For many native New Yorkers like myself, the City (as we always refer to New York) has become unrecognizable – not because of the look of the place, but because of the feel of the place. What was the celebrated melting pot, crossroads, and great amalgam of humanity has become a vitriolic, ideological, and resentful place.
New York was famous for being welcoming and accepting. If there was an ideology behind it, it was live and let live, and together we can all do pretty darn well.
New Yorkers were practical and proudly seeking to “make it there.” There was no hatred of the rich, but rather a hope that each of us could end up the same way.
This mindset was well exemplified by mayor Mike Bloomberg, who resisted raising the City’s income tax rate because, as he pointed out, some 5,000 individual taxpayers accounted for something close to the City’s tax payments. These were people who had choices and could go anywhere. Why drive them out of the City?
So the soak-the-rich underpinnings of the recent Mamdani campaign, and what is implicit in some of his bound-to-go-nowhere proposals, is completely counter to what helped make New York New York.
The Marxist ideology animating the City’s new administration is just the opening act of inversion. The truly breathtakingly adverse and self-destructive attribute of the new New York is its galloping jihadism and sanctioned anti-Israel hatred, a fig leaf for classic antisemitism.
The love affair of the City with its Jewish residents is over. The spirit, character, humor, and creativity that moved seamlessly back and forth between Jews in New York and their fellow residents has morphed into resentment, suspicion, and a none-too-well-disguised desire to have Jews be quiet – or even better, be gone.
The situation is disruptive and disconcerting for Jewish New Yorkers. But it is equally if not even more disturbing for those of us who ascertain the amazing fall from grace that has taken place in New York.
This is because we can sense that the travails of New York are nothing short of a shot across the bow for a malignancy that, unless forcefully encountered, is likely to spread throughout America.
The spirit of NY
All of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s hatred for Israel and, by extension, Jews, is matched by his hatred of America itself. It is a hatred of the values and the ethos that built and has sustained America. It is resentment for achievement, for success and for an accepting way of life.
The common thread in the resentment of Mamdani and his fellow travelers linking Jew hatred and capitalism hatred is the aversion to success. America has too much wealth, Israel has grown to be a successful, even dominant, power in its region, there are too many who have too much, and somehow they are preventing me and my cohorts from having what we deserve.
If New York can be personified through its mayors, the contrast between Mamdani and his predecessors is staggering. Picture Mamdani next to Ed Koch, Rudolph Giuliani, or Michael Bloomberg, and see the jaw-dropping differences.
Whatever their individual successes or drawbacks, these mayors loved their City and wanted all boats to rise in a rising tide. There was zero interest or desire to play New Yorkers off or against each other.
The City was greater than the sum of its parts, but the parts were what made New York so amazing.
In the short term and in a narrow sense, Mamdani may well get his desires to come true. New York will be increasingly Israel-phobic and Jew averse. Resentment is likely to become the driving spirit of the City.
Ironically, much as Bloomberg perceived, the Jews of New York will have choices, and many are likely to leave for more hospitable pastures elsewhere. The loser in this, of course, will be the City itself: poorer in substance and spirit.
As New York has always been both unique yet also emblematic among the cities of America, so too will its travail be increasingly seen elsewhere across the country. Marxism has always had its knee-jerk appeal, and when it is being espoused by a smiling and well-dressed spokesman who can dress it up as equity and fairness to millions on social media, it can spread until it collapses under the weight of its own unworkability.
New York is in for a rough ride, and if its malignancy is not seen for what it is, much of America might follow suit. This would be a self-inflicted wound of existential proportions.
I comfort myself with the recognition that New Yorkers have always been able to see through flim flam and hoo hah. I sure hope they can do this once again.
The writer is the chairman of the Board of Im Tirtzu and a director of the Israel Independence Fund.
