For 101 years, NA’AMAT USA has stood for the belief that justice is indivisible. You cannot build a more just world by deciding which community’s safety is negotiable.
Last week, at a Get Out the Vote rally in Brooklyn, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani called AIPAC and its supporters “monsters” — Americans engaged in legitimate civic advocacy, cast as enemies of democracy. We strongly reject this framing. Participants in democracy are not monsters.
Disagreement with Israeli policy is not antisemitism. But rhetoric that frames Jewish communal power as a uniquely corrupting force has a history, and that history ends badly. Every time.
That history is made more troubling by a glaring inconsistency: Israel’s lobbying and soft-power spending in the United States is smaller than that of China, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and numerous other nations. Mayor Mamdani’s singular focus on AIPAC is not a principled stand against foreign influence. It is selective targeting — taking legitimate public frustration with political corruption and redirecting it toward Jews and Jewish institutions. Power-hungry political figures have used this maneuver throughout history. We will name it plainly.
You do not get to call a community monsters and then ask for their votes. We see that move. We have seen it before. NA’AMAT USA was built by women who refused to be silent when silence was the safer choice. We are their daughters.
We will not be silent. We will not be afraid. And we will not pretend that calling for unity at the end of a speech erases what was said in the middle of it.
