brad lander

Does criticizing actions of the Israeli government or the behavior of its prime minister fuel antisemitism? Despite the stretch of logic required to make this argument and the danger its bizarre conflation presents to American Jews, some US pro-Israel organizations are working overtime to establish the case that criticizing Israel puts American Jews at risk. Their view on this matter has now been echoed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who, before leaving Israel for his meeting with US President Donald Trump, used an interview with an American TV network to level this very charge against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

While tensions between Mamdani and pro-Israel groups have been brewing since his 2025 election campaign, it was recently reignited in the lead up to Netanyahu’s announced visit to the US. Mayor Mamdani was asked by a reporter whether he would fulfill a campaign pledge to arrest the Israeli prime minister as a war criminal, as per the indictment issued by the International Criminal Court (ICC).

In response, the mayor convened a group of legal experts who concluded that the city, on its own, did not have the authority to make an arrest—only the federal government could do that. In an effort to put the matter to rest, Mamdani released a short video in which he acknowledged that he lacked the power to order an arrest but nevertheless called out Netanyahu as a war criminal responsible for the deaths of “more than 73,000 people” and stated that he would not welcome him in New York City. In his video, Mamdani did not mention Israel, nor did he mention the Jewish people or the citizens of Israel. This was, he observed, simply about Netanyahu’s crimes cited in the ICC arrest warrant.

Some pro-Israel groups immediately denounced Mamdani’s video and charges against the Israeli prime minister. They accused him of “repeatedly singling out the world’s only Jewish state…leaving many Jewish New Yorkers feeling targeted and unwelcome.” One group characterized the video as “blood libel and outrageous lies.” While still another charged Mamdani with “fomenting antisemitism.”

A few days later, a Hispanic man, whom police said had mental health issues, allegedly stabbed two people, one was Asian and another Jewish. In both instances, observers said they heard the attacker shouting “Allahu Akbar.”

The same pro-Israel groups that have been conflating Israel with American Jews and relentlessly condemning Mamdani leapt into the fray, blaming the mayor for making New York unsafe for Jews by “using his platform to viciously attack Israel.” One prominent Jewish leader called on the mayor to resign, charging him with “dereliction of duty.”

Mamdani immediately responded to these charges condemning the stabbings as “hateful and despicable attacks that have no place in our city” and noted that his administration had already dramatically increased investment in hate crime prevention “so that we can start to address the root causes of this bigotry and hatred, as we look to root out the scourge of antisemitism.”

The mayor added: “When it comes to my comments about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, they are critiques based not on my personal analysis, but rather on objective facts. They are critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith or religion or background. And my responsibility as mayor of the city is to keep every New Yorker safe, no matter where they come from, what they believe in or frankly, even if they agree with my politics. My job is to keep them safe.”

The mayor was not without defenders in the Jewish community. Brad Lander, who describes himself as a liberal Zionist and who recently defeated a pro-Israel congressman, described the attacks as “almost certainly an antisemitic hate crime and quite likely an anti-Asian hate crime, but they are not the fault of the mayor for calling Netanyahu a war criminal.” Lander added, “The effort to connect the mayor to that… is a political effort to shut down criticism of Israel,” and called it “weaponizing antisemitism.”

Peter Beinart, one of America’s most thoughtful progressive Jewish thinkers, directly took on the pro-Israel Jewish establishment by noting that it was they, not the mayor, who are conflating Israel with the Jewish community. Beinart wrote: “Zohran Mamdani keeps saying again and again that his critique of Israel… has nothing to do with his feelings toward Jews in New York, because he separates Israel, as a state, from Jewish New Yorkers. The people who are making this conflation… are the very establishment Jewish leaders who are now attacking Mamdani.”

The problem here is two-fold. Antisemitism is real, and conflating American Jews with Israel is wrong and dangerous whether it is done by pro-Israel advocates who want to identify all Jews with Israel for political purposes, or by haters of Jews who want to hold Jewish people, in general, responsible for the crimes committed by that state. In the first instance the effort is designed, as Lander notes, to silence criticism of Israel claiming that charges leveled against that state put all Jews at risk. In the second instance, the conflation serves to fuel the preexisting bigotry of some by holding all Jews responsible for the crimes committed by others.

The bottom line is Mamdani, Lander, and Beinart are right, and the pro-Israel establishment is wrong.