Let me get this straight. A foreign government’s diplomat walks into our country, sits down with a reporter, and tells the mayor of our largest city to shut up about a lobbying group, go pick up the garbage, and stop having opinions about the Middle East. And we’re supposed to nod along like good little citizens?
That’s what happened this week when Israeli Consul General Ofir Akunis decided to lecture Mayor Zohran Mamdani about the word “monsters.” Mamdani used it to describe AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, at a rally back in June. He said AIPAC are “monsters” who “move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power, so that they can turn us against one another.” Every single candidate Mamdani campaigned for won their race. So the word landed.
And Akunis’s response? He told Newsweek that the Germans used “the same words” toward Jewish people. So now calling a Washington lobbying firm “monsters” is the same as the Holocaust. I’m a mom of four. I’ve heard some stretch comparisons in my day. My eight-year-old once told me that making him eat broccoli was “basically prison.” This is that level of argument, except it’s coming from a grown man with a diplomatic title and a Newsweek microphone in his face.
Unknown authorUnknown author (BY) via wikimediaHere’s what I find absolutely rich. Akunis didn’t just stop at the Nazi comparison. He went on a whole rant. He told Mamdani, “Mind your own business! Find solutions to the terrible traffic issues here. Find solutions to the trash in the streets.” He said Mamdani doesn’t know “anything about the Israeli-Arab conflict. Nothing. Zero.” He went after Mamdani’s parents. His mother “makes some movies” and his father is “a so-called professor. Professor for nothing.”
Excuse me? A foreign diplomat is insulting an American mayor’s parents on the record? In our country? Can you imagine if any other nation’s representative did that? We’d be screaming from the rooftops. But because it’s Israel, we’re all supposed to pretend this is normal diplomatic discourse.
And then Akunis pivoted to this: “You don’t want the Sharia laws. You don’t want their main idea, that they will force their rules on you.” He’s talking to Americans. About an American mayor. Like we’re toddlers who need to be told what to fear. I’ve done my own research, sir. I don’t need a foreign consul to explain to me what I should be scared of this week.
Here’s the part they really don’t want you to notice. Mamdani won 33 percent of the Jewish vote in New York City. A Marist poll from April shows 45 percent of Jewish New Yorkers think the city is headed in the right direction under him. Nationally, his approval among Jewish respondents sits at 44 percent, according to AP-NORC. Netanyahu’s is at 32. Read that again. The Israeli prime minister is less popular with American Jews than the mayor Akunis is trying to smear.
ajay_suresh (CC BY 2.0) via Wikimedia CommonsTen rabbis did meet with Mamdani behind closed doors to ask him to tone down his rhetoric on Israel. That’s their right and that’s a real conversation worth having. But a Satmar Rebbe also publicly stuck up for Mamdani, calling the attacks on him a “dangerous provocation.” Funny how that part doesn’t make it into the headline.
Mamdani has been clear about what he means. He said AIPAC defends “a status quo for immorality” and uses dark money through shell organizations whose contributors are only revealed after an election. He’s talking about campaign finance. He’s talking about a lobbying group that pours money into American elections. Last I checked, that’s our business. Not Akunis’s.
Unfavorable views of Israel among Americans have jumped from 43 percent in 2022 to 62 percent this year, according to Pew. That’s not because some mayor said a word. That’s because people have eyes. They’ve seen what they’ve seen and they don’t need a diplomat to tell them they’re too dumb to understand it.
Akunis said, “Wake up now.” Oh, we’re awake. We’re plenty awake. That’s exactly what they’re worried about.