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JDL Poster, Rally, July 26, 2026, Manhattan
The Rally
Taking the 1 Train from Greenwich Village to the Upper West Side of Manhattan on a Sunday morning is a strangely pleasant experience. Families going to church, bikers with their bicycles in tow, men and women in their exercise gear, others mostly going to recreate or visit friends and relatives. I was going to attend a “United Against Hate” really which was really a Jewish anti-Mamdani rally. I first heard of it because it was posted on the “JDL 613” Facebook page. “JDL 613” is a relatively new organization modeled on Meir Kahane’s Jewish Defense League (founded in May 1968 in response to the Ocean-Hill Brownsville NYC school strike). It is so extreme that even some JDL branches have disassociated themselves from them. “JDL 613” posted about it as if it was their rally, and so I figured I would see maybe a dozen aging men and a few women waving “Never Again” banners and chanting racist slogans. But I was wrong. The rally was sponsored by numerous groups, most visibly “United Against Hate.” The rally had about 150 people, far less than reported in The Jerusalem Post (“hundreds of people”) and other news outlets.
A few things precipitated such a rally on a warm Sunday morning in July. I will mention three.
First, Mamdani’s video making it clear that while law did not permit him to arrest the Prime Minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu when he will visit the UN this fall, he was not welcome in New York City, where Mamdani serves as mayor. I am quite sure he will come anyway. It should be noted that there is an active arrest warrant for Netanyahu from the International Criminal Court, so the accusation was not baseless, even if one thinks it was inappropriate.
(A new poll by The Economist/YouGov cited in Haaretz, July 28, showed that 49% of Americans think that Netanyahu should be arrested if he comes to America)
Second, Mamdani sent a message to the Jews of NYC wishing them an easy fast in commemoration of Tisha b’Av, the day marking the destruction of the ancient Jerusalem Temples. (Most Jews in NYC not only do not commemorate Tisha b’Av but do know when it is or what it’s about). An on-line search notes that the only other mayor offered such remarks was Eric Adams. Apparently, the Jewish mayors Michael Bloomberg and Abe Beam seem to have forgotten about Tisha b’Av. Mamdani who mentioned the “resiliency” of the Jews, but he did not mention the Jerusalem Temple or the land of Israel. He was thus accused of denying the Jews as a people, which is disproven by the fact that he is acknowledged the Jews “as a people” publicly numerous times. If you already know what a person thinks, it really doesn’t matter what they say.
Third, considering the terrible attacks in the city where an apparently deranged assailant stabbed two men, first an Asian man and then a Jewish man, Mamdani issued a statement that in normal times would have been perfectly appropriate, but now was used to “confirm” his antisemitism. This is because he did not state unequivocally that the incident was a purely antisemitic act, even as the NYPD investigating the incident with the assailant in custody had not yet come to that conclusion. The assailant was subsequently accused of “hate crimes.”
In some way it all doesn’t matter. Because again, if you think you know what someone thinks, it doesn’t matter what they say. This is the hole we Jews find ourselves in.
I reached the crowd of about 150 at 10 am. The rally was already underway. There were signs and banners, for example, “Mamdani has Blood on His Hands,” “I Won’t be Your Dhimmi” “Jew-Hatred in America – Fight it,” “Antizionism Gets Jews Killed” “Sharia Law is Not For Me,” “Antizionism is anti-Jewish Racism,” and two JDL “Never Again” signs. The speakers, Jews and non-Jews, who were not easy to hear given the poor amplification, were rousing the crowd with anti-Mamdani chants, accusing him of complicity in these stabbings, and voicing criticism of anyone who uses terms “apartheid” or “genocide” in relation to Israel.
The crowd was not young--mostly, I would say, ranging from mid to late 40s to mid-80s, although there were some younger people mixed in. Some kippot but not as many as one would think (one must consider the baseball hat I suppose). It seemed to me the crowd was more female than male, but not by a wide margin. Mostly, the crowd was angry. That did not surprise me. What surprised me was how hateful it was.
The rabbis said that the Second Jerusalem Temple was destroyed because of “baseless hatred” (sinat hinam). But they buried the lead. The lead is that baseless hatred in its time is always viewed as justified hatred by those who spout it. No one thinks they are engaging in “baseless hatred.” Therein lies the trap.
Across the street from the rally were about 20-25 male haredim of the anti-Zionist Neturei Karta group, as expected. They often attend these rallies. They stood with signs, “Zionism is not Judaism” “Thank You Mayor Mamdani, “Netanyahu is a War Criminal,” “Torah Demands All Palestine Returned to Palestinian Sovereignty.” All signs we’ve seen before. One man spoke from a small megaphone but did not disrupt those on the other side of the street. Between them, separating them, on Amsterdam Avenue stood the NYPD. What they were thinking, I have no idea.
