Netanyahu’s growing unpopularity, angering Trump, boosts Mamdani’s pro-Palestine candidates for Congress

Is it all Bibi Netanyahu’s fault?

There’s little question that his relentless warmongering – and the chilling toll of civilian casualties – is turning Israel into a pariah state.

While Israel was an effective partner in joining President Trump – some say prodding him – in attacking Iran, the two sides are now very much at odds. 

Trump has called him "f------ crazy" and told him "you’d be in prison if it wasn’t for me."

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Netanyahu faces a corruption trial that has been repeatedly postponed because of Israel’s war against Hamas and now Iran. 

"All the Jews are sick of you," Trump told the prime minister last year, according to the Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Swan book "Regime Change," when the president was trying to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza.

Trump is particularly angry with Bibi right now because his continued attacks against Hezbollah in Lebanon have undermined his efforts to strike an agreement with the Iranians. 

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He says he’s creating a security zone to protect his country and that the U.S. would do the same thing.

There has long been a natural sympathy for Israel as the only thriving democracy in the Middle East. 

It was immediately attacked by its Arab neighbors when, in the wake of the Holocaust, it was created by the United Nations in 1948. 

While the Jewish state has since made peace with some of its neighbors – notably Egypt, thanks to Jimmy Carter – other Arab nations insist that Israel has no right to exist.

Yet Netanyahu has fiercely opposed a two-state solution that would create an independent Palestinian country, and Israel has been accused of becoming an apartheid state.

There was a new wave of global horror after Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas brutally butchered more than 1,200 Israelis, of all ages, in a barbaric assault.

But even with the understandable retaliation, Netanyahu’s military tactics have since dissipated much of the resulting goodwill – and arguably fueled a rise in the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism around the world. 

Hamas, which sacrifices its own Palestinians by embedding them with the military, puts the death toll at 70,000.

"Though Netanyahu defeated Hamas militarily," writes three-time Pulitzer winner Thomas Friedman in the New York Times, "he never nurtured or welcomed a moderate Palestinian alternative. So, killing all those Palestinian civilians during the war looked to the rest of the world just like that: killing, pure and simple, not to clear the way for better Palestinian governance but to clear the way for NO Palestinians in Gaza." 

And that brings us to Zohran Mamdani.

Though he won the mayor’s race a year ago as a socialist promising free buses and government-run grocery stores, he never retracted his support of the phrase "from the river to the sea," which means wiping Israel off the map.

But by successfully pushing three pro-Palestinian candidates for Congress in Tuesday’s primary, knocking off two incumbents, the mayor scored big in New York politics. 

But he also created a huge headache for the national Democratic Party.

"Mayor Mamdani pulled through three solid Communists, and has received loud and universal applause from the Fake News Media," Trump posted yesterday. 

Apparently the word socialist no longer packs a strong enough punch.

The problem is that most of the country is well to the right of the five boroughs.

Now it will be easy for the opposition to label the Democrats not just as socialists but as pro-Palestinian.

In fact, the Democratic Party is moving sharply toward an anti-Israel stance. That’s where the energy is, particularly among younger voters who perhaps don’t remember all the wars in which the country has been attacked.

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"You’d better believe this is a sign of where the party is headed, which is why Republicans are foaming at the mouth over what they’ve dubbed ‘The Commie Corridor,’" said columnist Rachael Bade on her website.

The commentary has been withering. Joe Scarborough said on MS NOW: "The idea that you’re going to be able to brutalize children and women in Gaza with bombing that looks indiscriminate on TV day in and day out for years, that you’re going to be able to level half of Lebanon, that you’ll be able continue to allow thugs to run wild in the West Bank."

"And brutalizing Palestinians, brutalizing Christians in Bethlehem, brutalizing Christians across that area, along with Palestinian Muslims — especially Palestinian Muslims — blowing up Catholic churches in Gaza. Of course, I’m saying things that would relate to some of these people who are so shocked that Israel is in such low standing in America right now."

In a faceoff of Jewish Democrats, Rep. Dan Goldman was ousted by Mamdani’s pick, former comptroller Brad Lander, who argued that the congressman’s support for Israel made the U.S. "complicit in genocide."

Goldman, who rejects the characterization, said after his loss: 

"As history has taught us, anti-Semitic tropes and stereotypes — some of which I heard personally on this campaign — will ultimately be the undoing of our democracy if we all don't lean in and speak out."

Even in liberal New York City, which has the largest Jewish population outside Israel, it’s stunning that Israel and its cause have become so unpopular. 

There has been something of a freak-out among Democrats, including New York Attorney General Letitia James, who sued Trump for alleged financial fraud. James says she and others are "disappointed" in the outcome.

"Some of the candidates that he has supported are individuals who do not understand the politics of New York City, the cultural differences from district to district, who have not been part of the history and the struggle of some of these districts, and are relatively new to the body politic."

One of Mamdani’s three winning candidates, community organizer Darializa Avila Chevalier, walked out of a radio interview on Election Day when pressed about her past support on social media for abolishing the police, eliminating ICE, and declaring that "Israel doesn’t exist." Chevalier, saying only that she regrets past tweets in general, also wrote that "all deportation is wrong"– and used a sexual taunt against the NYPD.

Some of these offensive messages were posted as recently as 2022.

There’s little question that Mamdani has hurt his party for years to come. 

A New York Post editorial yesterday said "Mamdani Takes the Jew-Hate All the Way to 11," adding that he’s going "full-on anti-Semite."

Keep in mind that Big Apple voters ignored the endorsement of the party’s leaders, Hakeem Jeffries and Chuck Schumer, in backing the Muslim mayor’s candidates. 

There is great frustration with anything that reeks of the Democratic establishment, which is viewed as a bastion of empty promises and failing to deliver for the working class. 

That’s why Washington and Seattle also elected socialists for mayor.  

So there are several layers of politics here. You can write it off as a low-turnout race, with half as many Democrats showing up as for Mamdani’s election.

But given the socialist mayor’s determination to play Palestinian politics, it’s fair to say it all comes back to Bibi Netanyahu.