In 1993, I gave a speech to The Heritage Foundation in Washington titled “Making Sense of Jewish Liberalism.” I explained that for secular Jews, liberalism was a substitute religion that was in no way connected to authentic Judaism.
What was absurd in 1993 has become suicidal in 2025. With Israel fighting for its survival and American Jews besieged, Jewish liberals cling more tenaciously than ever to their ersatz religion.
The United Jewish Appeal/Jewish Federation of New York is donating $1 million in humanitarian aid for the residents of the Gaza Strip – the same people who put Hamas into power and still condone the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, such as the beheadings of Jewish babies in front of their mothers.
While observing that Hamas was responsible for the war in Gaza, UJA-Federation of New York CEO Eric Goldstein insisted, “We must hold tight to what has always anchored the Jewish people: the belief that all human life is sacred.”
Mr. Goldstein forgot an important qualifier: “innocent” human life. Were the lives of Nazi concentration guards sacred? Are the lives of Hamas terrorists sacred? Mr. Goldstein is quoting the Torah of Temple Beth.
Judaism has always distinguished between the innocent and those who gang rape and sexually mutilate captives. The only ones starving in Gaza are Israeli hostages. An Aug. 18 editorial in the New York Post asks, “With every photo of a ‘starving’ Gazan proving fake, how can you believe famine claims?”
UJA has a policy of not helping Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, home to half a million Jews and erroneously designated the “occupied territories.” It won’t build a playground in the settlement of Kiryat Arba, but it will send truckloads of food, which probably will be stolen by Hamas, to Gaza.
This is standard operating procedure for Jewish liberals.
In 2020, while U.S. cities were burning, 600 Jewish organizations took out a full-page ad in The New York Times (their Holy of Holies) in support of the antisemitic Black Lives Matter movement. For these Jewish leaders, virtue-signaling always trumps the safety of the community they claim to represent.
Their response to Marxist New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, a clear and present danger to American Jews and to Israel, can be understood only in this context. Except for the Anti-Defamation League, there has been nothing but crickets from this quarter since the Democratic primary.
Jewish officeholders are even worse. Rep. Jerrold Nadler, co-chair of the Congressional Jewish Caucus, who is terrified of being primaried out of office, kissed the liberal ring and endorsed state Rep. Mamdani. Although stopping short of an endorsement, Senate Democratic Leader Charles E. Schumer praised Mr. Mamdani for “running an impressive campaign that connected with New Yorkers.”
In 1932, Adolf Hitler ran an impressive campaign that connected with the German people.
No major party candidate for an important office has ever been as manifestly hostile to Israel and Jews as the Democratic nominee for mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population in the world.
Mr. Mamdani has accused Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. He supports the Boycott, Sanctions and Divestment movement, which seeks to economically emasculate Israel. He says he supports Israel’s right to exist, but not as a Jewish state. This is akin to saying one supports America’s right to exist, but not as a constitutional republic.
He avoided condemning the Oct. 7, 2023, atrocities by saying he mourned the “hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.” Really? Did Hamas butcher civilians in Gaza City and Ramallah?
He added that he was sure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would use the attack as an excuse to increase the violence, just as Franklin D. Roosevelt used Pearl Harbor as an excuse to go to war with Japan.
Mr. Mamdani refuses to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt decries as “an explicit call for violence” that “celebrates and glorifies savagery and terror.”
As a member of the New York State Assembly, Mr. Mamdani refused to sign a resolution memorializing the Holocaust.
Despite all this, one poll shows Commissar Mamdani with a 17-point lead among Jewish voters.
Liberalism is the perfect pseudo-religion for alienated Jews. It substitutes leftist dogma for biblical truth and offers a vision of the promised land as a woke utopia.
Jews for Mamdani and Useful Idiots to Aid Palestine are like Catholics for Choice on Abortion. Their real religion negates their ostensible faith.
This column was first published at the Washington Times.