How is it possible that Jews in New York could support a mayoral candidate that labels Israel genocidal and calls for the “intifada to be globalized?”

The New York Times would have us believe that there are many such Jews. I have trouble believing anything the NYT prints on this subject given the overwhelming evidence that they lie, distort and manipulate when it comes to Jews and Israel, as proven by their recent story about starving children in Gaza based on an altered photo, and their infamous lie about a bombed hospital in October 2023. So, it’s no surprise that in their Mamdani story, two of the five Jews interviewed work for the Mamdani campaign.

Even without such distortion, however, it is true that some Jews voted for Mamdani in the Democrat primary, and will vote for him again in the general election. 

I am an Orthodox Jewish film director, author and influencer, which is to say, a visible Jew both on the street and online. So, I’ve been getting asked, “What’s the story with your fellow Jews? How could they vote for a man who hates Israel and hates the Jews?”

To understand this, you first need to know something about Jews, namely, that we’re all different. We’ve been around for so long, and lived in so many countries, and fallen into so many different categories, that there is no such thing as a typical Jew.

Non-Jews, whether they love us or hate us, tend to lump us all together. They’re not entirely wrong because we’re not primarily a religion or a nationality – we’re a family. Now, every family contains different types of and categories of people, but the family remains distinct because relatives resemble each other physically, intellectually, temperamentally and spiritually.

Jews are not only a family, but we are also uniquely bound to God through the Torah and its system of commandments, as well as our shared destiny and connection to the Holy Land of Israel. The question is, why would a Jew who inherits our unbroken wisdom tradition stretching back 3,700 years turn his back on it?

Some chafe at the demands of the commandments. Others simply think they have a better idea, be it a credo they dreamed up or an “ism” to which they subscribed. And some turn their backs on our family to fit in at work, school, cocktail parties or online.

In seeking to curry favor with the Jew-hating mob, these Jews do enormous harm.

They often open their statements about Israel with, “As a Jew…” and then they parrot lies about Israel fabricated by the Gaza Ministry of Health, an entity created by Hamas to serve as the media arm of their terrorist organization. One glance at a fact-based website like StandWithUs.com, or even at a simple map of the region renders the bulk of these lies comically inept. After all, how can one Jewish state among 56 Muslim countries – most of which were not Muslim before the sword brought Islam to their lands – be labeled the “colonizer?”

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Statistically, Jews are well-educated, high-achieving and score above average on IQ tests. Why then do some Jews fall for these obvious fabrications? One reason is that siding with Jew-haters against Israel makes them feel virtuous, and we must never underestimate the power of feeling virtuous. That feeling is so addictive that they indulge in it even at the cost of lives: when the As-a-Jews speak out against Israel and get quoted by the enemies of Israel, they strengthen the hearts of Hamas terrorists.

Senior Hamas official Ghazi Hamad said on Al Jazeera that the recent push by multiple nations to recognize Palestine as a state is the fruit of October 7. In other words, their plan is working. Why would any government reward a terrorist state for the murder and rape of Israeli civilians? Because Hamas claims, “Israel commits genocide, and even the Jews admit it.” And as long as that plan is working, Hamas will keep firing rockets from their children’s bedrooms so they can shriek with victim-glee when Israel inevitably counter strikes. This is how the Hamas death cult operates. This is the modern version of that ancient evil, child sacrifice.

And the murderous phase of the present cycle is lasting longer than it would otherwise because those As-a-Jews give cover to our enemies. Their virtue-signaling costs lives.

Now let us recall that despite our family resemblances, Jews are all different. Most Jews are not As-a-Jews.

In my Orthodox community, Jews are overwhelmingly supportive of Israel, even when they disagree with its government, and we also oppose communism, socialism, and any “ism” that privileges people based on their genes rather than merit. In this time of elevated danger to the Jewish people, we’re also profoundly grateful to live in a country that rejects antisemitism like every other racism, and to have allies who can see through Hamas/Iran lies about Israel. Increasingly, we’re also exercising our Second Amendment right to bear arms – with care and training – to protect our families. God forbid the Jew haters who daily chant violence against us come to kill us, we will not be a soft target.

The percentage of Jews who subscribe to these societal views drops significantly when we look at Jews in non-Orthodox denominations, collectively known as liberal Judaism. This term should not be confused with liberal politics, because there are many religiously liberal Jews who are politically conservative. It’s true that religiously liberal Jews do tend to be politically liberal but even so, they are not Mamdani Jews. If they’re affiliated with a synagogue, they tend to support Israel and feel a visceral connection to the Jewish people.

Mamdani Jews are usually those who’ve untethered themselves from Torah entirely. Either they’ve never been exposed to Judaism, or they’re actively against it. They’ll give many reasons why, but their disconnection allows them to generate their own system of morality, and to fit in with the Jew-haters who lionize them. At least for a while. Historically, such Jews get attacked in the end just like the rest of their family.

The Jew-haters offer new and different reasons for their hatred in every generation: we’re too stand-offish or we’re too assimilated, we’re too rich or we’re too poor, we’re stateless or we have a Jewish state. Perhaps the simplest reason is that we’ve lived in exile for so long, that we’ve learned how to arrive on a new shore, identify what success looks like in that culture, and attain it in one generation, even while retaining our ancient traditions and transmitting them to our children. Invariably, we succeed by contributing to the nation that hosts us.

The Mamdani Jews go awry because they jettison the guard rails of Torah and tradition while retaining otherwise positive Jewish qualities like studiousness, generosity of heart, and sympathy for the underdog. Without the Torah’s holistic system for living, these lovely traits can cause an individual’s moral system to skid off the rails and cause great harm.

This process is summed up by an old adage: one who is kind to the cruel will end up being cruel to the kind. In this case, Mamdani Jews support the Hamas death cult because they’re moved by pictures of sickly children, and they shut their eyes to the evidence that the sickly child’s well-fed siblings have been cropped out by cynical terrorists and their willing accomplices in the media. The result is more innocent lives lost, not less.

We try desperately to open the eyes of our brethren to these facts, yet they remain clenched shut.

Perhaps they keep their eyes shut because if they were to absorb these facts, they would have to open their eyes to many more. They’d have to make an accounting of their choices in a life untethered from Torah and Jewish tradition – a fearless moral inventory – and such a process is not for the faint of heart.

I pray these Mamdani Jews will remember who they are, and the family they come from, before our enemies force them to remember with a globalized intifada. In the meantime, I hope the rest of the family will join our allies and vote against Mamdani because he is an enemy of the Jews, meritocracy, Israel, and America.

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Salvador Litvak is the director of “Guns & Moses,” coming back to theaters across America Sept. 7-11, and the author of his bestselling book, “Let My People Laugh: Greatest Jewish Jokes of All Time!” Learn more at salvadorlitvak.com

The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.