyone to follow the Freedom Flotilla, and so on. I wonder if on their first date Rama and Zohran spoke about anything other than Palestine justice ;)

How Zohran fares in office remains to be seen. The early signs are extremely promising. Instead of heading off on what would have been an extremely well-deserved break he’s been organising the transition. In yet another mark that he’s serious he appointed Lina Khan to head his transition team. Khan headed the Federal Trade Commission under Joe Biden and is considered to be one of the very few things that Genocide Joe got right. While working for Biden Khan went hard on corporate corruption, which doubles as a euphemism for going hard on Zionist corruption, and now she’s heading to New York. Zohran has also re-opened donations so that he can organise his transition team without needing to rely on lobbyists and special interest groups.

What are the corporations going to do if they can’t stitch everything up other than threaten to leave New York City? Zohran will want them to stay and start behaving in a civil way. But if they leave then the city will manage. Any such development could even become the precursor to New York City becoming affordable once again—the glorious city that I’ve been so passionate about I’ve dedicated the last twenty-years of my life to its glorious yet fast-fading legacy—fast-fading until now. People who were forced to leave the city after it started to rapidly gentrify in conjunction with the real estate and Wall Street neoliberal boom that started to motor in 1983 will be able to return. Instead of the tax base collapsing because the super-wealthy leave it will flourish because more local businesses will surface that pay rather than evade their taxation responsibilities. There will be a renaissance and it will be epic. Other cities will follow.

Importantly, it’s not as though all of this is new and entirely dependent on Zohran. Popular discontent with neoliberalism goes back to 1975, to 1983, to the successive crashes that peaked with the banking recession of 2008, the trauma of covid, the inflation generated by the US stoking war in Ukraine and the sanctions that led to US oil and gas prices inflating the economy by thirty percent, the basic failure of successive presidencies, Democratic and Republican, to stand up for working people, and of course the treachery of genocide. The rising of a discontent, progressive opposition enabled Zohran’s rise and Zohran is enabling its ongoing momentum.

Zohran’s commitment to help bring about belated justice for the Palestinians has also been bolstered by the nationwide shift. In addition to the America First and the Christian evangelical lobby losing faith in Zionist’s transparently monstrous project, which Ilan Pappé now rightly characterizes a project that’s being led by not so much Israel as the State of Judea—or a fanatical, even-more racist version of Israel that revolves around a militaristic, religious, fantastical vision of Greater Israel—voters who may or may not believe in the capacity of the Democrats to be progressive are going through a rapid and fundamental transformation. The corporate media, corporate universities, the wider corporate sector and the corporate political class might still be almost wholly aligned with Israel This includes their intermittent, superficial requests that Israel carries out the genocide a little bit more quietly in order to improve its image on social media. But how long can they hold this position given that the genocide has been live-streamed on and voters have discovered a new resolve to withhold their support, electoral and financial, from organisations that are complicit if not actively supportive of genocide.

One of the key reasons why Kamala Harris fared so abysmally in last November’s presidential election was precisely because of her refusal to take Democratic voter horror at Israel’s blood-thirsty behaviour seriously. Apparently millions of those voters decided that they could’t vote for someone who’d so obviously become a Zionist puppet. But they voted for Zohran with gusto, as if democracy was being reborn, and its clear that a massive sea change is taking place in grassroots political life that will see a new generation of political representatives coming through—representatives who are clear in their opposition to Israel’s long history of ethnic cleansing and won’t compromise on this issue once they’re elected.

In short, it’s just a matter of time before US politicians have no choice but to vote to end funding for Israel as well as the supply of weapons to Israel, and corporations similarly have no choice but to divest and end trade with Israel, which also includes the supply of the technology that’s been used to perpetrate the genocide.

In these heady days, when congratulations to Zohran pours in, including from the Democrat-Zionist old guard, it’s worth remembering where the Democrat-Zionist old guard come from and what they’ve been up to these last few months.

Cuomo, the alleged sexual harasser, the best friend of the billionaires and the corporations, openly believed that along with his socialism Zohran’s unwavering support for Palestinian justice was his great weakness. Cuomo even went so far as to say that if Zohran were to attempt to arrest Netanyahu under the ICC’s ruling he’d step in to defend Israel’s genocidal leader! The former governor didn’t bat an eyelid because he was simply following what Biden and Harris, the Clintons, Obama and indeed just about every senior Democratic politician on the matter had already said. It doesn’t just run in the family, it’s ingrained in the family.

However, as Ziyad Motala, a professor of law at Howard University School of Law, noted in Al-Jazeera a few days ago, although Cuomo “denounced Mamdani’s stance as ‘extremism’”, as far as NYC voters were concerned “it was Cuomo who stood for extremism—the extremism of power defending itself and of moral blindness in the service of donors.” Motala added of Zohran’s victory: “It is an indictment. It exposes a Democratic Party that has traded moral conviction for fundraising quotas and public trust for privileged access. It reveals leaders more beholden to Wall Street and the Zionist lobby than to the people it claims to represent. The message from New York is unmistakable.”

