I don’t know what kind of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani will turn out to be, but he’s already proved to be a real disappointment as a statesman. New York is the only city in the world in which at least 750,000 Jews and Muslims apiece live side by side. Rather than being a constructive bridge builder between them, Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has chosen to be a bridge destroyer — using the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as his ax. It is such a waste of a truly charismatic political talent.
Consider Mamdani’s recent stunt: threatening to arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel when he comes to New York City for the United Nations gathering in September. The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu in 2024, alleging he committed crimes against humanity in Gaza. Though Mamdani eventually acknowledged that the city had no such legal authority — and instead called on the federal government to execute the warrant days before the Israeli leader’s visit to Washington — it was just the kind of thing Netanyahu will use in his campaign to get re-elected on Oct. 27. I can write Bibi’s campaign commercial myself: “The only safe place for Jews is Israel. Just look at what’s going on in New York. The only leader who can protect Israelis is me: Bibi.”
In my view, Mamdani’s and Netanyahu’s extreme views are just flip sides of the same coin: Bibi does not recognize the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in their national homeland and believes only Israel should govern the territory stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. But the Palestinians are a people — more than seven million of them live in that space — and they are not going away or relinquishing their right to statehood, no matter what fantasy Bibi and his followers propagate to the contrary. What Bibi is really selling is a forever war between Israelis and Palestinians. Today he lets settlers in the West Bank rip up Palestinians’ villages, and when they resist, his government calls it terrorism.
Mamdani does not call for a two-state solution, either. He argues that Jews are not entitled to self-determination in a state of their own — a Jewish state in their biblical homeland in that same region stretching from the Mediterranean Sea to the Jordan River. But more than seven million Jews also live in that space, and they, too, are not going away or relinquishing their right to a Jewish state — no matter what Mamdani and other democratic socialists say. So, they are also effectively promoting a forever war.
What if Mamdani actually wanted to be a bridge builder between Israelis and Palestinians, a role for which he has the unique capacity and talent? If he did, he would declare his intention that on the day Bibi arrives in New York City for the U.N. General Assembly, he would convene a seminar at his office and invite Israeli, Palestinian, Arab, Muslim and Jewish experts to discuss the only just and stable solution: how to forge two separate states for two peoples living in that area between the river and the sea.
He would invite Saudi representatives to discuss the Arab Peace Initiative, which was launched in this column in 2002 by the Saudi crown prince, Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud. He would invite Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and George W. Bush to each talk about their respective plans for two states for two peoples. He’d invite Palestinian leaders like Salam Fayyad, the former Palestinian Authority prime minister, who did so much in his tenure to build Palestinian institutions for a Palestinian state next to Israel, to discuss how they would revive that effort today.
Most important, he would invite representatives of Jewish-Arab organizations trying to forge two states for two peoples, like the Abraham Initiatives. Not to be confused with the Abraham Accords, this is an organization in Israel that works on reconciliation between Palestinian and Jewish citizens of Israel. (I have donated money to the group.) He would invite representatives of EcoPeace Middle East, an Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian organization dedicated to driving reconciliation through shared environmental projects. (I’ve also donated money to it.) And he’d invite the new Israeli party A Place for Us All, established ahead of the upcoming election with a combined list of Israeli Palestinians and Israeli Jews, led by Rula Daoud and Alon-Lee Green.
In an essay published in Haaretz, Green explained that the new party is “not a Jewish party (with a symbolic Arab representation) and not an Arab party (with a symbolic Jewish representation), but a joint Arab-Jewish party.” It proposes to build “a peace that will bring both an end to the occupation and the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, side by side with the State of Israel.”
Last, to add a little star power, he could invite the actress Natalie Portman. I was so impressed by the speech she delivered to a recent online fund-raiser for A Place for Us All. According to a report in Haaretz, Portman “emphasized her identity as a Jewish woman and Israeli citizen, noting that her father was born and raised in Israel and that she has ‘deep love, as many of you also do, for the people of this region — all people of this region — and for the land, and for the future.’”
As Portman told the party’s supporters: “You fought for the return of the hostages. You stood against the war of annihilation, and for the children of Gaza. You demanded safer streets, more fair wages. … The establishment wants to tell us that this is impossible, that true partnership is impossible. They want to minimize what these incredible leaders are doing here right now, and they’re terrified of what this movement represents.”
That is what constructive leadership sounds like. A Place for Us All is still polling far below the threshold needed to win a seat in the Knesset. But it is also just starting. If you prefer a more hardheaded version of that message, check out the website for Commanders for Israel’s Security, which comprises nearly 600 retired Israeli Army colonels and generals as well as Mossad, Shin Bet (Internal Security), police and diplomatic corps veterans who are all committed to opposing Israeli annexation of the West Bank and working toward a two-state solution.
Imagine if Mamdani, instead of engaging in a useless stunt of publicly mulling the arrest of Netanyahu, convened all these Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and American advocates of two states for two peoples and then invited Netanyahu to address them. Let Bibi be the one to say: “No, I don’t want to have anything to do with Israeli, Palestinian, Arab and American advocates of two states for two peoples.”
It would at least send the message to the Israeli center-right, center and left voters that the world doesn’t hate them, that the mayor of New York City isn’t out to get them and that all the international community wants is for Israelis and Palestinians to be constructive partners ready to explore the only realistic alternative to a forever war.
I have no idea if it would help. But I know for sure that what Mamdani is doing is just minting voters for Netanyahu among Israelis who think Bibi is their only protector, his hard-line stance their only salvation.
If that’s what Mamdani now wants to do with his platform — to add more logs to a fire that is already raging quite well on its own — it’s such a waste of his talent, such a waste of his office, such a waste of his breath and such a waste of our time.
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