My Fellow New York Jews and I Know Zohran Mamdani Does Not Threaten Us (Director's Cut)

Edited by Zeteo

I'M PROUD of this Zeteo column. I think it pairs nicely with this one from Mehdi Hasan, which inspired it. Here I give it the original dek I suggested—Zeteo, probably wisely, dialed the dek back a bit. This column also grew out of a great piece in The Forward last week that quoted me. 

I don't often write As A Jew. I haven't wanted to do it very much during the Israeli genocide of Gaza, since what matters is saving Palestinian lives, not the endless discussion of Jewish feelings. But when so much Jewish self-victimization is deployed to stop not only Zohran Mamdani but the movement for an affordable New York that elected him, that's the time for anti-Zionist Jewish voices to say, loudly and militantly: You do not speak for us; you do not get to threaten our neighbors; you do not get to manipulate fear and pain and history; you are betraying your history while we insist on honoring it; we will never stop opposing you; and however long it takes, we, and not you, will win. 

Before we get there, let's focus on a few other things that I would be remiss not to highlight. 

The Associated Press yesterday published a horrific piece confirming what Palestinians in the south of Gaza have been saying, posting and begging the world to understand: the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is an agent of the genocide. Two GHF contractors described colleagues lobbing stun grenades and pepper spray and firing live ammunition at unarmed people desperate for food. In the videos they provide the AP, you can hear Americans in English cheering on gunfire. And if you read down into the piece you'll see them also describe the way the "aid distribution sites" feed the Israeli surveillance network. Last week that Haaretz ran a similar story, sourced to IDF soldiers blowing the whistle, about the sites being what one called "killing fields," where soldiers and contractors treat the starving as a hostile force. "Our form of communication is gunfire," the soldier said.   

Frankly, this is behavior familiar to those of us who reported on the way U.S. contractors operated in Iraq and Afghanistan, down to the pathetic, Erik Prince-like martyrdom pose that all this first-hand evidence is the work of malicious actors. Yet as Jack Poulsen originally reported, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation rests upon a bed of shell companies. In plain sight but seriously under-appreciated is the additional angle that one of the architects of the plan to turn aid sites into kill boxes is a former senior CIA official turned merc named Phillip Reilly. The New York Times in May found a podcast interview in which Reilly talks about "help[ing] train the Contras" in Nicaragua before being "one of the first U.S. agents to land in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks… [and then] he became the C.I.A. station chief in Kabul." 

Zeteo has acquired and released a documentary on the crucible of being a doctor in Gaza. The BBC apparently refused to air it. Full disclosure, I have not had time to watch this one, but it's clearly an important piece of work that you should subscribe to Zeteo to see for yourself. 

Also yesterday, Politico reported on rendition survivor Kilmar Abrego Garcia revealing the brutality within the Salvadoran "counterterrorism" prison CECOT. Readers familiar with post-9/11 U.S. torture will find this real familiar: "Abrego said he shared a cell with 20 other people, who were forced to kneel overnight, 'with guards striking anyone who fell from exhaustion.' …The detainees were confined to metal bunks with no mattresses in an overcrowded cell with no windows, bright lights that remained on 24 hours a day, and minimal access to sanitation." Abrego, if I'm not mistaken, is among vanishingly few people ever to emerge from CECOT to describe it from the inside. 

Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, aided by DHS, created a migrant concentration camp in the Everglades. And on the verge of passage is the Big Beautiful Bill that decimates Medicaid and similar publicly-funded health care assistance while pushing ICE funding to a staggering $45 billion through fiscal year 2029. That's a component of the bill providing more than $170 billion for kidnapping and detaining migrants—and not only them. If it wasn't a police state before, well. Happy July 4th! 

At least Lazarus is back. 

And with that, here's my Zeteo column. If you've hit the paywall, subscribe to FOREVER WARS already!