There is no doubt in my mind that Zohran Mamdani was elected mayor of New York City on November 4, 2025, because of the Hamas massacre of Israelis on October 7, 2023.
The world has changed. And it changed because of the brutal, heinous, unconscionable acts perpetrated on October 7. It changed in ways that Israelis, Jews living outside of Israel, and lovers of Jews have yet to fully comprehend.
The ripple effects are dramatic.
We are only now beginning to reel from some of those effects. Israeli academics are being shunned in universities around the world. Israelis are being told they are not welcome in countries where they once enjoyed leisurely vacations.
Being Jewish has become a liability. The city reputed to be home to more Jews than any other city in the world will now be governed by a man who publicly, openly, undeniably, hates them.
New York’s mayoral election lit up the political arena. Brighter than the lights of Broadway, Mamdani’s election illuminated the open hostility toward Israel and Jews and the simultaneous warm embrace much of the world is giving Israel’s enemies.
It is no longer a political liability to openly show disdain for Israel and Jews; it is an asset.
For too long, the focus of the impact of October 7 has been internal. The focus was the effect on Israel – and, at first, understandably so: on soldiers, on families, on the economy, and on the Arab and Muslim world.
What Israeli leadership missed, or ignored, was the impact October 7 had on the Diaspora.
Yes, Israel has managed to resuscitate its military reputation, severely damaged by October 7. The Jewish state has managed to reverse the glee of so many in the Arab world who immediately rejoiced in Hamas’s undoing of the image of Israel the invincible.
Across the Muslim world, those pundits who said, “Look at what Hamas did; Israel can be defeated,” have now been silenced.
It took beeper and walkie-talkie attacks and targeted assassinations and attacks against Iran – but those voices are no longer heard. Israel is once again the superpower of the Middle East.
The rise of mainstream Jew-hatred
The voices that are heard, loud and clear, are coming from Jew-haters not in the Middle East, but in the liberal West.
No one is talking about the damage that was done to the many Jewish communities in the West by October 7. Attention was placed on pro-Hamas disorder on campuses and pro-Hamas demonstrations on city streets across the US and Europe.
Events were brushed off as one-offs. As teenagers in a few elite schools and their extremist faculty. As bored Americans with the need to find a cause. As disenfranchised youth happy to be part of a group, even if that group were keffiyeh-wearing hoodlums.
Yet these events are not simply a show of dwindling support for Israel.
They are an outright rejection of the Jewish state. This movement is the public embrace of Hamas and their ideology of destroying Israel and Jews. For them, both are synonymous.
I cannot underscore this more.
What has emerged is mainstream justification of the destruction of Israel and the hatred of Jews. This new philosophy is presented as a moral justification for destroying Israel and those who support it.
Hamas and Hamas supporters justify their murder and violence as moral resistance against Israel because they see it as an illegitimate state.
The election of Zohran Mamdani in New York City proves that Jew/Israel-hatred is not a fringe outlier on campaigns at elite campuses – it is a serious phenomenon.
The unease caused by The Squad of Jew-haters in the USA pre-Mamdani pales compared to the reality of Jew/Israel hate post his election.
Before Mamdani, these ideas were considered quirky and extremist. They were disregarded as marginal. October 7 thrust Mamdani and his marginal ideals into the mainstream, where they were well received.
The man who sought to be mayor did not distance himself from anti-Jewish, anti-Israel points of view. He rode the wave, and that wave translated into overwhelming support.
The eradication of Israel has become the new status quo among a significant part of the electorate. Its supporters reject the old status quo – they now embrace a new worldview that positions Israel as an abusive, colonial, Western power.
A view that is in perfect step with the Democratic Socialists of America. A view that is, in its own forms, spreading throughout Europe.
Pre-October 7, these attitudes about Jews and Israel would have been toxic. But not anymore. For the growing numbers of those who hate Israel and support Hamas – Gaza and the Palestinians have become the epicenter of the moral world.
That is why they do not veil their hatred.
Israeli and Diaspora leadership must work quickly to stem this tide before the movement gets even stronger, jeopardizing and endangering more Jewish communities.
After October 7, Israel restored its military prowess. Now Israel must restore its public reputation and the Jewish state’s moral prowess.
The writer is a columnist and a social and political commentator. Watch his TV show Thinking Out Loud on JBS.