I’ll just say it: I would like to support a $30 an hour minimum wage. Rent freezes that help struggling people. Free public transportation so meager paychecks aren’t eaten away simply getting to jobs. I’ll also confess that I don’t understand basic economics, which may be why I feel a tug of sympathy for such policies even after people who do understand economics—people I respect, whose good will I believe in—explain why they don’t work and will in fact make living conditions worse for the people they’re supposed to help. I want them to succeed and have a religious kind of faith that the money exists for them. When your country’s debt is $36.2 trillion and growing by $8.5 billion a day, every hour the nation survives seems a miracle. So why not free childcare?
Which means that despite my better judgment, I understand some of the enthusiasm for Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor last week. Clearly much of his fan base is thrilled about Mamdani’s support for BDS, and his vow to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot in the Big Apple. Yet they don’t necessarily love these things—they may be motivated by closer-to-home, economic, seemingly virtuous concerns.
But there it is: On the one hand, stirring rhetoric about hope and justice and helping the downtrodden; on the other hand, an obsession with malevolent, bloodthirsty Israel that can only be called antisemitism. Is this a paradox? Or is one actually the corollary of the other?
These are questions near to my heart. Not many years ago, while living in London, I joined the Labour Party to support Jeremy Corbyn. After doing the unimaginable, however—fact-checking my anti-Zionist beliefs—I realized with horror, however belatedly, that Corbyn was, as British Jews said, an antisemite.
Like Mamdani, Corbyn talked about socialism, and as a socialist I was thrilled. But also like Mamdani, Corbyn said it was a moral imperative to side with the Palestinians against Zionism, and I’d finally realized this was just a cover for antisemitism—that vilifying Zionism is itself a form of antisemitism.
I’d been a socialist my entire adult life. Weird as my political group looked to outsiders, it gave my life an intense sense of purpose. It allowed me to transcend—I imagined—my life of privilege, through vicarious solidarity with the world’s powerless. It gave me a thrilling mythology, heroes and martyrs who’d fought under the red banner for the liberation of mankind. I still wanted the promise of socialism—just without the Jew-hatred. Surely that’s possible?
I returned to school, and I wrote my master’s thesis about antisemitism and the left. The facts were unassailable: Socialism and antisemitism have always gone hand in hand. Hostility to Jews is implicit in Marxism’s very project: a mobilization of the oppressed against the rich capitalists, who have always been identified (rightly or not) with the Jews.
Hostility to Jews is implicit in Marxism’s very project: a mobilization of the oppressed against the rich capitalists, who have always been identified (rightly or not) with the Jews.
Marx wrote revoltingly about Jews. Late nineteenth-century European Socialists flirted occasionally with antisemitic movements, seeing them as incipiently anti-capitalist. The Communists did the same while the Nazis gained in popularity, and after the war took to executing Soviet Jews as “Zionist agents.” The Trotskyists, members of the Marxist tendency I’d belonged to for so many years, sometimes criticized Stalinist and Islamist antisemitism but were among the most vitriolic anti-Zionist antisemites of all.
Having learned this history, I hoped to convince the left to recognize its antisemitism and take it seriously. I still considered myself to be on the left—part of the community of good people, the compassionate souls who care about the poor and oppressed. I found, however, that by expressing alarm about antisemitism, I’d exiled myself from their warming companionship. Apparently carping about this subject made me that loathsome thing, a right-winger.
The more tolerant of my London university mates listened with seeming sympathy when I explained why I thought Corbyn was antisemitic. But really, they were just waiting for my lips to stop moving. They had one, maybe two, burning questions to ask me. Maybe it’s true, they’d say. Maybe Corbyn does have a blind spot about antisemitism. But surely you aren’t going to vote for the Tories? How much does antisemitism matter, really, compared to all the other terrible things in our society?
I might have pointed them to Dostoyevsky. In “The Brothers Karamazov,” his character Ivan poses a question. “Imagine,” Ivan says, “that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that child beating its breast with its fist, for instance—in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?” Ivan’s brother Alyosha answers no. I’d think that any moral person would.
And yet the socialist vision is premised on something along these lines, with the Jews being that child beating its breast—not necessarily weak and pitiable, not necessarily tortured to death, but removed from the rest of society, condemned, and marked for, potentially, torture and extermination.
Socialists claim they target Jews because Jews are rich and powerful; others in history have loathed Jews for being poor and weak. Hated for being capitalists, and hated for being Communists. The pretext doesn’t matter. Antisemitism—all antisemitism—claims an entire people must be designated “it” in order that the rest of humanity may achieve total emancipation and fulfilment.
There’s no way to erect a just society on this basis, and any movement that doesn’t see this is rotten to its core. The antisemitism on the socialist left–Mamdani, Corbyn and the rest—isn’t an unfortunate excess, or a “blind spot,” but the unforgivable feature that gives the whole game away.
