Why be surprised when this particular candidate, whose political career has been based on an obsession with destroying Israel, hires scores of antisemites to staff his administration?
The most important thing about the Anti-Defamation League’s latest “Mamdani Monitor” is that its results were so unsurprising and generated few headlines in New York or anywhere else. That 20% of New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s 400 appointees to various transition committees have ties to anti-Zionist and antisemitic groups—or have engaged in acts of Jew-hatred online—is, in and of itself, an astounding figure. It’s even more astounding when you consider that they are engaged in an effort to govern a city with the largest Jewish population in the world.
But then, what else would you expect from someone whose entire political career is rooted in opposition to the existence of the one Jewish state on the planet?
Mamdani dismissed the ADL’s data as unimportant and claimed that those who accuse him of complicity with Jew-hatred don’t distinguish between “criticism of Israel” and actual antisemitism.