Meet Zohran Mamdani

This is an abject case study of how antisemitism becomes normalized. Extreme fringe movements begin outside the values and norms of a political party, and slowly, inexorably encroach on the establishment. Before one has a chance to blink, a living, breathing antisemite like Zohran Mamdani captures the democratic nomination for mayor of the city of New York, a city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

Mandadi has defended his use of the term “globalize the intifada”. This is a call to violence against Jews living anywhere on the globe. He has spoken at rallies whining out the tired, hackneyed rhetoric, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine should be free.”

Free of whom, you might ask? The answer, of course is obvious: Of Jews.

How does he propose doing this? For an answer, please look at the recent events of October 7, 2023. That’s when 1,200 innocent people, many of them from kibbutzim who were predominantly peace-loving activists, who brought their Palestinian neighbors to hospitals for cancer treatments, or who attended the Nova music festival, a festival of music, dancing and love, and were sadistically and brutally raped, tortured and/or slaughtered. Babies were burnt in ovens in front of their parents. Parents were tied to chairs and slaughtered in front of their children.

251 of them were brought into the hell hole of Gaza, living in underground tunnels and persisting on filthy water and literally, one half a pita a day. Approximately 20 of them are alive today, emaciated, molested, and somehow clinging to life.

How does this happen? In 1978, Edward Said, the late professor of comparative English literature from Columbia University wrote the book “Orientalism”, a simplistic, trivial denunciation of how Middle Eastern studies was taught. Edward Said had his Columbia acolytes, such as Rashid Khalidi, Hamad Dabashi and Joseph Mossad. Today it is difficult to find a course dealing with the Middle East at Columbia that is not imbued with this sort of anti-Israel racism.

This movement rapidly gained popularity in academia. At the University of California, Berkley, Hatem Bazian founded both Students for Justice in Palestine as well as American Muslims for Palestine. He now is the founder of the Islamophobia Studies Center at Berkely.

The normalization of antisemitic rhetoric is rarely the fruit of a single incident or figure; it is the product of a slow, corrosive drip that has migrated across the United States. Each outburst or provocation tests the boundaries—what is tolerated today paves the way for what is embraced tomorrow. As the fringes inch closer to the center, their ideas, once shocking, are diluted by repetition, their aggressions reframed as misunderstood passion or principled dissent. The lines separating radicalism from mainstream discourse blur, and what might once have sparked outrage instead elicits a weary shrug or the hollow justification of free speech.

This sort of rabid antisemitism has trickled down to kindergarten through 12^th grade institutions, as incubators of hate. New York City Educators for Palestine describes itself as “a group of public-school educators committed to fighting for Palestinian liberation in our school system, and society at large, by organizing and mobilizing  educators, developing curriculum, divesting our pension funds from Israel securities, and working with community, family and student organizations.”

The Portland Teacher’s Union has handed out a one-sided pro-Palestinian teacher’s guide for kindergarten through 12^th grade children, glossing over the October 7^th attacks on Israel. The National Education Association has issued a pro-Palestinian stance and has affirmed its support for a Palestinian Solidarity Campaign and a Stop the War Coalition.

Where is the comparable outrage over the Uyghurs in China, the Sudanese genocide, attacks on Christians across Africa, or Russia’s bombings in Ukraine?

The “intersectionality movement” blurred the lines of “oppressor-oppressed”. Gay, lesbian and transgender individuals who would be thrown off of buildings or hung in Gaza were taught to feel a common identity with the “victims of settler-colonialist apartheid.”

This rhetoric is unfounded.  In Israel, one sees, sees doctors, nurses, pharmacists, schoolteachers, attorneys, judges, and members of the Knesset who describe themselves as “Palestinian Israelis.” Israel is a vociferous democracy, not an apartheid state.

Yet to attribute this transformation solely to a few high-profile academics or activist groups misses a more insidious dynamic at work. What begins as marginal rhetoric—once dismissed or derided—can be amplified by digital platforms, where the echo chamber effect rewards outrage and distorts nuance. Simplified narratives go viral easily, reinforcing themselves in a tightening cycle.  In schools and public forums, ideas that were once regarded as extreme gain traction through repetition, not evidence, their emotional resonance eclipsing the facts on which meaningful dialogue depends.

In parallel, those who attempt to dissent—who voice discomfort or call for moderation—are too often drowned out by accusations of complicity or moral failing. The resulting atmosphere stifles genuine debate, turning difficult questions about justice and history into binary choices: for or against, ally or enemy. In such an environment, thoughtful voices are crowded out, and the public square is left to those willing to shout the loudest or wield the sharpest slogans.

