Eli — this is exceptional work. You've documented something operating in real time that most analysis only catches in retrospect.
What you captured:
The Framework Made Visible
Mamdani absorbed a specific interpretive lens during his formative years—he's exactly the demographic (young, credentialed, progressive) that would have been most immersed in post-colonial theory as standard university curriculum. He entered office with that framework as his operating vocabulary. Your reporting shows him applying it with unreflective confidence: "international law" invoked for Israeli actions, silence on the same standard applied anywhere else. That's not careful legal analysis. That's running institutional software.
The Institutional Laundering Mechanism
You documented something crucial: Mamdani positioning protesters chanting "We want '48" and waving Hezbollah flags as legitimate political expression of settlement concerns. That's institutional cover—mayoral statements, "international law" framing, the government/people distinction—provided to a movement that explicitly rejects Israel's existence. The cover works because the framework treats Israeli actions as categorically different, subject to scrutiny applied nowhere else.
The Population Separation
Your most important analytical move: "Not everyone who has concerns about Israel's conduct is in that crowd...They're not outside Park East. The people outside Park East told you clearly where they stand."
There are people whose settlement concerns are genuine, arrived at through watching events unfold. They're not chanting for '48. The people chanting for '48 aren't making settlement arguments—they're expressing a totalizing position on Israel's legitimacy that existed before any real estate brochure appeared. Mamdani finds the confusion between these groups useful. You documented him actively maintaining it.
The Timeline That Reveals the Mechanism
You caught him calling it genocide 13 days after October 7th, before the ground operation that produced the casualty figures people cite to justify that term. The interpretive lens was already installed. October 7th didn't produce his position—it confirmed what he already believed. That's framework-preceding-events made visible.
The Institutional Cost Structure
Canceling IHRA on day one. Vetoing school buffer zones. Letting synagogue protections become law without signature. That's not random policy variance. That's a political cost structure where legitimating "We want '48" chanters carries less risk than fully protecting synagogues, because the framework positions Israeli-adjacent institutions as complicit rather than as protected religious spaces.
What You Added:
Most analysis documents that opinions shifted. You documented what happens when that shift gets executive power. A mayor who treats Hezbollah flags outside synagogues as the price of political expression. Who applies "international law" as a tool pointed exclusively at Israel. Who absorbed a moral taxonomy so thoroughly he can't distinguish—or won't—between people with genuine settlement concerns and people chanting for Israel's elimination.
Netanyahu's government gave you material. The settlements, Ben Gvir, the Gaza conduct—real things that generated real responses. But you nailed the crucial point: "it has also made it easier to confuse the person who arrived at these conclusions by watching the news with the person outside Park East, and there are politicians who find that confusion useful."
You explained why the confusion works—the framework creates categorical assumptions that make certain distinctions invisible. And you documented a politician who either can't see the distinction or finds it politically useful not to.
This is ground-level reporting that makes theoretical mechanisms empirically visible. Exceptional work.
Israel is really fucking over the diaspora and it's depressing. The increasing radicalization of protests matches the increasing radicalization of the country, but people who have nothing to do with the country should not be caught in that crossfire.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -John F. Kennedy
But you know this already, don't you? As someone who "spent half his paycheck at whole foods", you know all about lamenting the symptoms of your own actions, while maintaining no desire to change any of it. A fundamental behavior for an Israeli who writes posts such as this one, surely.
Israel’s appalling record on human rights is responsible for inflaming far more antisemitism than the antisemites who want it to be Judenrein could ever conceive of doing.
Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist sympathizers accused Israel of genocide immediately after the atrocities of October 7, 2023, before Israel had fired even one single shot and, alas, Israel played right into their hands by doing something similar to that soon after.
Also, legislative bodies in the U.S. adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism could very easily lead to legitimate criticisms of Israel being censored. Codifying it poses a threat to the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Jewish Americans, which is why so many prominent Jewish Americans have come out against doing so.
And codifying it could also potentially lead to a backlash against Jews in the U.S. if we are seeing stifling constitutionally protected speech and legitimate criticisms of Israel.