The protests of British Jews were instrumental in bringing down Corbyn—I was lucky to be there to see it happen. Widespread suspicion that the Labour leader was a bigot brought the party into more disrepute than it was worth, and ultimately a new leader had to be found. The British left is still shot through with antisemitism; in these nightmarish post-October 7 days, it’s worse than ever. The UK government under the new Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has been increasingly hostile to Israel and tolerant of the antisemitic hordes marauding through British streets. Corbyn still tweets and pontificates in Parliament about the diabolical Zionists, and he still has a devoted following. His power is a shadow of what it used to be, though, and that’s a victory worth noting.
Mamdani can be defeated too, and he must. It falls to New Yorkers to put forward and mobilize around a worthy alternative candidate, but it’s everybody’s responsibility to fight the poison of antisemitism. Even—or especially—when it comes cloaked in virtue.
Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”
Zohran Mamdani and the Paradox That Isn’t
Kathleen Hayes
I’ll just say it: I would like to support a $30 an hour minimum wage. Rent freezes that help struggling people. Free public transportation so meager paychecks aren’t eaten away simply getting to jobs. I’ll also confess that I don’t understand basic economics, which may be why I feel a tug of sympathy for such policies even after people who do understand economics—people I respect, whose good will I believe in—explain why they don’t work and will in fact make living conditions worse for the people they’re supposed to help. I want them to succeed and have a religious kind of faith that the money exists for them. When your country’s debt is $36.2 trillion and growing by $8.5 billion a day, every hour the nation survives seems a miracle. So why not free childcare?
Which means that despite my better judgment, I understand some of the enthusiasm for Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor last week. Clearly much of his fan base is thrilled about Mamdani’s support for BDS, and his vow to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu if he sets foot in the Big Apple. Yet they don’t necessarily love these things—they may be motivated by closer-to-home, economic, seemingly virtuous concerns.
But there it is: On the one hand, stirring rhetoric about hope and justice and helping the downtrodden; on the other hand, an obsession with malevolent, bloodthirsty Israel that can only be called antisemitism. Is this a paradox? Or is one actually the corollary of the other?
These are questions near to my heart. Not many years ago, while living in London, I joined the Labour Party to support Jeremy Corbyn. After doing the unimaginable, however—fact-checking my anti-Zionist beliefs—I realized with horror, however belatedly, that Corbyn was, as British Jews said, an antisemite.
Like Mamdani, Corbyn talked about socialism, and as a socialist I was thrilled. But also like Mamdani, Corbyn said it was a moral imperative to side with the Palestinians against Zionism, and I’d finally realized this was just a cover for antisemitism—that vilifying Zionism is itself a form of antisemitism.
I’d been a socialist my entire adult life. Weird as my political group looked to outsiders, it gave my life an intense sense of purpose. It allowed me to transcend—I imagined—my life of privilege, through vicarious solidarity with the world’s powerless. It gave me a thrilling mythology, heroes and martyrs who’d fought under the red banner for the liberation of mankind. I still wanted the promise of socialism—just without the Jew-hatred. Surely that’s possible?
I returned to school, and I wrote my master’s thesis about antisemitism and the left. The facts were unassailable: Socialism and antisemitism have always gone hand in hand. Hostility to Jews is implicit in Marxism’s very project: a mobilization of the oppressed against the rich capitalists, who have always been identified (rightly or not) with the Jews.
Marx wrote revoltingly about Jews. Late nineteenth-century European Socialists flirted occasionally with antisemitic movements, seeing them as incipiently anti-capitalist. The Communists did the same while the Nazis gained in popularity, and after the war took to executing Soviet Jews as “Zionist agents.” The Trotskyists, members of the Marxist tendency I’d belonged to for so many years, sometimes criticized Stalinist and Islamist antisemitism but were among the most vitriolic anti-Zionist antisemites of all.
Having learned this history, I hoped to convince the left to recognize its antisemitism and take it seriously. I still considered myself to be on the left—part of the community of good people, the compassionate souls who care about the poor and oppressed. I found, however, that by expressing alarm about antisemitism, I’d exiled myself from their warming companionship. Apparently carping about this subject made me that loathsome thing, a right-winger.
The more tolerant of my London university mates listened with seeming sympathy when I explained why I thought Corbyn was antisemitic. But really, they were just waiting for my lips to stop moving. They had one, maybe two, burning questions to ask me. Maybe it’s true, they’d say. Maybe Corbyn does have a blind spot about antisemitism. But surely you aren’t going to vote for the Tories? How much does antisemitism matter, really, compared to all the other terrible things in our society?
I might have pointed them to Dostoyevsky. In “The Brothers Karamazov,” his character Ivan poses a question. “Imagine,” Ivan says, “that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last. Imagine that you are doing this but that it is essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature—that child beating its breast with its fist, for instance—in order to found that edifice on its unavenged tears. Would you consent to be the architect on those conditions?” Ivan’s brother Alyosha answers no. I’d think that any moral person would.
And yet the socialist vision is premised on something along these lines, with the Jews being that child beating its breast—not necessarily weak and pitiable, not necessarily tortured to death, but removed from the rest of society, condemned, and marked for, potentially, torture and extermination.