Others have written about the rally. I am not writing to express my views on Mandani. I am writing about something else that I personally found deeply disturbing. What was frankly frightening to me was how the anger in the crowd morphed into hatred. The hatred of Mamdani soon turned against the haredim.
I want to recount a few exchanges I had with people in the crowd to illustrate this impression, then consider its historical context and what it might mean today.
From Anger to Hatred: Some Exchanges
# 1 – I was standing next to three elderly women, and one was telling others that those haredim were not real Jews. She was told they were actors being paid to do this.” The others nodded. This is not an uncommon thing said in these rallies. I politely said to the woman, “Excuse me, but they are not actors, they are Jews. They just think differently than you.” She sneered, “They are actors,” to which I responded, “I know some of them.” She was a bit shocked and said, “Do you agree with them?” I responded diplomatically, “I’m listening to both sides.” She then flew into a tantrum with a torrent of curses, “F-you. F-you. If I get a screwdriver in my chest, you are guilty. Go to them. You are not a Jew,” etc. etc. The others nodded. Then she turned to others in the crowd, pointing at me and said, “He is one of them, he is one of them.” A crowd started to gather. I am not very skittish about such situations but at that moment I palpably felt a threat of violence. I knew this could get out of hand very quickly—not accusing me of loving Mamdani, but accusing me of agreeing with the Jews across the street. At that moment another woman approached me and said something with an Israeli accent. I answered her in Hebrew, and we began to converse in Hebrew. The other women were a bit confused and walked away. Tragedy averted.
# 2 – The Israeli woman I spoke with was telling me how the haredim “over there” steal Yemenite children, and she saw one who had “dark skin,” and he might be a stolen child. (There is a history to this, but this is beside the point). In any case, she said to me “80% of Israelis hate Bibi. I hate Bibi.” When I asked why he kept getting re-elected, she shrugged. When I asked why she hated Bibi she said, “because he was responsible for October 7, he was the Prime Minister.” A fairly rational answer. Then I said, “What about Gaza?” She replied, “everyone in Gaza had it coming to them.” “Everyone?” I asked, and she said, “yes, everyone.” She then said, “Ask them (the haredim) if they even know where Gaza is. I bet they don’t.” I replied, “I kind of think they do. But anyway,” I continued, “how many people in this crowd can read a verse from the Torah in the original?” Her reply was illustrative. “Very few,” she said, “but that’s not the point, that’s not the point at all.” I thanked her. We parted ways amicably. I wasn’t asking that question to be cynical. I wanted to impress upon her that for those people “over there” across the street from them, Jewishness is bound inextricably to Judaism as they see it. The Haredi counter-protesters are “believers” in the covenant. They believe God is the redeemer.
# 3 –Walking away from the Israeli woman, I encountered a Modern Orthodox man, clean shaven with a kippah on his head screaming as loud as he could toward the haredim shouting, “Amalek!” “You are Amalek! Amalek!,” he continued. A friend came to pull him back from getting closer to them. “I knew the man who was stabbed the other day,” he said. Okay, I can understand his anger at the antisemitic act, but the haredim are “Amalek”? The haredim are responsible for your friend being stabbed by a deranged Hispanic man? This coincided with numerous men and woman yelling at the haredim. “You are not Jews! You are not Jews!”—which one must admit is a bit odd, even macabre.
Another gentleman upped the ante. Wearing an Israel flag as a cape he walked over to the haredim and yelled, “You don’t belong on this earth,” sneered, and walked away. Another man danced in the street, laughing and taunting the haredim, shouting, “Hey what kind of bagel do you like? What kind of bagel? I bet you like the rainbow bagel, rainbow bagel for you” and laughed (I assume accusing of him of being gay). In any other context that would be considered an antisemitic comment (and a homophobic one as well). Not here. At the “United Against Hate” rally hating the anti-Zionist haredim was precisely the point. It was part of the “unity.” They too are the enemies of Jews, as strange as that may sound.
The haredim did not respond. Agree with them or disagree, they are disciplined.
I walked across the street and stood on the side of the haredim to witness more interactions. When people from the rally walked by the haredim, they often cursed them as they passed. I saw two incidents where two different women physically lunged at the haredi, trying to grab them, or hit them. The NYPD delicately grabbed their arms and pulled them away. That was the one time I heard a haredi man respond to one of the women, calling her a “Zionazi.”
I watched the waves of hatred of Mamdani in the crowd waft from the speakers and cheers into the vitriol against the haredim across the street. One could almost see it happening in real time.