Obama—lest his progressive demeanor prompts anyone to forget, the “enlightened” president whose first act was to hand $17 trillion to the criminal banking class that had created the financial crash of 2008 in the first place, the “enlightened” president who bombed nine Arab countries during his term, which was more than any other president in living memory, the “enlightened” president who deported more undocumented migrants than Trump did in his first term, the “enlightened” president who gave Israel a record $38 billion of aid during his final year in office, the “enlightened” president who referring to the events that followed 7/10 spoke of Israelis being “butchered” while Palestinians were “shattered”, the “enlightened” president who repeatedly placed Israel’s classic, endlessly-repeated rights and needs above the rights and needs of the Palestinians, and the “enlightened” president who repeatedly backed Biden’s sponsorship of the genocide—declined to endorse Zohran when he stood for mayor.

Obama didn’t endorse Cuomo, either. Such is Obama’s idea of elegant diplomacy, which he’s happy to assume as the world burns in colonial flames that he faned. Yet on the night of Zohran’s victory Obama posted congratulations to all Democratic victors on Facebook without mentioning Zohran by name, ouch. But when war criminal Dick Cheney passed hours later, Obama posted again, noting that he “respected his [Cheney’s] life-long devotion to public service” while forgetting to mention that Cheney was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians. I checked the comments beneath the posts. They’re all favorable and commend Obama for being able to transcend party divisions, a true example to today’s lesser politicians. Evidently Obama has a team that busily edits out any unfavourable comments.

But wait! Scrap all that. Now Obama wants to get all cuddly with Zohran! He’s even offering to be a “listening board” for Zohran!

It’s been the same with Hilary Clinton, Obama’s leading executioner during her time as secretary of state. Right up to the day of the election Clinton refused to endorse Zohran. Feeding the Zionist lie about the threat of antisemitism, which of course exists but is routinely and disgracefully conflated with any criticism of Israel by Zionists, she said that Jews might not be safe if Zohran was elected. She also offered Biden steadfast support on Israel and criticized students who confronted her about her complicity with genocide on college campuses by alleging that they only received their news from TikTok, which was controlled by the Chinese Communist Party.

For Clinton it was just unspeakable that young people would believe that there’s a genocide going on just because social media says there’s a genocide. Instead they should believe the corporate media and its support for Israeli propaganda that it has a real job on its hands defending itself from Palestinian animals, or that the genocide is all about Hamas, etc. She even said that the problem of young people getting their information from social media is more serious than whatever Israel has done since 7/10, which has been “misinterpreted”. Along the way she has completed ignored the consensus that has emerged on genocide in the UN, between genocide scholars and human rights organizations. She has also failed to mention that she’s received more than $4m in funding from the Israel lobby. No wonder Clinton couldn’t bring herself to saying anything positive about Zohran.

But wait! Scrap all that. Now Clinton wants to get all cuddly with Zohran! And not just H. Clinton! B. Clinton, who has been every bit as avid in his support for Israel, wants to get all cuddly with Zohran, too!

The opportunism is as breathtaking as it’s predictable. Like clockwork the Democratic establishment enabled and actively supported the genocide. Like clockwork, the Democratic establishment refused to support Zohran vs. Cuomo. Like clockwork, the establishment now fancies a piece of Zohran’s ass. They think we can’t see that they’re trying to cuddle him so damn hard they want to squeeze the egalitarian, pro-Solidarity life out of him. But anyone who’s listened to “Smiling Faces Sometimes” by the Temptations knows the score:

The Temptations, “Smiling Faces Sometimes”, on Sky’s the Limit (Motown, 1971)

“Smiling faces sometimes pretend to be your friend
,
Smiling faces show no traces of the evil that lurks within



Smiling faces, Smiling faces sometimes

They don’t tell the truth,

Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies, and I got proof



Let me tell you

The truth is in the eyes

‘Cause the eyes don’t lie, amen

Remember, a smile is just a frown turned upside down, my friend

Let me tell you



Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes

They don’t tell the truth, uh

Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies, and I got proof



Beware of the handshake that hides the snake

I’m telling you beware

Beware of the pat on the back

It just might hold you back

Jealousy

Misery

Envy

I tell you, you can’t see behind smiling faces

Smiling faces sometimes, they don’t tell the truth

Smiling faces, smiling faces tell lies, and I got proof

Smiling faces, smiling faces sometimes

They don’t tell the truth



Your enemy won’t do you no harm

‘Cause you’ll know where he’s coming from

Don’t let the handshake and the smile fool ya

Take my advice, I’m only tryna school ya”

