Iran’s exploits in battle and Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in the Democratic Party’s primary in New York, have shattered the myth of Zionism’s military and political invincibility.
By Raji Krishna
Colombo, June 27 – Two historic events occurred in June 2025. In the 12-day war in West Asia, an avowedly Islamic Iran humbled the fabled Israeli-US military machine. And in the key Democratic party primary ahead of the November Mayoral election in New York, Zohran Mamdani, an avowedly leftist/secular/pro-Palestine/non-White/Asian-African/ immigrant, humbled former Governor Andrew M. Cuomo, a candidate who wore his links with Zionism and capitalism on his sleeves.
Iran’s exploits in battle and Zohran Mamdani’s stunning victory in the Democratic Party’s primary in New York, have shattered the myth of Zionism’s military and political invincibility.
Prior to the June Israel-Iran war, no Islamic country could match Israel militarily. The Zionist State had won all the wars which it had fought against the Arab States since 1948-49. And sadly, with every war, Israel only expanded its territory. A Palestinian State also remained an unreachable goal.
But the performance of the Iranian war machine in June was so different that it forced the US to enter the war on Israel’s side and save it from ignominy. Correctly assessing the plight of Israel, US President Donald Trump unilaterally declared a ceasefire. But Iran’s showing against the combined might of US and Israel will make Israel think twice before resorting to war again at least in the near future.
New York Democratic Primary
In New York, which has the largest Jewish population (1.2 million) outside of Israel, Zohran Mamdani, a 33-year old Muslim of Ugandan and Indian origin, beat Andrew Cuomo identified with the pro-Jewish/pro-Israel ruling elite of the metropolis in the Democratic Party’s primary ahead of the November Mayoral election.
Although the election was only the primary of a party, it is widely believed that Mamdani might win the November election though he will be facing the conservative, pro-Israel and right wing might of the Republican Party backed by President Trump. If, indeed, Mamdani wins, he will be the first non-White Muslim man of South Asian-African origin to be Mayor of New York.
In their campaign, Cuomo and several Democrats had mocked at Mamdani’s promises, including free public buses and city-run grocery shops , as “unrealistic”. Millions of dollars were spent on attacking him. But the millennial Mamdani had connected with millennials of New York, social media-age voters who craved for his down-to-earth policies.
“I was blown away by his personable skills, with the way he talks to people and the way he can relate to just the average person, and the way he humanises the voters who felt very frustrated with the way things were going,” 30-year old Harry Krizmanich told the BBC.
This was in accordance with a New York Times report which said that Israel’s standing in the US had fallen “precipitously” since the Gaza war. “Opposition to Israel and its government (even questioning its existence as a Jewish state) is increasingly acceptable to broader swaths of the Democratic party, even in areas where pro-Israel Jews had long been a bedrock of the party,” the report said.
Mamdani had won several Jewish Democrats like Brad Lander and Jerrold Nadler, the latter being one of the city’s most prominent Jewish leaders who had vowed to “fight against all bigotry and hate.”
Nearly seven in 10 Democrats expressed an unfavourable view of Israel, compared with 37% of Republicans, according to a poll released by Pew Research Centre in Spring (March –May).
However, New York Times also noticed concerns in the larger Jewish community in the US about the increasing legitimization of “anti-Semitism” which they tend to see as opposition to existence of Israel itself.
“The politics of Israel have roiled the Democratic Party for years, accelerated by fierce debates about the war in Gaza, the rise of the far-right Netanyahu government and a running argument about when criticism of Israel veers into antisemitism,” NYT points out.
President Trump had called Mamdani “a 100% Communist lunatic,” while insulting his appearance, voice and intelligence. Others on the far right stoked fears about his Islamic faith and spread baseless conspiracy theories, New York Times recalled.
But Younger Jews, like young people from other religious and ethnic groups, were driven by concerns about high prices. Many also did not support former Governor Cuomo, who had earlier resigned in disgrace. Many Jews were willing to look past Mamdani’s views on Israel. On his part, Mamdani, a genuinely secular person, had repeatedly said that he abhorred antisemitism and promised to increase funding to combat hate crimes.
According to the World Socialist Website, the election of Mamdani, has shattered the myth that socialism is “toxic” in four ways –
(1) His reform proposals—related to soaring housing costs, child care, and other social problems—had clearly struck a chord with workers and young people, along with elements of the middle class in one of the most expensive cities in the world.
(2) There is the claim that criticism of Israel’s genocide in Gaza amounts to antisemitism. The billionaire-backed smear campaign led by Cuomo, which centred on accusations of antisemitism against Mamdani, clearly backfired. Mamdani received tens of thousands of votes from among New York’s Jewish population. Popular opposition to war and what Mamdani explicitly called a “genocide” was a major factor in his electoral victory. Several US cities had seen demonstrations against Israel which had to be dispersed by the National Guard.
Mamdani had the courage to tell interviewer Mehdi Hasan that he would have Benjamin Netanyahu arrested as per the International Criminal Court’s ruling against him, even though the US is not a signatory to the ICC charter. Mamdani said he would work for a new US stance on the ICC.
(3) Mamdani’s win refutes the media narrative that Trump’s re-election in 2024 marked a right-wing shift in the American population.
“Mamdani’s campaign benefited from mounting popular opposition to the Trump administration, with the candidate pointing out that Cuomo was backed by the same billionaires bankrolling Trump,” the socialist website said.
(4) The basic questions animating the great mass of the population centred not on issues of race and gender politics, relentlessly promoted by the Democratic Party and their affiliated media outlets, but class, the WSWS pointed out.
Conservatives Will Strike Back
However, the Democratic Party’s Establishment will strike back. Larry Summers, a former Treasury Secretary and Harvard University President who denounced the anointment of a candidate who advocated pro-Palestine and Trotskyite economic policies, said that Mamdani must “evolve to reassure those committed to a market economy as an American ideal.”
If Mamdani were to resist these pressures, as he well might, the Democratic Party would not hesitate to sabotage his November campaign and attempt to throw the general election to a compliant representative of Wall Street, the WSWS warns.
Abdaljawad Omar, a Palestinian scholar and theorist whose work focuses on the politics of resistance, decolonization, and the Palestinian struggle, writes in Mondoweiss.net that Mamdani’s victory does not indicate the emergence of a coherent pro-Palestinian mainstream. What is beginning to erode is the sanctity of Israel’s place in American moral life.
“The shift, at this stage, is not from marginality to centrality for Palestine—but from unquestioned centrality to uneasy displacement for Israel,” Omar says.
However, the more a beleaguered Israel insists on its unique status, the more visible its violence will become. This will have the unintended consequence of people in the West getting to see the ugly side of Israel which could hasten the alienation from it, the scholar predicts.
Omar concludes saying; “In the end, the shift we are witnessing is not the triumph of an alternative narrative, but the slow implosion of the dominant one under the weight of its own excesses. Paradoxically, it is not anti-Zionist discourse that has produced this rupture, but Zionism itself—its saturation of the symbolic space, its demand to be centred in every moral reckoning, its compulsion to speak even when no one is asking. This is the logic of ideological overproduction, when a system can no longer sustain its own fictions, not because they have been disproven, but because they have been repeated too often, too loudly, with too little shame.”
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