The Dangerous DSA

Children Of Israel Are Never Alone

Hey, beloved tribe.

How is everyone this week?

A couple quick things before we get into the heart of this newsletter:

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib’s new book — Hamas And Its Two Million Hostages — was released yesterday! It’s a very brief and illuminating read, only 86 pages. I finished most of it last night and can’t wait to get to the rest tonight. And I remain wildly excited that he’ll be with us on the evening of August 6th at 5:30 pm Pacific time, 8:30 pm Eastern to talk with us about it.

The best way to get the link is to join the Never Alone Book Club on Facebook.

This club was created to mount a fierce fight against the way Jews are being pushed out of the publishing world. As with my secret initiative, the idea is that we have the power to create bestsellers and a thriving Jewish literary community all by ourselves. We just need to find the collective will to organize and execute.

If — and only if — you are not on Facebook, and you plan to attend, please let me know in the poll below so I can get an accurate count. The interest in this event has been through the roof and I will need to purchase a Zoom package that can accommodate all who want to come.

Very important: if you asked for a link but didn’t hear back from me, PLEASE join the Never Alone Book Club on Facebook, find the event (under the Event tab), and RSVP. If you’re not on Facebook, let me know here — I will open the comment section to everyone, and I will make sure I get it to you.

If your financial situation at this time does not allow a book purchase, but you want the book, please message me privately. I think I have arranged book deliveries for all who asked, but if not, please remind me ASAP and I will get on it!

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Over at JUDITH Magazine, our non-fiction editor Howard Lovy published his interview with Rafael Medoff, who was slated to publish his graphic collection Cartoonists Against The Holocaust with Dark Horse Comics.

As this article’s introduction tells us:

Dr. Rafael Medoff spent fifteen years assembling Cartoonists Against the Holocaust, a collection of editorial cartoons that tried to warn Americans, in real time, about the destruction of European Jewry. Dark Horse Comics accepted the book. Then his editor, Craig Yoe, demanded he add text accusing Israel of genocide as a condition of publication. Medoff refused, and Dark Horse canceled the book.

It’s an important story and I urge you all to read it when you can.

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So yesterday, I was on a scheduled phone call with a new acquaintance and I heard myself articulating a primary worry of mine out loud for the first time.

He’d just said something like: “Mamdani’s overarching focus is on Israel instead of on doing good things for New York City.”

I found myself disagreeing with this — not on his primary focus, but on the assertion he’s doing nothing good for NYC.

The fact is, while he’s admitted he does not have the ability to make buses free, which was one of his central campaign promises, he is doing some things that NYC truly needs and which are long overdue — including lowering said fares, at least, for those most in need.

He’s also committed to taxing the rich and announced a new special tax for second-home-owners with pied-a-tierres worth more than $5M, which is absolutely the right thing to do.

He’s created a new free pre-school program for 2,000 two-year-olds with plans to expand to 10,000 in the near future.

He’s achieved a rent freeze on regulated apartments.

He offered an evening out for parents by providing free supervised entertainment for their kids at a series of local parks.

I applaud these and other measures he’s taken on behalf of the most vulnerable New Yorkers.

I get no pleasure from disliking this man, who — at least from one angle — represents the polar political opposite of Donald Trump and his greed-driven enablers.

And if he ever finds it within himself to truly represent all New Yorkers, and to put their collective welfare above his own personal agenda, I would be more than willing to support him.

But he continues to alarm me mightily on two different fronts.

The first, needless to say, is the Jewish front.

The absence of any Jews but antizionist tokens in the vast majority of his hires.

His blood libel and Holocaust inversion preached to all his constituents from the mayoral pulpit.

His ousting of perfectly competent, accomplished, hard-working and popular Democrats fighting tooth and nail for affordable housing and other benefits for NYC’s working class in order to install fringe DSA demagogues with no political experience and endless incendiary rhetoric.

Which brings me to the second front: Mamdani’s own party, the DSA itself.

To put it plainly: the DSA is batshit.

They just rolled out an updated version of their platform Workers Deserve More.

Here are just a few of their agenda items:

1. They want to abolish capitalism;

2. They want to abolish national borders;

3. They want to extend the vote to non-citizens;

4. They want to abolish prisons;

5. They want to abolish deportation altogether, even for the most violent criminals.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Anyone can live here, no questions asked! Anyone can determine our country’s political future. Drug traffickers, fentanyl pushers, violent gangs, come on in and make yourself at home! And go ahead and terrorize, murder, distribute wildly addictive and destructive substances to anyone anywhere, rape and pillage as you please. You won’t be arrested or jailed. You won’t even be asked to leave.

The good news is: there is no worry that America as a whole is going to get behind anything resembling this drivel in any way, shape or form.

The bad news is: only the Democrats could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory in the midterms this fall, by welcoming this disastrous brand into the tent and scaring the country further into Trump’s corner.

Why, oh why, can’t we ever have nice things? Why can’t we have someone with Mamdani’s good looks, energy, charisma, optimism and resolve without this toxic cloud around him? Why can’t we have an antidote to Trump that isn’t deeply compromised and frightening? Why can’t we have someone doing good things for the city and not have to fear he’s a Trojan horse?

Many nefarious groups have come to power by doing good things for the community, by providing desperately needed and appreciated social services. Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall political machine is one example that comes to mind. The Nation of Islam is another. And for that matter, Hamas is yet another. All these entities consolidated huge political influence and/or domination through providing their communities with help that was in very short supply by other means. But it didn’t mean they were benevolent; it meant they were clever.

To be clear: I’m not saying Mamdani is Hamas or the Nation of Islam.

I’m saying that I’d love to love him, and trust him, but I don’t, and I hope he does not continue to endanger Jews, and that the DSA doesn’t do fatal harm to our electoral prospects in November.

Okay, fam. I’ll be back with you very soon.

As always, love and fortitude in the meantime.

Am Yisrael Chai.