Let’s also not forget the smiling faces at the New York Times, which has been as dedicated as any media organisation outside of Israel to covering up for the genocide. Here’s the editorial the Times published on 16 June, just ahead of the primary:

“Unfortunately, Mr. Mamdani is running on an agenda uniquely unsuited to the city’s challenges. He is a democratic socialist who too often ignores the unavoidable trade-offs of governance. He favors rent freezes that could restrict housing supply and make it harder for younger New Yorkers and new arrivals to afford housing. He wants the government to operate grocery stores, as if customer service and retail sales were strengths of the public sector. He minimizes the importance of policing. Most worrisome, he shows little concern about the disorder of the past decade, even though its costs have fallen hardest on the city’s working-class and poor residents. Mr. Mamdani, who has called Mr. de Blasio the best New York mayor of his lifetime, offers an agenda that remains alluring among elite progressives but has proved damaging to city life.

“Mr. Mamdani would also bring less relevant experience than perhaps any mayor in New York history. He has never run a government department or private organization of any size. As a state legislator, he has struggled to execute his own agenda. A telling example came last year. Given an opportunity to expand a pilot program offering free bus rides, one of his signature issues, he instead engaged in a performative protest that doomed the policy, New York magazine reported. He seems to lack the political savvy and instinct for compromise that has made Senator Bernie Sanders, his fellow democratic socialist, an effective legislator.

[…]

“We do not believe that Mr. Mamdani deserves a spot on New Yorkers’ ballots. His experience is too thin, and his agenda reads like a turbocharged version of Mr. de Blasio’s dismaying mayoralty. As for Mr. Cuomo, we have serious objections to his ethics and conduct, even if he would be better for New York’s future than Mr. Mamdani.”

So better to have the candidate who is an alleged sexual abuser, a thoroughly corrupt politician, someone and a defender of Netanyahu than someone who might try to tackle the worst excesses of neoliberal capitalism and is dedicated to ending the calamity of the genocide. We see you, New York Times, but we no longer read you.

When I say we, I include one of our newest truth-speaking figureheads, Ms. Rachel, who yesterday announced: “I am unsubscribing from the New York Times because of its biased and dehumanizing coverage of Palestinians and Palestine, and its failure to uphold journalistic integrity.”

The good news is that the New York Times is dying, the Democratic establishment is dying, Israel is dying, while the lie that to criticize Israel is to be antisemitic is already dead. Zohran, the resolute democratic socialist and supporter of Palestinian justice, has won a landslide victory in the city that’s home to more Jews than anywhere on the planet other than Tel Aviv. Along the way, at least thirty percent of the Jewish population of New York voted for him. They’re not longer afraid to call Israel an apartheid state or a genocide a genocide. Most of them are also young, not old, and their number is growing exponentially. So the constituency that is most loyal to Israel’s butchery is also dying.

To be clear, for all of the Zohran excitement, it’s the Palestinians who’ve always been and will always be the primary actors in the inevitable demise of Israel. If they’d abandoned their indigenous homeland the entire story of resistance and solidarity wouldn’t have got going or would be hurtling towards a very different ending. Without Palestinian resistance, including the Al-Asqa flood of 7/10, there would be no global solidarity movement and very possibly no mayor-elect Zohran. Without Palestinian resistance, Israel would have completed its ethnic cleansing of Gaza and would be rolling out even greater carnage in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Iran. Instead Israel boasts only of hollow victories that hide its inability to win and mask its irreversible downfall, the world’s number one pariah state bar none.

At the same time the Palestinians could do with some international support, having been forsaken and isolated ever since Balfour promised their land to the Zionist lobby. They could also do without the West prioritizing Israel above its own citizenry and democracy. So it’s very encouraging that finally, more than two years into the development of an unprecedented global solidarity movement, the tectonic plates of US support for Israel are shifting and Zionism’s control of the political landscape is imploding.

When the US ends its support for Israel—when, not if—the consequences for Zionism will be cataclysmic. Once the dollar pipeline and weapons conveyor belt are turned off, the emergence of a Palestinian state can only come about very quickly. Connected to a multiplying grassroots movement, Zohran will have made his contribution. Historians might even look back on his mayoral campaign and conclude it amounted to a decisive turning point.

The next national demonstration in the UK takes place in London on 29 November, meeting 12:00 noon at Park Lane.

Free, free Palestine!

xx

https://palestinecampaign.org/

https://www.stopwar.org.uk/

https://bdsmovement.net/

https://www.foa.org.uk/

https://events.pfbuk.com/

https://cnduk.org/

https://www.yourparty.uk/

https://greenparty.org.uk/

https://www.zohranfornyc.com/platform