Would Zohran Mamdani make a good Prime Minister of Israel?

Bryant McGill · Would Zohran Mamdani make a good Prime Minister of Israel?

*New York stands at a crossroads. The question before voters isn't just about policy—it's about identity, covenant, and recognition.* ## When a City Becomes a Covenant Picture it: A candidate stands before the Knesset, seeking to lead the nation. But when asked if he recognizes Israel as a Jewish state, he demurs. He speaks of "systems of hierarchy based on race and religion." He supports movements explicitly aimed at dismantling Jewish sovereignty. He refuses to affirm the Jewish character of the state he seeks to govern. The question answers itself. Such a candidate would be immediately disqualified—not by the opposition, but by basic logic. No one seeks to lead a nation whose fundamental identity they refuse to recognize. So here's the real question: **Why is Zohran Mamdani running for mayor of New York City?** Because by every measure that matters, New York *is* a Jewish city. Not metaphorically. Not as a matter of historical footnote. But as a demographic, cultural, and civilizational reality that surpasses Tel Aviv itself. **New York has more Jews than Tel Aviv. More than twice as many, in fact.** If Mamdani's positions would disqualify him from leading Israel's cultural capital, a city of 454,000 Jews, why would they qualify him to lead America's largest city, home to 960,000 Jews? This isn't a rhetorical flourish. It's a mathematical fact that demands an answer. ## The Numbers Don't Lie: New York Has More Jews Than Tel Aviv Let's make this concrete with a fact that should end the discussion immediately: **New York City has more than twice as many Jews as Tel Aviv.** Tel Aviv, Israel's cultural and economic capital, has a population of approximately 495,000, of which 91.8% are Jewish—roughly **454,000 Jews**. New York's five boroughs are home to nearly **960,000 Jews**. Read that again. The city Zohran Mamdani wants to lead has **more than double the Jewish population** of Tel Aviv—the city that symbolizes modern Israeli culture, innovation, and secular Jewish life. But it gets even more striking: - **Brooklyn alone**—one of New York's five boroughs—contains over 500,000 Jews. That's more than the entire city of Tel Aviv. - **Manhattan** has roughly 250,000 Jews—more than half of Tel Aviv's Jewish population in just one borough. - Greater New York (including Long Island and Westchester) has **1.37 million Jews**—nearly **one in five of all Jews living in Israel**. If we extracted New York City and examined it as a sovereign nation, it would have the **second-largest Jewish population on Earth**, surpassing France (440,000), Canada (393,000), the United Kingdom (292,000), and Argentina (180,000) combined. But let's stay focused on the Tel Aviv comparison, because it's the most illuminating: **New York isn't just "like" Tel Aviv. By every demographic measure, it is MORE Jewish than Tel Aviv.** Consider the institutional weight: - **Brooklyn** has more Jews per square mile in neighborhoods like Borough Park, Crown Heights, and Williamsburg than any neighborhood in Tel Aviv - **Manhattan** houses more major Jewish museums, archives, and cultural institutions than Tel Aviv - **The New York metro area** supports more Jewish day schools, yeshivot, and religious seminaries than Tel Aviv and Haifa combined - **New York** has more Holocaust survivors than any city outside Israel - **New York** has more Yiddish speakers than any city on Earth, including in Israel ## A City-State Within a State **Put simply: New York is not a city with Jews. It is one of Earth's two Jewish capitals.** If you carved New York City out and made it a sovereign nation tomorrow, it would have: - The **second-largest Jewish population on Earth** (after Israel) - More Jews than France, Canada, the UK, and Argentina **combined** - More than **double** the Jewish population of Tel Aviv, Israel's cultural heart - More Jews than any European country - More Jews than any country in the Western Hemisphere except itself This is not diversity. This is not multiculturalism. This is **Jewish civilization at scale**. Think about what this means: - More Jews live in New York than in all of Western Europe combined - New York has more Holocaust survivors than any city outside Israel - More Yiddish speakers walk the streets of Brooklyn than in any city on Earth - The kosher food industry in New York rivals that of Tel Aviv - Jewish nonprofits based in New York serve hundreds of thousands, rivaling the social service infrastructure of Israeli municipalities The city's Jewish character isn't incidental—it's **constitutional**. It's embedded in the city's architecture, its rhythms, its institutions, and its soul. From the Lower East Side synagogues that anchored immigrant waves to the Hasidic enclaves of Brooklyn to the Modern Orthodox communities of the Upper West Side, Jewish life doesn't just exist in New York—it *defines* significant portions of it. ## The Covenant Question This brings us back to Zohran Mamdani—and to his words. The specific statements matter. When asked directly during the June 2025 Democratic mayoral debate whether he believes in Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state, Mamdani responded: "I believe Israel has a right to exist... as a state with equal rights." Pressed again—"As a Jewish state?"