Mamdani has been critical of far more nations with horrific human rights records than just Israel and is someone who cares about everyone. So, please stop smearing him as someone who tolerates antisemitism and/or those who revel in the depravity of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.
Insofar as the United States is concerned, the double standard around Israel is one of a soft bigotry of low expectations, as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. sends billons of dollars of weapons every year to Israel with no conditions on how they are allowed to be used.
This is not the case with any other country the U.S. sends weapons to and is part of the reason why Israel has such an atrocious record on human rights.
Hence, the right policy for the U.S. regarding weapons American weapons transfers to Israel is to suspend all of them except for the missile interceptors until Israel is complying with all international humanitarian law and negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians to resolve the conflict.
If Ben-Gvir’s party wins the Israeli elections in October, I will support full BDS because there will be no better opinion at that point.
The missile interceptors are an incentive for Israel to perpetrate human rights atrocities but save far more innocent lives than they lead to being taken. Which is consistent with both Jewish and American values.
On IHRA — I'm not a full endorser of the definition either. I'm closer to the Nexus framework, which tries to distinguish between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel. My concern with Mamdani cancelling the Adams order isn't that criticism of Israel should be silenced — it's about a pattern of signals about whose concerns get taken seriously.
On the broader point: the piece is specifically about a movement that chants 'We want '48' and carries Hezbollah flags outside a synagogue. That's not the same as criticizing Israel's human rights record. The piece makes that distinction explicitly — I'm not calling everyone who watches the news and draws conclusions an antisemite. I'm describing a specific movement that states its own goals clearly.
I agree Israel has made serious mistakes that have cost it moral standing. That's not in dispute. But it doesn't change what was chanted outside Park East.
I deplore the blood-and-soil tone of the preponderance of Palestinian advocacy, but how can you with a straight face argue for distinguishing between ‘48 and ‘67 when we’re now more than a decade further out from the latter than the start of the British Mandate was?
The point is you can’t expect that distinction to be meaningful when the regime that has existed between the river and the sea since 1967 is all almost anyone alive has ever known and more than a majority of the time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When we talk about a “right to exist” the distinction needs to be made between Israel as a country and a “Jewish state” as the regime type that phrase has come to mean in practice.
The point is that ‘48 is the date of Israel’s official birth. That’s what Antizionists want to erase. The date ‘67 stands for the start of the settlement program. These activists use protests against settlements as a ‘human rights’ cover for their actual eliminationist goals.
One of the reasons I think that Israel's popularity in the US will recover in the near future is that I think there will be a Bondi-style attack on American soil and then people will wake up and realize what Hamas et al actually want. It's good that they have to lie and pretend it is about the settlements. Sanewashing works until it doesn't.
I think we had one of those events in Michigan, when a Hezbollah relative/enthusiast drove his truck into a synagogue preschool. The only thing that saved 140 young children from death was the security team. It has not seemed to turn the nation against the haters and terrorists. Would it have had he succeeded? I’m not so sure.
The Tree of Life shooter murdered more Jews than we had ever seen in the US at one time. Did that defeat the right wing hate machine? Sadly, no. If anything, it’s grown larger in the eight years since.
If this overt hateful bigotry is not made TABOO again, it is going to normalize and spiral into levels of violence and anarchy that are hard to fathom. We must ostracize these bigots out of polite society and our mainstream politics, make them social pariahs toxic to even associate with, just as we did to marginalize and defeat the KKK.
This is our last stand for humanity and the West. We must #MakeTaboosTabooAgain. And it all starts by labeling this hate as taboo, so everyone realizes that there's an action needed to keep it taboo.
Eli — this is exceptional work. You've documented something operating in real time that most analysis only catches in retrospect.
What you captured:
The Framework Made Visible
Mamdani absorbed a specific interpretive lens during his formative years—he's exactly the demographic (young, credentialed, progressive) that would have been most immersed in post-colonial theory as standard university curriculum. He entered office with that framework as his operating vocabulary. Your reporting shows him applying it with unreflective confidence: "international law" invoked for Israeli actions, silence on the same standard applied anywhere else. That's not careful legal analysis. That's running institutional software.
