A group of liberal Jews opposed to Israel had invited Zohran Mamdani to an Oct 7 vigil. The vigil was supposed to show why Israel’s war on Hamas was cruel, senseless and wrong.
Instead, the vigil became an object lesson in why Israel exists and why it must fight.
Israelis for Peace, whose logo is a dove in flight, had booed marchers at Israel’s parade in New York City, and gathered at Union Square not long after the attacks to protest Israel’s military campaign against Hamas while brandishing signs like “How Many Children Is It Okay to Kill”.
By joining the small group’s vigil, Mamdani had hoped to defuse claims of antisemitism and to boost the reputation of the handful of anti-Israel activists who, contrary to the group’s name, included veteran non-Israeli activists like Rachel Timoner: best known as Schumer’s ‘rabbi’.
When Mamdani showed up, he was surrounded by more extremist clergy, including Jill Jacobs, a longtime activist who leads the T’ruah anti-Israel group, Sharon Kleinbaum, the co-founder of New York Jewish Agenda with Timoner, once accused of reciting prayers for Hamas terrorists, and Ellen Lippmann, an activist in a series of radical anti-Israel groups including T’ruah, J Street and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. None of them were actually ‘Israelis’.
But then the real terrorist supporters showed up with loud chants of, “Long live Hamas” outside a Whole Foods and Mamdani and the clergy who wanted to appease terrorists had to flee.
Israelis for Peace had specifically warned against bringing any flags lest the blue and white get waved and give Mamdani and Lander a photo op they didn’t want, but Hamas supporters came waving terrorist flags, holding up pictures of a dead Hamas leader, and chanting, “Zohran, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”, “Zohran, how many kids have you killed today?”, “Traitor” and “How dare you call yourself a Muslim?” to drown out the vigil’s speeches.
“We don’t want peace with Israelis, bro! We sent your people to hell on October 7,” they yelled.
The organizers of the insufficiently anti-Israel rally, in an absolutely perfect metaphor for the consequences of their policies, cringed away from the mob and retreated behind layers of police barricades while allowing the Hamas supporters to seize control of the location of the vigil. Their version of the ‘Two State Solution’ meant retreating to a little ghetto behind police barricades and turning over the larger surrounding vigil space to the Hamas supporters who soon closed in on them.
“For our protection and to prevent the counter-protesters from getting arrested, we moved into a barricaded perimeter to begin the vigil,” a statement by the anti-Israel leftist group explained. “We chose the option that would result in the least amount of violence.”
So too, they had wanted Israel to retreat to the 1948 lines and then face annihilation.
“We might’ve been drowned out at times, but we were not silenced. We will continue to call for a real end to the genocide,” the group whined. “We will continue to object to the occupation and do protective presence in the West Bank. We will continue to believe that shared security… is the only hope for a better future for the 15 million people living between the river and the sea.”
How did that plan to refuse to fight back, retreat to a ghetto and hope for peace work out?
A stone-faced Mamdani, flanked by a nervous Jill Jacobs, and other anti-Israel clergy tried to listen to the anti-Israel recitations at the vigil only to be completely out-shouted by the far more uncompromising anti-Israel chants of the mob which had brought megaphones and was chanting, “Slaughter all your heads of state.” Asian college students, faces covered in keffiyahs shrieked bloody murder. Muslim women in hijabs shouted that they loved Hamas. A Communist group tried to hold up signs about the inevitable triumph of their revolution against capitalism.
“Globalize the Intifada,” the mob screamed while waving pictures of Oct 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar. The local media described this only as a “pro-Palestinian protest”.
The only thing keeping the appeasement crowd from being beaten bloody by the Hamas mob was the protection of uniformed NYPD officers, whom some of the activists had previously denounced, and the plainclothes police officers who quickly rushed Mamdani into a big black SUV and whisked him away from the mob despite his previous proposals to defund the police.
The mob, many of them wearing keffiyahs, tore down police barricades, shoved police officers, and at times threatened to break through to the vigil. It took layers of metal barricades on both sides of the road and a human wall of police officers to control the mob which surrounded the Union Square statue of George Washington around which the activists had taken refuge in a makeshift ghetto to conduct what was left of their pathetic vigil dedicated to condemning Israel.