—he answered: "I would not recognize any state's right to exist with a system of hierarchy on the basis of race, of religion." This is not policy criticism. This is categorical denial. Mamdani has labeled Israel's military operations "genocide," championed the BDS movement as "non-violent" resistance, and refused—three times on national television—to condemn the phrase "globalize the intifada," even invoking the Holocaust's Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in its defense. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum responded directly: "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." For New York's Jewish community, these positions are not abstractions. They cut to the heart of the covenant. When a candidate declares that Jewish self-determination constitutes "hierarchy," he is not calling for equality—he is calling for erasure. When he refuses to recognize Israel's Jewish character while seeking to govern a city with twice as many Jews as Tel Aviv, he signals that Jewish particularism itself is the problem. Now ask yourself: **Would the citizens of Tel Aviv elect a mayor who denied their city's Jewish character?** Would Jerusalem choose a leader who supported movements aimed at dismantling Jewish self-determination? Would Israelis trust their security, their communal institutions, their children's schools to someone who viewed Jewish particularity as inherently discriminatory? The answer is obvious. And yet Mamdani asks New Yorkers—who live in a city that is, by every demographic and cultural measure, a Jewish metropolis—to do exactly that. The covenant promised recognition and safety. Mamdani's positions offer neither. ## The Hypocrisy of Selective Recognition Here's the progressive paradox Mamdani embodies: He would presumably affirm that Tokyo should remain Japanese, that Seoul should remain Korean, that Dublin should remain Irish. He would likely celebrate Indigenous sovereignty movements that seek to preserve cultural and ethnic identity. He might even support the idea that nations have the right to maintain demographic majorities that reflect their founding peoples. But when it comes to Jews—and only Jews—this principle collapses. Suddenly, Jewish self-determination becomes "hierarchy." Jewish sovereignty becomes "apartheid." The desire of Jews to maintain a state where they are not a persecuted minority becomes evidence of racism. This isn't progressivism. It's a double standard so glaring it would be comedic if the stakes weren't so high. And in New York—where Jews have built refuge, where they've established institutions, where they've woven themselves into the city's fabric so completely that removing them would be like removing load-bearing walls—this stance isn't just hypocritical. It's a betrayal. ## The Sanctuary Mandate New York has been a sanctuary for Jews since the first Sephardic refugees arrived in 1654. Through pogroms in Eastern Europe, through the Holocaust, through Soviet persecution, through Middle Eastern expulsions, New York has been the city that opens its arms. But sanctuary isn't just about providing refuge. It's about **recognition**. It's about seeing a people, affirming their identity, protecting their right to exist *as who they are*. When a mayoral candidate refuses to recognize Jewish sovereignty in Israel, he signals something profound about how he views Jewish identity everywhere. If Jewish self-determination is illegitimate there, why should Jewish particularism be honored here? The message is clear: Jews can live in New York, but only if they dilute themselves, only if they accept that their collective identity—their schools, their institutions, their neighborhoods, their Sabbath rhythms—is somehow suspicious, somehow problematic, somehow "hierarchical." That's not sanctuary. That's tolerance on the condition of erasure. ## A Covenant, Not Just a City The relationship between New York and its Jewish community is not transactional. It's not a matter of "minority rights" or "diversity initiatives." It is something older and deeper—a covenant. Covenants are not contracts. Contracts are conditional, transactional. Covenants are bonds of mutual recognition and commitment that transcend calculation. They are sacred relationships. New York's covenant with its Jewish community was forged through generations: through immigrant struggles, through building institutions, through wars fought and survived, through cultural contributions that enriched the city immeasurably. It was sealed through shared memory—Ellis Island, the Lower East Side, the garment district, the postwar building boom, the Soviet refusenik arrivals. The city promised: *You will be safe here. You will be recognized here. You can be fully Jewish and fully New Yorker.