The Institutional Laundering Mechanism
You documented something crucial: Mamdani positioning protesters chanting "We want '48" and waving Hezbollah flags as legitimate political expression of settlement concerns. That's institutional cover—mayoral statements, "international law" framing, the government/people distinction—provided to a movement that explicitly rejects Israel's existence. The cover works because the framework treats Israeli actions as categorically different, subject to scrutiny applied nowhere else.
The Population Separation
Your most important analytical move: "Not everyone who has concerns about Israel's conduct is in that crowd...They're not outside Park East. The people outside Park East told you clearly where they stand."
There are people whose settlement concerns are genuine, arrived at through watching events unfold. They're not chanting for '48. The people chanting for '48 aren't making settlement arguments—they're expressing a totalizing position on Israel's legitimacy that existed before any real estate brochure appeared. Mamdani finds the confusion between these groups useful. You documented him actively maintaining it.
The Timeline That Reveals the Mechanism
You caught him calling it genocide 13 days after October 7th, before the ground operation that produced the casualty figures people cite to justify that term. The interpretive lens was already installed. October 7th didn't produce his position—it confirmed what he already believed. That's framework-preceding-events made visible.
The Institutional Cost Structure
Canceling IHRA on day one. Vetoing school buffer zones. Letting synagogue protections become law without signature. That's not random policy variance. That's a political cost structure where legitimating "We want '48" chanters carries less risk than fully protecting synagogues, because the framework positions Israeli-adjacent institutions as complicit rather than as protected religious spaces.
What You Added:
Most analysis documents that opinions shifted. You documented what happens when that shift gets executive power. A mayor who treats Hezbollah flags outside synagogues as the price of political expression. Who applies "international law" as a tool pointed exclusively at Israel. Who absorbed a moral taxonomy so thoroughly he can't distinguish—or won't—between people with genuine settlement concerns and people chanting for Israel's elimination.
Netanyahu's government gave you material. The settlements, Ben Gvir, the Gaza conduct—real things that generated real responses. But you nailed the crucial point: "it has also made it easier to confuse the person who arrived at these conclusions by watching the news with the person outside Park East, and there are politicians who find that confusion useful."
You explained why the confusion works—the framework creates categorical assumptions that make certain distinctions invisible. And you documented a politician who either can't see the distinction or finds it politically useful not to.
This is ground-level reporting that makes theoretical mechanisms empirically visible. Exceptional work.
Israel is really fucking over the diaspora and it's depressing. The increasing radicalization of protests matches the increasing radicalization of the country, but people who have nothing to do with the country should not be caught in that crossfire.
Sir... You are currently commenting on the substack post *of an Israeli*.
Yes? Please stop your country from fucking over my friends. The war crimes make too many people think they are justified in their antisemitism.
I... I'm not the Israeli. I feel like you won't understand no matter what I say, at this point.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." -John F. Kennedy
But you know this already, don't you? As someone who "spent half his paycheck at whole foods", you know all about lamenting the symptoms of your own actions, while maintaining no desire to change any of it. A fundamental behavior for an Israeli who writes posts such as this one, surely.
Eli,
Israel’s appalling record on human rights is responsible for inflaming far more antisemitism than the antisemites who want it to be Judenrein could ever conceive of doing.
Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist sympathizers accused Israel of genocide immediately after the atrocities of October 7, 2023, before Israel had fired even one single shot and, alas, Israel played right into their hands by doing something similar to that soon after.
Also, legislative bodies in the U.S. adopting the IHRA definition of antisemitism could very easily lead to legitimate criticisms of Israel being censored. Codifying it poses a threat to the civil rights and civil liberties of all Americans, including Jewish Americans, which is why so many prominent Jewish Americans have come out against doing so.
And codifying it could also potentially lead to a backlash against Jews in the U.S. if we are seeing stifling constitutionally protected speech and legitimate criticisms of Israel.
