By Bruce S. Ticker in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani fell into what could be the Menin trap on a Jewish-related issue, hopefully the first of many to come in the remaining 3 1/2 years of his administration.
Mamdani does have bigger problems, but he was forced to choose between Jewish New Yorkers and the anti-Israel mob last week when he vetoed a City Council bill requiring security perimeters around school facilities during demonstrations. Mamdani has yet to hear an anti-Israel chant – like “globalize the intifada” – that he would condemn.
The buffer-zone sideshow – of Mamdani’s own making – is a natural lose-lose conundrum. To wit:
“I don’t know how anyone in their right mind can be against students having the right to enter and exit the school facility,” City Council Speaker Julie Menin said last Saturday, according to New York Jewish Week.
Menin was so quoted at an appearance before her fellow Jews at a Downtown Minyan while major Jewish groups voiced their ire toward the politically inexperienced mayor.
The council speaker is in a strategic position to be the anti-Zohran after she was unanimously elected council speaker last Jan. 7. However, she said she gathered a majority of votes for speaker by last Thanksgiving. As leader of the 51-member legislative body, she has long experience in city government and proved with the buffer-zone outcome that she could throw Mamdani off balance.
Menin proposed two bills authorizing security perimeters when she was formally elected speaker. The bill applying to school facilities was passed 30-19, four votes short of a veto-proof majority, leaving Mamdani the opportunity to veto it, as he did.
The bill requires police to provide the mayor and speaker with a plan to control risks posed by protesters without denying them their First Amendment free-speech rights, according to The New York Times. The police commissioner is also mandated to provide a public point of contact relating to any bid to mitigate a protest.
In a statement, Mamdani said the bill “is not a narrow public safety measure; it is a piece of legislation that has alarmed much of the labor movement, reproductive rights groups and immigration advocates, among others across this city. Nearly a dozen unions have raised the alarm about its impact on their ability to organize. That is why I am vetoing this legislation.”
If the police were doing their job, this legislation would not be necessary. It is inherent in law enforcement to prevent demonstrations from spiraling out of control.
Mamdani must be joking. The groups he mentions usually behave themselves, so they need no special treatment.
We know who Mamdani is helping. This bill would deny the mayor’s progressive friends from making themselves obnoxious when they protest Israel.
Their repulsive conduct during a protest outside a modern Orthodox synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side spurred passage of the two bills. Last fall, they got into the face of Jews waiting to attend an event hosted by the nonprofit organization Nefesh B’Nefesh, which aids North American Jews move to Israel, including Judea and Samaria (a.k.a. the West Bank).
The demonstrators were chanting “death to the IDF” and “globalize the intifada,” the latter being a common Israel-hostile phrase that Mamdani refuses to condemn. In the past, the mayor was also filmed chanting “Free Palestine,” and he created a pro-Palestinian group when he was a student at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. His parents and wife are all anti-Israel.
Menin initially proposed that police secure a perimeter of up to 100 feet around houses of worship, but she agreed to weaken the twin bills after resistance from Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, and others in the administration.
Progressives predictably opposed the bills on grounds that they would expand unnecessary policing and stifle free speech, according to the Times. Translated: The bills would preclude them from harassing Jewish New Yorkers. The synagogue bill was passed with enough votes to override the mayor’s veto.
Last Friday, Mamdani said that while he still opposed the bill, he would neither sign nor veto it, as if he had a choice. “Following a thorough legal review, I do not believe it poses the same risks it once did, and that is why I will allow it to become law,” he said in his statement. “That said, I disagree with its framing of all protest as a security concern.”
If Mamdani was trying to talk like a constitutional scholar, it did not work. He sounded desperate.
What Menin did was shrewd, if unintentional. If her strategy was to distract and agitate Mamdani, she probably succeeded. The controversy played out in public view. Interestingly, both the Jewish community and Mamdani’s core supporters won some and lost some, so neither party was satisfied.
The Menin trap, if that’s what was intended, is a textbook example of how to take on activists for the so-called Palestinians: Put them on the spot.
Mamdani took on a massive task to govern America’s largest city, population 8½ million. He already must find a way to eliminate a $5.4 billion budget deficit. How will this sideshow help his fellow New Yorkers?
The race is not over, as Stephen Boyd told Charleton Heston after the chariot race in the movie Ben-Hur. Council members immediately considered another vote to establish security perimeters for educational facilities. They would attempt to make the vote veto-proof next time.
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Bruce S. Ticker is a Philadelphia-based columnist