As Brad Lander, New York City Comptroller and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the city said, “the line in the Democratic Party right now is not between progressives and moderates—it’s between fighters and folders.” This ugly and racist episode has drawn that line even clearer, with the New York machine beclowning itself even more than previously thought possible, demonstrating how it has long been a pox on the Democratic Party and must be defeated by Zohran Mamdani and Lander’s left-liberal coalition proving that better things are possible. Rather than echo proven fighters like Sen. Chris Van Hollen calling out “the members who have engaged in such bigotry and anyone who doesn’t challenge it,” House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries decided he would join the people not challenging the GOP’s attempt to deport a Muslim man for the crime of being Muslim and a democratic socialist.
Lander: “It’s just gross, racist bigotry. Meanwhile he’s running an optimistic, upbeat campaign for a NY where everybody belongs, and I feel proud as the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in NYC to be supporting somebody who would be the first Muslim mayor—what could be more NYC than that?”
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— Joshua J. Friedman (@joshuajfriedman.com) June 26, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Yellow is the color most associate with Jeffries, et al, as the fighters versus folders phrasing used by Lander is practically a direct reference to him and New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the two highest ranking Democrats in America at a time the Democratic Party has never been less popular. New York Democrats are a big fucking problem in the party, because they believe in nothing other than capitulating to Republicans in order to maintain a status quo that benefits their wealthy donors. These are Islamophobic lies about Mamdani by Jeffries, Gillen and especially Gillibrand who one New York State Senator has even called on to resign, but it’s difficult to charge these middlemen for elite impunity with believing in anything. They have proven themselves to be simple pawns who are primarily in Congress to do a job for a wealthy few and not their constituents who voted for an upbeat and positive coalition that wrecked the New York machine which funds them.
Zohran Mamdani never said, “globalize the intifada” or anything like it. He did however, say in response to a question about that phrase that “antisemitism is a real issue in our city” and called October 7th a “horrific war crime” while saying that “[antisemitism] is something that has to be the focus of the next mayoral administration, not just talking about it but tackling it.” He pointed out, correctly, that this is a “difficult” conversation because the US Holocaust Museum used the word “intifada” in its Arabic translation of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and he said that the word from “what I hear in so many, is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” The US Holocaust Museum then changed their Arabic translation from “intifada” to “muqawama” and issued an over-the-top statement saying “Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors. Since 1987 Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history.”
Us Jews associate the word intifada with the Palestinian uprisings of the 1980s and 2000s, but it was also used in 1952 to describe the Iraqi revolt to their monarchy that definitely was not a Jewish one. I am mildly sympathetic to the notion that everyone should be more circumspect about how other people interpret the words they use, especially if you are asking for their vote, but you don’t get to redefine a word in another language you don’t speak just because you have a narrow conception of it. If you think that Mamdani’s response was flippant and downplayed antisemitism, you’re just proving that you never actually listened to his interview with The Bulwark, or maybe you just find words in Arabic inherently scary.
This is serious stuff that Gillibrand is doing that goes way beyond the perpetual Democratic politician’s goal of getting their talking points in the braindead CNN/MSNBC 24-hour newscycle. Zohran Mamdani recently received bomb threats currently being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force. And yet, Democratic “leaders” like Hakeem Jeffries’ first instinct in this moment, leading into a week where the big Republican bill may get passed through Congress, is to slander their party’s Muslim nominee for mayor of New York City. Jeffries is an embarrassment, and Gillibrand has become a shameful parody of herself after making her name by really enforcing punishments for sex pests within the party. Now she’s not exactly declining to endorse one of the party’s avatars for sex pests while being one of the party’s reliable crypto votes and lying about its NYC mayoral candidate on public radio. The people atop New York’s “leadership” are why most of this country doesn’t take this party seriously and think they believe in nothing. This is rank hysteria on the part of the media and Democrats in service of doing their favorite thing in the entire world: chastising leftists.
That’s what this is really about. That’s what Democrats’ embrace of the cynical McCarthyite usage of antisemitism is too. An anti-war coalition has sprung up to claim a majority of the party, and the elite party structures are fighting back however they can. Who is folding and who is fighting in this moment is very instructive as to where the parts of the Democratic Party which must be dismantled lie. I want to be clear that not all Democrats are participating in this racist dogpile that Jeffries and Gillibrand have joined Ogles in, as New Jersey’s Rep. Rob Menendez released a statement saying “It is our responsibility to speak out against Islamophobia and racism wherever it exists. The vile rhetoric being spread about Zohran Mamdani, including by Members of Congress, is unacceptable.” There is a dividing line in this moment, separating much of New York leadership from civil society, and where politicians stand now says a lot about how much power they will have in a future where the Democratic establishment’s late 20th century politics is only becoming more irrelevant.
Pretty incredible fuck up to miss this badly, but the corrected chart doesn’t change the overall picture of a youth-vote driven campaign
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— Jacob Weindling (@jakeweindling.bsky.social) June 30, 2025 at 4:20 PM
Jews who think this bullshit is making us safer are out of their minds. Joining a coalition of cynics willing to strip others’ citizenship for having political views they find unpalatable just means you’ll eventually be sent out on the same boat they’re trying to send Zohran Mamdani out on. Democrats like Hakeem Jeffries and Kirsten Gillibrand have proven themselves constitutionally incapable of being leaders in this moment, and in the great electoral reckoning coming for the feckless Democratic Party, people like Jeffries and Gillibrand must be prime primary targets if we are ever to reform the party into a coalition of real fighters who can build a future worth fighting for.
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