# 4 - Later, I sat at an outdoor table of the Gelato shop directly behind the haredim, and a woman sat down next to me. Looking at her, I said, “Confused?” She said, “I am not Jewish. I am Italian and grew up Catholic. I live here. I’m a photographer. Can you tell me what the hell is going on?” We then had a long conversation about Jews, Judaism, Zionism, modernity, how different Jews view the state differently. I explained as best I could why the protestors are so against Mandani and why the haredim weren’t. She was receptive and asked many questions. “Why the hatred, why do ‘they’ dress that way”? It was a nice conversation.
Afterward I thought, what do all these people walking by Sunday morning on their way for brunch think of all this? The NYPD protecting the Jews… from the Jews. What is going on? Whatever they thought, it could not have been good. The optics were terrible. Terrible. Jews on one side basically yelling for Mamdani’s deportation with photos of Mamdani holding up bloody hands. And worse. And on the other side, Jews saying the state of Israel is anti-Judaism. But the conflicting messages were likely drowned out by the sheer expression of hatred and bile palpable from the crowd.
Meir Kahane 2.0?
I published a book some years ago on Meir Kahane. I spent months in the archives reading documents of the years between 1968-1975 when the JDL was most active. Was this a Kahanist rally? Formally, no. But there was something very Kahanist about it. First, the focus on the mayor of NYC. We should remember that the Ocean-Hill-Brownsville School Strike that was the occasion of the founding of the JDL had Mayor John Lindsay at the center of the storm. First, Kahane chastised Lindsay for having a parlor meeting with members of the Black Panthers. Second, Lindsay had supported the head of the UTF (United Teachers Federation), Albert Shanker (a liberal Jew Kahane hated as well, who marched with MLK in Selma a few years before in 1965), in trying to avert the strike. Kahane claimed Lindsay was an antisemite because he didn’t crack down on the antisemitism of the mostly Black and Hispanic Ocean Hill-Brownsville Parents Association that attempted to fire white (many Jewish) teachers and replace them with Black teachers. In other words, one of the first acts of the JDL was to take aim at the mayor in 1968.
Later, in August 1991 an unfortunate car accident, involving one of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s motor envoy, killed a young Black boy, Gavin Kato. This sparked what was known as the “Crown Heights Riots” where an Australian yeshiva student, Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death in the early morning of August 20 by Black youths. Mayor David Dinkins, NYC’s first Black mayor was blamed by many in the Jewish community as being responsible for Rosenbaum’s death (“blood on his hands”). Setting aside Dinkins’ error in not acting sooner to quell the riots, Jews claimed it was because he was an antisemite. There was no evidence of that. But again, the mayor was at the center.
And so here we are today. There is one difference between 1968 and 1991, and 2026. In the two earlier cases it had nothing to do with Israel, they had to do with Jews in NYC. In 2026 it seems to have everything to do with Israel. That distinction is not insignificant in terms of where American Jewry is today.
One remnant of a true Kahane rally was Rabbi Avi Weiss. Rabbi Weiss cut his teeth as an early career activist as a colleague and supporter of Kahane. He spoke at this rally and said that Mamdani was the worst antisemite we have had to deal with in a long time. “I like my antisemite directly in front of me,” Weiss said, “Mamdani hugs me and stabs me in the back.” Right out of Kahane’s playbook. Then he chanted “J’accuse, J’accuse” (“I accuse” referring to Emile Zola’s letter to the French government defending Alfred Dreyfus against the accusation of treason against France). Weiss had posted a Facebook post July 23rd he called “J’Accuse” claiming Mandani had turned the state of Israel “into a collective Dreyfus.” The utter absurdity of the logic of such a claim is beyond the scope of this examination. But these accusations are not about logic. Dreyfus was innocent on all counts of treason. Israel, whether you think it defensible or not, utterly destroyed an entire society, killing tens of thousands of children, maiming tens of thousands of others. The comparison is clever but egregious on every level. To the dead children of Gaza, to the memory and family of Dreyfus, and to the sovereign state of Israel.
Regardless, while the rally was not Kahanist in intent, it may have been so in effect. Weiss’ appearance and remarks gave it historical context, but the tenor of the whole event was certainly reminiscent of those heady days of yore. And equally frightening.
Rally as Deflection
How much of the anti-Mandani movement is itself a deflection away from what is happening in Gaza and the West Bank today? That is certainly a matter of conjecture and enters a kind of psychologizing that can be speculative and spurious. But it is also not implausible, especially here. Literally 24 hours before the rally, Jewish West Bank settlers burned down at least two mosques, destroyed numerous villages, including homes and farmland, and killed nine Palestinians. Two Israeli soldiers were killed, one of them by friendly fire. Thus far, only two Jewish settlers have been detained by the police while dozens of Palestinians have been arrested from various villages.
