Chuck Schumer, Senate minority leader  representing NY.

By MARC DAVID SARNOFF

JNS

At a time when anti-Semitism is erupting from the far left, the far right and increasingly from within the very institutions that claim to champion human rights, the American Jewish community has looked to its elected leaders for courage and moral clarity. But in New York City—home to the largest Jewish population outside of Israel—two of the most prominent Jewish politicians in America have failed a basic test of leadership.

Rep. Jerry Nadler and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, both Democrats representing New York, have long held themselves out as defenders of the Jewish people and the U.S.-Israel relationship. But their public endorsement in the face of New York state representative Zohran Mamdani’s escalating anti-Israel extremism is more than disappointing. It is dangerous.

Mamdani, 33, a Democratic Socialist representing the borough of Queens, has aligned himself with groups and causes that routinely vilify Israel, deny its right to exist and promote movements like BDS, which explicitly seek to isolate and delegitimize the world’s only Jewish state. Since Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists brutally murdered, raped and burned more than 1,200 Israeli civilians, including women, children, babies and the elderly, Mamdani has not condemned the atrocities. Instead, he has co-signed letters that accuse Israel of genocide while remaining silent on the crimes against humanity committed by Hamas.

Dehumanization Of Israelis

In the wake of these horrors, Mamdani’s actions have only grown more brazen. He appeared at rallies where chants like “From the river to the sea”—widely understood as a call to erase Israel—rang out unchallenged. He has endorsed and elevated organizations that equate Zionism with apartheid and excuse terrorism as resistance. And he continues to serve in public office without rebuke from the very figures who should be most alarmed.

This is not a matter of policy disagreement. This is not a debate over settlements or ceasefires.

Party over Principles?

This is about drawing a moral line between legitimate criticism of a democratic nation and the dehumanization of its people. Mamdani has crossed that line repeatedly.

Nadler and Schumer—who know better, who have spent their careers speaking out against such rhetoric when it came from other corners—have now chosen to endorse this man and his rhetoric.

In 2021, Schumer stood on the Senate floor and denounced anti-Semitic attacks in the streets of New York. He declared: “When Jewish Americans are targeted because of their support for Israel, that is anti-Semitism, plain and simple.”

Where is that clarity now?

Nadler, who represents Manhattan’s heavily Jewish Upper West Side and serves as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, has condemned anti-Semitism in the abstract and now publicly endorsed Mamdani—a fellow Democrat operating in his backyard, whose rhetoric and alliances embolden hostility against Jews on campuses and in public spaces across the city.

Leadership Questions

Leadership is not measured by how loudly one speaks when it is safe, but how firmly one stands when it is uncomfortable. Mamdani represents the very strand of anti-Semitism that cloaks itself in the language of social justice—the kind that insists it is merely “anti-Zionist,” while tolerating or defending the targeting of Jews who support Israel’s existence. It is a moral inversion, and it must be called out; the endorsement assails those who Nadler and Schumer claim to represent. This is not a policy dispute it is an existential crisis of survival for Jews. The endorsement of an anti-Semite is to be a Kapo.

To be a Kapo is an abdication of their offices. When prominent Jewish leaders like Nadler and Schumer refuse to not only confront anti-Semitism but endorse the speaker from within their own political coalition, they leave Jewish communities vulnerable and send a message that some hate is tolerable, if it comes from the “right” side.

There was a time when both men understood the stakes. Schumer has visited Auschwitz.

Nadler has spoken of his father’s escape from Nazi Europe. They know the playbook: dehumanize, isolate and attack. They have seen how anti-Jewish hate adapts to the language of the day—from racial purity to anti-imperialism—and how it finds enablers not only among the fanatics, but among the silent.

They could have drawn the line between protest and propaganda, between justice and Jew- hatred. But today they endorsed the most visible pro-BDS and anti-Semitic person seeking office in the most Jewish city in America.

Anti-Semitism is not only about swastikas on synagogues or slurs hurled on the street. It is also about who gets protected and who gets left to fend for themselves. The Jewish people have a long memory. We remember those who stood with us—and those who looked away.

Nadler and Schumer have made a dangerous choice. They could have spoken with the clarity their offices demand and their constituents deserve. Instead, they chose party and power. Let history record their complicity.