This binary choice is what brought politicians like Senator Charles Schumer to support Zohran Mamdani. This is the same Senator Schumer who proclaimed in March, 2024, ““My last name is Schumer, which derives from the Hebrew word shomer, or ‘guardian,’” Schumer said. “Of course, my first responsibility is to America and to New York. But as the first Jewish Majority Leader of the United States Senate, and the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in America ever, I also feel very keenly my responsibility as a shomer yisroel — a guardian of the People of Israel.”

The same is true of Congressman Jerry Nadler, who described Mr. Mamdani as “someone who will be a partner with me in Washington to take on Donald Trump.”

These people obviously are party hacks who have buried their commitment to their people for their own political ambition, long ago. Rather than sounding the alarm, too many choose the comfort of silence, or in their cases, much worse: the expediency of endorsement and accommodation.

This shift—once gradual, now accelerating—reveals itself not only in the policies and rhetoric shaping our institutions, but in the silences that follow. The absence of proportional outrage at atrocities beyond the immediate political narrative speaks volumes. It is a silence that signals consent, or at least resignation, to the narrowing scope of empathy and the selective application of justice. When conversations about human rights become tethered to a single ideological frame, voices that question or complicate the narrative are quietly dismissed, and the lived realities of persecuted peoples elsewhere fade from the public conscience.

Meanwhile, those working to foster honest dialogue and build bridges across difference are left navigating a minefield of suspicion and accusation. They face the daunting task of restoring complexity to debates that have been flattened by slogans and shorn of history’s sobering lessons. In this atmosphere, the work of defending pluralism and principled solidarity grows ever more urgent, even as it becomes more perilous.

It is in this gradual numbing, this collective loss of vigilance, that the greatest danger resides.  What happened to the support for the Jewish freedom riders, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwimmer, who were murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, trying to register African American voters in Mississippi? The structures meant to uphold civility and inclusion—media, political leadership, even grassroots activism—can fail, whether by omission or by design, to confront the poison as it gradually seeps inward.

The gradual shift often goes unnoticed, masked by rhetoric that appeals to broader frustrations while subtly shifting the boundaries of acceptable discourse. Political gatekeepers, whether out of complacency, opportunism, or genuine belief, sometimes permit these new voices to infiltrate, reshaping the party’s identity from within. The transformation is rarely abrupt; rather, it unfolds through a series of incremental changes—moments where old taboos are questioned, then quietly discarded, and where ideologies once relegated to the margins are given a platform and, eventually, legitimacy.

These academic critiques, once intended to interrogate narratives and expose bias, opened a door that, over decades, widened into a thoroughfare for ever more radical interpretations. The seeds of skepticism toward established histories and communal identities, first planted in classrooms and journals, found fertile ground in the broader cultural conversation. By reframing the language of conflict and identity, such ideas not only challenged prevailing perspectives on the Middle East, but also provided a new lexicon for activists and political players eager to recast their messages in the language of justice and decolonization.

As these theories migrated from rarefied university halls into mainstream debate, their implications shifted. What began as a critique of Western representation became, in the hands of some, a tool to justify animosity and erase nuance. Academic discourse, filtered through echo chambers and social media, was often stripped of its caution and complexity, leaving only the provocative headlines—stripped of context, weaponized, and looped endlessly in partisan spaces. Movements that once prided themselves on a commitment to equality and universal human rights began, at their fringes, to harbor exclusionary doctrines, sometimes barely concealed beneath slogans of resistance.

In this climate, the line between challenging power and scapegoating communities became dangerously thin. Unquestioned, these narratives permitted the resurgence of old prejudices under the guise of progress, transforming what should have been informed debate into ideological trench warfare. The consequences, as history repeatedly demonstrates, rarely remain confined to words.

As society grows acclimated to this new reality, the lines that once delineated hate from legitimate criticism blur. The mechanisms designed to safeguard against extremism—editorial standards, internal party checks, and the collective moral compass—are dulled by fatigue or indifference. Ordinary citizens, bombarded by inflammatory slogans and manipulated narratives, may find themselves desensitized, their outrage first numbed, then extinguished.

In this environment, antisemitism is granted not only a foothold but a veneer of respectability. Its proponents co-opt the language of social justice, cloaking old prejudices in the garb of liberation and equity, making it increasingly difficult to disentangle genuine calls for peace from veiled incitements to hatred. The result is a civic discourse impoverished by suspicion and division, where the most vulnerable—those who have already borne the weight of history’s darkest chapters—once again find themselves targets of dehumanization.

If vigilance wanes, and the lessons of the past are dismissed as relics, the consequences are borne not just by one community, but by the very fabric of democracy itself. For when bigotry is allowed to masquerade as debate, and when violence is excused as activism, the very foundations of a pluralistic society begin to erode—slowly, perhaps imperceptibly, but inexorably toward crisis.

Sarah N. Stern is Founder and President of EMET, a think tank specializing in the Middle East in Washington, DC