Thus, at least three pogroms happened in the West Bank within 48 hours before the rally. Of course, none of this was mentioned, even the word “Gaza” was not mentioned except to claim that anyone who says Gaza was a genocide is a fool and/or an antisemite. Literally, the West Bank was burning with hatred and violence, settlers running roughshod over Palestinian civilians under the protection of the IDF, and in NYC’s Upper West Side, Jews were spewing hate for the mayor for not protecting them from a crime he firmly denounced.
The irony of course is that the Jews who are really threatened are those most identifiable as Jews—that is, those anti-Zionist Haredi counter-protesters across the street, not the Jewish woman in a T-shirt, jeans, and aviator sunglasses among the anti-Mamdani protesters. But those haredim, who were also the target of hate, not of Mamdani but of their fellow Jews, those “enemies” of “the Jews” who were “probably not even Jews, but paid actors” were not afraid to walk in the world as Jews. How could a “real Jew” think that way, a protester asked? They must be imposters. But of course, agree or not, Jews have thought that way for a long time. But how would they even know? They couldn’t. And therein lies part of the tragedy of the Jews today.
Coda: Going “Off the Rails”?
To me, the event was illustrative of a collective collapse of both perspective and moral conscience. It’s not about the positions held; there can be robust disagreement and debate about all these issues. The collapse is the dangerous descent into the “friend-enemy” dichotomy the Nazi legal scholar Carl Schmitt called “political theology.” This is not particular to Jews, or anyone, but rather possible for every collective. No collective rallying around a state, any state, is immune from fascism.
As I stood and watched people look angrily at me when that woman yelled, pointing at me, “he is one of them, he is one of them,” I thought of Jacob Israel de Haan (1881-1924), the openly gay Dutch Jew who moved to Palestine (he wrote the forsr gay novel in Dutch Pijpelijnjes in1905) , become ultra-Orthodox and represented the anti-Zionist “Old Settlement” Jews in Jerusalem. He was hated by the Zionists (he was once a member of the Mizrahi Zionist movement) and told to desist from his anti-Zionist activities. He refused. In the morning of June 30, 1924, coming out of a synagogue in Jerusalem after saying kaddish for his recently departed mother de Haan was approached by Avraham Tehomi, a member of the Irgun and the Haganah, who asked him for the time, then drew a pistol and shot de Haan at point blank range, killing him within minutes. Tehomi fled the scene. The rumor was started that an Arab killed de Haan, but the facts got in the way and soon the story emerged that the assassination was the work of the Haganah, the official Jewish militia in the Yishuv. Yosef Hecht of the Haganah admitted to ordering the assassination and said he didn’t regret it. One could of course mention Yigal Amir’s assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and his continued status among some radical settlers, and the assassination of the Labor Zionist Haym Arlosoroff by right-wing Zionists on a Tel Aviv beach June 16, 1933.
Jacob Israel de Haan - murdered by Avraham Tehomi, June 30, 1924, Jerusalem
I am not being hyperbolic in saying after attending the rally, that we are not far from there. Not far at all. When anger turns to hate, the impermissible suddenly become permissible, even obligatory.
I am not interested in debating what Mayor Mamdani thinks, whether he is or is not an antisemite. And I am as concerned as anyone about the safety of Jews in NYC; my mother lives there, my nieces live there, my sister works there, my stepson lives there, and we spend a lot of time there. I am more concerned what, and who, we are becoming. And how we are justifying it.
I seriously submit to my Jewish brothers and sisters that the world is watching us and wondering, like the Italian photographer on Amsterdam Avenue, “what is happening to the Jews?” What are we becoming? And why? A hateful people is an ugly people. We are becoming an ugly people.
I too am asking that question. “What is happening to the Jews?” And after the “Unite Against Hate” rally, I know less than I did before, and I worry more than I did before.
Shaul
Thank you Shaul.
Besides for being one of the most thoughtful Jewish intellectuals of today, you're also a fantastic writer!
A tragically interesting piece about where we are today. Thank you for writing it.
May I offer one possible historical correction that I as an old-timer am very aware of which you may not be?
When you identify Albert Shanker as a liberal who marched with Dr. King in Selma, that is not what he is famous (or infamous) for. While he may indeed have marched in Selma in 1965, by 1968 he was leading the UFT’s largely Jewish membership in fierce opposition to Black community organizing for community control of schools. This was both a symbol of and an aggravating factor in the breaking of the Black-Jewish alliance that had prevailed in the early sixties Civil Rights movement. So well known was this that Woody Allen joked in one of his movies about Shanker having nuclear weapons.