The anti-Israel activists had unintentionally created a perfect metaphor for Israel in Manhattan. The only reason they were still alive was the presence of grim armed men, most of whom had probably voted for Trump, protecting them with their bodies from Muslim mobs. In Israel, those same men wear green rather than blue and don’t passively hold back terrorists: they go out and kill them. That’s the ‘war’ that the ‘Israelis for Peace had gathered to protest only to be met by a mob that wanted to kill them. And rather than stand up to the mob, they retreated and hid.
‘Israelis for Peace’ didn’t want to arrest the mob so instead NYPD officers had to stand there and be attacked while the mob called for murdering every last one of them. The only reason that worked is that this time the mob hadn’t brought deadly weapons. And the police had the guns.
But what would have happened if the mob had come armed the way it did on Oct 7?
Some founders of ‘Israelis for Peace’ had ties to Vivian Silver, a 74-year-old anti-Israel activist living near Gaza, who had called in to an Israeli radio station while the Oct 7 massacre was going on to argue that a deal had to be made with the terrorists. Her remains were eventually found in her home. Her son, Yonatan Zeigen, shows up at the vigils to argue against the war.
“If Vivian’s vision was a part of the formal Israeli state’s policy, then I believe that we wouldn’t have had an October 7th,” he had argued. But here was Vivian’s vision of appeasement and surrender being lived out while a mob of Hamas supporters called for their blood.
Mamdani offered no condemnations. Attendees of the anti-Israel vigil went to cry to the liberal Jewish media, because the mainstream media wouldn’t even publish their complaints.
“Hundreds of people physically surrounded a group of speakers representing some of the most progressive voices in the Jewish community,” a JTA op-ed by one of the vigil attendees complained. “The ensuing silence about these protesters from many in this movement — including, prominently, Mamdani — contrasts with the willingness of many in the Jewish community who regularly and openly issue rebuke to Jews in the Diaspora and in Israel.”
Mamdani and the progressive movement are allies of the mob calling for the destruction of Israel and Jewish genocide. The ‘Israelis for Peace’ members are useful idiots there to enable that. But if Mamdani isn’t good enough for the Hamas fan club, what’s going to happen to a bunch of leftist LGBTQ activists with worthless rabbinic titles when the moment of truth comes?
If they can’t even manage to be safe at an Oct 7 vigil while standing next to the Muslim mayor of New York City, in a place where Muslims are, for now, a distinct minority, how do they expect Israel to survive in an almost entirely Muslim region without the willingness to use force?
When push came to shove (and there was plenty of pushing and shoving), the anti-Israel activists hid behind armed men holding back the mob through the implied threat of force.
Words, pleading and appeasement had accomplished nothing: not in New York or in Israel.
The only way to stay alive when a mob screaming for your blood shows up is through the use of force. That’s the choice that Israel made. The only alternative is ending up like Vivian Silver.
“These elections are about one question: Right or Palestine,” Netanyahu tweeted on Sep 28.
“Palestine,” Israelis for Peace tweeted back. A week later they got a taste of ‘Palestine’.
The question is a lot simpler than that. In the face of enemies who want to kill you, do you run away, do you stand and fight, or do you surrender to the mob in the hopes of mercy?
If surrendering didn’t work in Manhattan, why would it work in Israel?
This article previously appeared at the Center’s Front Page Magazine.
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Thank you for reading.
Read my book ‘Domestic Enemies: The Founding Fathers’ Fight Against the Left’ to discover the true origins of the American Left.
I feel sick. Sick and enraged. Mental illness and suicidal empathy (TY Gad Saad) have no limits. I can't understand it, not even remotely. For better or worse, my Germanic Jewish pragmatism protects me from being susceptible to both inappropriate empathy and mob mentality. BUT what really galvanizes my gall is the cowering. How dare they incite a pogrom shoot and then run for protection.
Upsetting and excellent summary of these mentally ill Jews playing the appeasement game that lays the groundwork for a genocide upon themselves. Their spineless stupidity puts all Jews at risk. It appears they've learned nothing from history nor could possibly have watched nor listened to the atrocities of October 7th that were committed amongst many left leaning Israelis who lived there and also thought they could befriend Hamas.
Do you think one person at the "peace rally" learned a thing?