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MembersThe tragic Israel wedge

Jewish leaders need to quickly close the gap that has opened up between Zionism and Judaism.

A star of david is painted on a door with the words "The people of Israel live" in Lifta, Jerusalem. Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90
A star of david is painted on a door with the words "The people of Israel live" in Lifta, Jerusalem. Photo by Nati Shohat/Flash90

(JNS) Israel has not just become a pathologically unhinged obsession in the Western world. It’s also turning into a wedge issue that’s splitting Diaspora Jews from each other.

Last week, New York City’s Islamist mayor Zohran Mamdani broadcast a video packed with eye-watering lies painting Israelis as cruel and bloodthirsty genocidal monsters determined to kill and starve innocents in Gaza.

The purpose of this two-minute hate was to signal that it was now open season against Zionism and the Jews of the city, for whom the price of acceptance is to be the institutionalized demonization of Israel to further Mamdani’s driving aim of the destruction of the Jewish state.

The full implications of this strategy were well understood by Angela Buchdahl, the Reform rabbi of Manhattan’s Central synagogue. In a strong open letter to the mayor, she wrote that he had used “rhetoric that demonizes Jews and the Jewish state” and had therefore put “a bullseye on our backs.”

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Patrick Callahan

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