Mamdani has been critical of far more nations with horrific human rights records than just Israel and is someone who cares about everyone. So, please stop smearing him as someone who tolerates antisemitism and/or those who revel in the depravity of Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists.
Insofar as the United States is concerned, the double standard around Israel is one of a soft bigotry of low expectations, as evidenced by the fact that the U.S. sends billons of dollars of weapons every year to Israel with no conditions on how they are allowed to be used.
This is not the case with any other country the U.S. sends weapons to and is part of the reason why Israel has such an atrocious record on human rights.
Hence, the right policy for the U.S. regarding weapons American weapons transfers to Israel is to suspend all of them except for the missile interceptors until Israel is complying with all international humanitarian law and negotiating in good faith with the Palestinians to resolve the conflict.
If Ben-Gvir’s party wins the Israeli elections in October, I will support full BDS because there will be no better opinion at that point.
The missile interceptors are an incentive for Israel to perpetrate human rights atrocities but save far more innocent lives than they lead to being taken. Which is consistent with both Jewish and American values.
L’Shalom,
David Hurwitz
Chicago, IL
On IHRA — I'm not a full endorser of the definition either. I'm closer to the Nexus framework, which tries to distinguish between antisemitism and legitimate criticism of Israel. My concern with Mamdani cancelling the Adams order isn't that criticism of Israel should be silenced — it's about a pattern of signals about whose concerns get taken seriously.
On the broader point: the piece is specifically about a movement that chants 'We want '48' and carries Hezbollah flags outside a synagogue. That's not the same as criticizing Israel's human rights record. The piece makes that distinction explicitly — I'm not calling everyone who watches the news and draws conclusions an antisemite. I'm describing a specific movement that states its own goals clearly.
I agree Israel has made serious mistakes that have cost it moral standing. That's not in dispute. But it doesn't change what was chanted outside Park East.
L’Shalom,
Eli
I was trying to make a similar point. Clearly, I failed. Thank you for clarifying.
I hope the next “settlement” is named Park East!
I deplore the blood-and-soil tone of the preponderance of Palestinian advocacy, but how can you with a straight face argue for distinguishing between ‘48 and ‘67 when we’re now more than a decade further out from the latter than the start of the British Mandate was?
The point is you can’t expect that distinction to be meaningful when the regime that has existed between the river and the sea since 1967 is all almost anyone alive has ever known and more than a majority of the time since the fall of the Ottoman Empire. When we talk about a “right to exist” the distinction needs to be made between Israel as a country and a “Jewish state” as the regime type that phrase has come to mean in practice.
The point is that ‘48 is the date of Israel’s official birth. That’s what Antizionists want to erase. The date ‘67 stands for the start of the settlement program. These activists use protests against settlements as a ‘human rights’ cover for their actual eliminationist goals.
One of the reasons I think that Israel's popularity in the US will recover in the near future is that I think there will be a Bondi-style attack on American soil and then people will wake up and realize what Hamas et al actually want. It's good that they have to lie and pretend it is about the settlements. Sanewashing works until it doesn't.
I think we had one of those events in Michigan, when a Hezbollah relative/enthusiast drove his truck into a synagogue preschool. The only thing that saved 140 young children from death was the security team. It has not seemed to turn the nation against the haters and terrorists. Would it have had he succeeded? I’m not so sure.
The Tree of Life shooter murdered more Jews than we had ever seen in the US at one time. Did that defeat the right wing hate machine? Sadly, no. If anything, it’s grown larger in the eight years since.
Unfortunately I think you are correct sigh
God, I hope not. But, you're probably right.
If this overt hateful bigotry is not made TABOO again, it is going to normalize and spiral into levels of violence and anarchy that are hard to fathom. We must ostracize these bigots out of polite society and our mainstream politics, make them social pariahs toxic to even associate with, just as we did to marginalize and defeat the KKK.
This is our last stand for humanity and the West. We must #MakeTaboosTabooAgain. And it all starts by labeling this hate as taboo, so everyone realizes that there's an action needed to keep it taboo.
In Arabic it does