How New York Democrats Came to Embrace Anti-Zionism

Fifty years ago this November, Daniel Patrick Moynihan became an unlikely political star. Then serving as America’s ambassador to the United Nations, Moynihan led the charge against the UN’s infamous Arab- and Soviet-backed “Zionism is Racism” resolution. He could not prevent its passage—the resolution wasn’t repealed until after the fall of the Soviet Union—but Moynihan’s eloquent defense of Israel, the United States, and liberal democracy electrified the nation.

In 1976, still riding that momentum, Moynihan won the Democratic nomination for New York’s Senate seat. He went on to serve four terms with little primary or general election opposition in each of his reelection campaigns.

Today’s New York Democrats are a far cry from those of Moynihan’s era. They widely embrace Israel skepticism and “anti-Zionism.” What caused this shift? In short: growing political power of the Democratic Socialists of America, the Working Families Party, and other far-left organizations hostile to the Jewish state.

Moynihan was not just another New York politician. Before he was a senator, he wrote extensively on urban poverty, family breakdown, and the pathologies associated with the modern welfare state. His willingness to serve under both Republican and Democratic presidents reflected his conviction that intellectual seriousness mattered more than partisan conformity. At the UN, his defense of Israel was part of a broader defense of liberal, Western values—the idea that the United States had the duty and the moral authority to oppose attempts to delegitimize its allies.

In Moynihan’s era, New York Democrats were among Israel’s most fervent champions. New York City mayor Ed Koch, a moderate pragmatist, built a national following in the 1970s and 1980s in part on his willingness to confront fellow Democrats—including rising progressive star Jesse Jackson—over their hostility to the Jewish state. During the 1977 New York City mayoral primary, Bella Abzug, a far-left congresswoman from Manhattan, fought with Koch over who was more supportive of Israel.

One Empire State Democrat’s support for Israel even cost him his life. Robert F. Kennedy, the former U.S. attorney general elected to represent New York in the Senate in 1964, was one of Israel’s most steadfast defenders on Capitol Hill. His assassin, a Palestinian, claimed he murdered Kennedy because of the senator’s support for Israel during the 1967 Six Day War.

How times have changed. The new face of New York Democrats is Zohran Mamdani, the party’s 2025 nominee for mayor of New York City. Mamdani proudly calls himself an anti-Zionist, condemned Israel’s military campaign in Gaza as “on the brink of a genocide” only a week after the October 7 attacks, and backed legislation hostile to Israel as a state assemblyman. Mamdani has even vowed that he would order the arrest of Benjamin Netanyahu should the Israeli prime minister visit the Big Apple—a move likely to run afoul of federal law.

In another era, a politician with such views would have been consigned to the margins of New York Democratic politics. Today, the state’s highest-ranking Democrats have embraced him. Governor Kathy Hochul, Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, and State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins all lined up behind Mamdani’s mayoral candidacy in recent weeks. That the most powerful trio in state government would publicly endorse a candidate so openly hostile to Israel shows just how thoroughly the political ground has shifted.

Why would these savvy New York politicos support Mamdani? The answer is simple: power, politics, and primaries. The old Democratic county political machines have lost control of the primary voting electorate. The new force in Democratic primary politics is the radical coalition made up of the Working Families Party (WFP), the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and a collection of allied nonprofits. This new machine carried Mamdani to victory in this year’s 2025 Democratic primary.

The WFP and DSA take a backseat to no one in their hatred of the Jewish state. From the earliest days, the WFP called for Israel not to respond to the October 7 attacks. The DSA has gone even further: it recently passed an explicitly anti-Zionist resolution and now claims the ability to expel members and yank endorsements of candidates who it believes are insufficiently hostile to Israel.

None of this is lost on Hochul, Heastie, or Stewart-Cousins. Hochul—who ironically once worked on Moynihan’s Senate staff—will seek reelection in 2026. She already has a primary opponent, Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado, running against her from the left.

Heastie and Stewart-Cousins lead Democratic conferences with growing far-left contingents closely in sync with the WFP and DSA. For Hochul, Heastie, and Stewart-Cousins, not backing Mamdani is just bad politics.

Not every player in New York Democratic politics has played along. Jay Jacobs, the longtime chair of the state Democratic Party and a moderate from Long Island, recently announced that he would not support Mamdani’s candidacy. In response, many on the left have demanded his resignation as the state party boss. These calls haven’t just come from professional activists, either: the deputy leader of the State Senate Democrats, Mike Gianaris of Queens, has called on Jacobs to quit as party leader.

That Jacobs’s non-endorsement is controversial demonstrates the philosophical chasm between Mamdani and the remaining Moynihan Democrats. For Moynihan, defending Israel was part of the defense of liberal democracy. His stand at the UN was not merely about opposing one shameful General Assembly resolution. In Moynihan’s formulation, to remain silent while tyrannies defined Israel as racist was to accept a moral inversion that would corrode the West itself.

Sadly, the growing hostility to Israel in New York mirrors a national rise in hatred of Jews and the Jewish state. From campus protests to political rallies, across the political spectrum, views once confined to the ideological fringes are creeping into mainstream discourse. The normalization of such views should alarm all Americans.

This may be remembered as the year Moynihan’s Democratic Party finally died in the Empire State—when an older political order was vanquished by a radical new elite, one that sees Israel as an enemy.

Top Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images