* And the Jewish community responded: *We will build here. We will invest here. We will make this city greater.* That covenant holds. The institutions built on its foundation—the museums, the schools, the hospitals, the social service organizations, the cultural centers—stand as testimony. ## The Question for Voters So we return to where we began: **Would Zohran Mamdani make a good Prime Minister of Israel?** No. Obviously not. His positions disqualify him completely. Then why—**why**—would New York, a city with more than double the Jewish population of Tel Aviv, even consider him for mayor? Let's make this even more specific: **Would Tel Aviv elect a mayor who denied its Jewish character?** No. **Would Jerusalem choose a leader who supported movements aimed at dismantling Jewish sovereignty?** No. Then why would **Brooklyn**—which alone has more Jews than all of Tel Aviv—elect someone to lead it who holds these exact positions? Why would **Manhattan**—with more Jews than half of Tel Aviv—trust its schools, its synagogues, its communal safety to someone who views Jewish particularism as inherently oppressive? The answer cannot be "because New York is different." New York *is* different—it has **more Jews** than Tel Aviv. That difference doesn't make the question irrelevant. It makes it *urgent*. **If Mamdani isn't qualified to lead a city of 454,000 Jews, how is he qualified to lead a city of 960,000 Jews?** The math is simple. The principle is clear. New York is not just a city with Jews in it. It is a Jewish city, a covenant city, a sanctuary city in the deepest sense. It deserves a mayor who understands that—who honors it, who protects it, who sees Jewish life not as one interest among many, but as part of the city's very essence. Anything less is a broken promise. Anything less betrays the covenant. And New York's Jews—liberal, conservative, religious, secular, Ashkenazi, Sephardi, all of them—deserve better. ## The Choice Ahead This is not about single-issue voting. It's not about ignoring housing, education, public safety, or any other crucial issue facing New York. It's about recognizing that a candidate's position on Jewish identity and Jewish sovereignty reveals something essential about their worldview, their moral compass, and their understanding of the city they seek to lead. Mamdani's refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state isn't a foreign policy position. It's a statement about Jewish legitimacy itself. And in a city where nearly one million Jews live—**more than in Tel Aviv itself**—that statement cannot be ignored. Think about what we're really being asked to accept: A candidate who wouldn't qualify to lead Tel Aviv (454,000 Jews) seeks to lead New York (960,000 Jews). A candidate who wouldn't be trusted to govern a city where Jews are 91.8% of the population seeks to govern a city where they're 11.5%—and yet *more numerous in absolute terms*. A candidate who opposes Jewish sovereignty where Jews are the overwhelming majority somehow deserves to lead the city with the second-largest Jewish population on Earth. The absurdity is breathtaking. For 370 years, New York has been more than a home for Jews—it has been a promise. A promise of safety, of recognition, of the right to be fully Jewish and fully American, fully ourselves and fully part of something larger. That promise has been kept through generations. Through waves of immigration, through wars, through hatred that raged elsewhere but found less purchase here. The covenant has held because leaders understood that this city's Jewish character was not incidental—it was essential. New York is a covenant city—bound not just to its own Jewish community, but to the global Jewish family, to Jewish memory, to Jewish survival itself. Not by accident, but by choice. Not for one community alone, but woven into the very fabric of who we are. It deserves a mayor who understands what that sacred mantle means. Not as a slogan, but as a solemn trust. Not as politics, but as promise. A mayor who will guard it as fiercely as those who came before. **If he's not fit to lead a city of 454,000 Jews, how can he be fit to lead a city of 960,000?** **If Brooklyn alone—with more Jews than all of Tel Aviv—wouldn't elect him, why should New York?** The voters will decide if that covenant continues. But the city with more Jews than Tel Aviv should know this: the promise is not past tense. It is present. And it demands to be honored. The covenant holds. The question is whether New York's next mayor will honor it.