Is There Hope For NYC?
In reference to the recent article by Jonathan Braun “A Bitter Turning Point for NY’s Jewish Community” (July 4), as a long time New York City resident I too am very concerned about the impact a socialist Jihadist sympathizer will have on the Jewish communities in New York as well as the city as a whole should Zohran Mamdani be elected mayor.
I also nostalgically long for the days of prior mayors – Robert Wagner, John Lindsay, Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, Michael Bloomberg, etc. – who were all strong supporters of Israel. They and their Jewish constituents would all march proudly in the annual Salute to Israel Parade. They all allowed New York, with its large Jewish population and rich Jewish religious and cultural heritage, to be “the beating heart of Jewish civilization outside the land of Israel,” as Braun put it.
All of this could come to a crashing end should Mamdani be elected, and the consequences would reverberate not only in New York, but the entire country and perhaps the entire world. It could be the turning point for the last golden era of Jewish life in galus just prior to the coming of Mashiach.
It can also be a turning point for the Democratic Party that was once predominantly Jewish and very supportive of Israel and many Jewish causes, but has now been transformed into an anti-Israel and antisemitic party, as evidenced on almost all college campuses with the battle cry of “Globalize the Intifada” and “Free Palestine from the River to the Sea.” In fact, a recent poll of Democratic voters under the age of 50 has shown that almost 60% are more sympathetic to the Palestinian people than to Israelis, which is a major shift from just eight years ago when the result was the direct opposite.
However, I do not find any of this very surprising, as a prominent, very liberal columnist at The New York Times, Michelle Goldberg, recently wrote an article entitled “Plenty of Jews Love Zohran Mamdani.” She claimed he is not antisemitic, only anti-Zionist, and that you cannot equate the two, which I assume is the sentiment of most of her secular progressive Jewish friends.
The fact that Mamdani has proclaimed that he will enforce the ridiculous warrant issued by the International Criminal Court against Netanyahu and would have him arrested as soon as he enters New York should be a red flag that alone should disqualify him to be mayor of the largest Jewish-populated city in the world outside Israel.
However, there is hope on the horizon in name of our current mayor, Eric Adams, who is running as an Independent and has proven to be a great friend of the Jewish community as well as of Israel, as evidenced in your front-page article in The Jewish Press and interview by Baruch Lytle. I believe that the progressives of Adams’ party who are anti-Israel did a hatchet job on him in bringing ethical charges against him because of his pro-Israel stance. For that reason alone, I believe the entire New York City Jewish community must mobilize and rally behind Adams in the upcoming November general election, and try to convince Cuomo to remove his name from the ballot to help ensure that Mamdani will be defeated.
This is the only way to help preserve our city as the capitalist center of the world and to continue as a “bastion of Jewish life” and as a powerful lifeline to the land of Israel.
Josh Rosenthal
Queens, N.Y.
Baseball Memories
I grew up in LA a couple of blocks from Gilmore Field. I used to pay ten cents to see Duke Snyder and Lee Walls. My greatest joy was keeping score, but my interest in baseball did not go beyond the Hollywood stars. Nonetheless, I really enjoy Irwin Cohen’s “Wise & Otherwise” column and read it expectantly every week. Keep up the good work. It is a wonderful thing to read.
Jonathan H., Esq.
Via E-mail
Irwin Cohen responds:
What a great time to grow up – before the Dodgers moved in ’58, and when the ballpark was in the heart of the Jewish section at Beverly and Fairfax. We’re lucky to have memories going back eight or nine decades. Thanks for taking the time to write.
A Paradigm Shift In The Middle East
There are certain times in history, which is so often beset with turbulence, when it is prudent to step back and look at the big picture. This is one of those times.
On October 6, 2023, the world was generally composed of two major coalitions: the “Axis Of Evil” consisting of the totalitarian powers China and North Korea in the Pacific; Russia in Europe; and Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, and the Western democratic states aligned against them including Japan, Australia, and India in the Pacific; the NATO block in Europe; Israel in the Middle East; and the United States, which was the acknowledged leader of this block. There were four ongoing world flashpoints – China-Taiwan and the North-South Korea border in the Pacific; Russia and Ukraine in a long, bloody war in Europe; and Israel and its Arab neighbors in the Middle East. Israel was completely ringed by Iran and its proxies for many years. To the west was Hamas, to the north was Hezbollah, and to the East were Syria, Iran, and the Houthis.
In Hamas’s attack on October 7, 2023, Iran’s other proxies were expected to also join in but did not, thus allowing Israel to confront each one separately. In the aftermath of the Hamas attack, Israel has been battling for over a year and a half, making steady progress in destroying their fighting ability. But it has been a slow, grinding, and costly campaign, and the endgame and future makeup of the Gaza Strip is still uncertain. This war has also been a public relations nightmare for Israel. Many countries, including the United States, have seen an explosion in antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment. And the left-leaning mainstream media consistently report and often amplify Hamas propaganda and casualty reports as established facts.
In contrast to the Hamas response, Israel’s performance against Iran and its other proxies has been swift, brilliant, decisive, and world-shaking.
Israel dispatched Hezbollah with barely any ground intervention, through a brilliant operation where they decapitated virtually the entire leadership of Hezbollah using the now famous “exploding pager” devices. This campaign was so short and swift, it was not even called a war. But it certainly will be prominently featured in military manuals in all the armies of the world as an example of the successful use of spycraft, instead of a bloody all-out war, to neutralize an enemy.
The civil war in Syria, coupled with Israeli incursions and U.S. Air Force raids, resulted in the final collapse of the Syrian regime, thus taking them out of the picture.
The Houthis made only a few perfunctory missile attacks against Israel during the Gaza War but suffered devastating air attacks by Israeli and the U.S. air forces in return. Also, the Houthis are more interested in the Yemen conflict than the war against Israel.
Next it was Iran’s turn, the “Head Of The Snake” itself. Earlier in the Gaza War, Iran fired hundreds of rockets and missiles toward Israel. However, by a series of miraculous actions, essentially all were shot down by a loose coalition of Israeli, American, French, British, Jordanian, and Saudi Arabian forces. This disastrous performance by Iran showed it to be a paper tiger and severely diminished its image as a power player.
In the recent war, the Israeli Air Force completely destroyed Iran’s air defenses, leaving it wide open for the final blow – the United States Air Force bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities, buried deep inside mountains, with massive bunker-busting bombs. The final indignity to Iran was the failure of any of its friends and allies to offer any assistance during the war. The entire Iran War took just 12 days, and eliminated Iran as a power-player in the “Axis of Evil” and in the Middle East arena.
The clear victors here are Israel and the United States for demonstrating outstanding military and espionage capabilities, and their willingness to use them to reduce threats to themselves and their allies. Other potentially favorable developments are the increased chances for expansion of the Abraham Accords, which favors Israel and the Western democracies.
The clear losers are Iran, for its completely inept performance in the war against Israel and for losing the support of its allies and other Arab countries, even those not particularly friends of Israel, and also Iran’s proxies for failing to destroy Israel as they set out to do.
Max Wisotsky
Highland Park, N.J.