Socialists claim they target Jews because Jews are rich and powerful; others in history have loathed Jews for being poor and weak. Hated for being capitalists, and hated for being Communists. The pretext doesn’t matter. Antisemitism—all antisemitism—claims an entire people must be designated “it” in order that the rest of humanity may achieve total emancipation and fulfilment.
There’s no way to erect a just society on this basis, and any movement that doesn’t see this is rotten to its core. The antisemitism on the socialist left–Mamdani, Corbyn and the rest—isn’t an unfortunate excess, or a “blind spot,” but the unforgivable feature that gives the whole game away.
The protests of British Jews were instrumental in bringing down Corbyn—I was lucky to be there to see it happen. Widespread suspicion that the Labour leader was a bigot brought the party into more disrepute than it was worth, and ultimately a new leader had to be found. The British left is still shot through with antisemitism; in these nightmarish post-October 7 days, it’s worse than ever. The UK government under the new Labour leader, Keir Starmer, has been increasingly hostile to Israel and tolerant of the antisemitic hordes marauding through British streets. Corbyn still tweets and pontificates in Parliament about the diabolical Zionists, and he still has a devoted following. His power is a shadow of what it used to be, though, and that’s a victory worth noting.
Mamdani can be defeated too, and he must. It falls to New Yorkers to put forward and mobilize around a worthy alternative candidate, but it’s everybody’s responsibility to fight the poison of antisemitism. Even—or especially—when it comes cloaked in virtue.
Kathleen Hayes is the author of ”Antisemitism and the Left: A Memoir.”
Did you enjoy this article?
You'll love our roundtable.
Editor's Picks
Israel and the Internet Wars – A Professional Social Media Review
The Invisible Student: A Tale of Homelessness at UCLA and USC
What Ever Happened to the LA Times?
Who Are the Jews On Joe Biden’s Cabinet?
You’re Not a Bad Jewish Mom If Your Kid Wants Santa Claus to Come to Your House
No Labels: The Group Fighting for the Political Center
Latest Articles
Wayward Jewish Minds
It’s Hard to Understand Trump Until You Realize He’s Still a TV Showman
World’s Leading University System’s Role in Combating Antisemitism
Change in Iran Must Come from Within
A Donkey’s Perspective on Politics
They Hate the Left, Love America, and Blame the Jews: How the Woke Right Mirrors the Left
Rabbis of LA | The Fast-Paced Life of Rabbi Michelle Missaghieh
Michelle Missaghieh, Temple Israel of Hollywood’s associate rabbi, is likely the busiest rabbi in Los Angeles.
Why Do Some Jews Support Those Who Hate Them?
The lesson of Mamdani’s victory is not just that dangerous ideologies can win elections — but that they can win them with Jewish help. That makes them even more dangerous.
Balaam’s B-Sides – A poem for Parsha Balak
If you’re a good Jew, and who am I to assume otherwise…
When Jew-Hatred Meets Partisan Hatred, Things Can Get Complicated
Jew-hatred is terrible regardless of where it comes from. But not all Jew-hatred is created equal. Depending on where you sit politically, some Jews can be more hated than others.
Israel Discount Bank’s Soiree, LA Jewish Film Fest Closing Night, AJU Board Chair
Notable people and events in the Jewish LA community.
Bombing Auschwitz—in Iran
The Allies faced similar dilemmas during World War II, yet that never stopped them from bombing necessary targets.
Joshua Stopped the Sun
A Bisl Torah — A Prayer for the People of Texas
Together, we cry. Together, we mourn.
A Moment in Time: “The Awe of In-Between”
Print Issue: Hate VS. Love | July 11, 2025
The more noise we make about Jew-hatred, the more Jew-hatred seems to increase. Is all that noise spreading the very poison it is fighting? Is it time to introduce a radically new idea that will associate Jews not with hate but with love?
Prophetic Illumination, or, The Comedy Club of Canaan
Warren Rockmacher: Kosher Barbecue, Crack Dogs and Brisket
Taste Buds with Deb – Episode 115
‘Fagin the Thief’ — A More Nuanced Portrait of Dickens’ Jewish Villain
The desire to set things right animates “Fagin the Thief.”
‘Bad Shabbos’: You’ll Laugh, You’ll Cringe, You’ll Hide the Body
The film, built on a witty and well-paced script by Robbins and co-writer Zack Weiner, invites us to what is well set to be a disastrous Shabbat dinner.
LA Federation to Award $500,000 in Security Grants
The funds, according to JFEDLA, will provide for vital security personnel for organizations, institutions and groups primarily serving children.
Mother, Daughter and OC Synagogue Lead ‘Mitzvah Missions’ to Cuba
Currently, there are an estimated 600-800 Jews living in Cuba, most of whom are based in Havana, though there are small Jewish communities in Cuban cities Santa Clara and Cienfuegos.
From LA to Israel Under Fire: Why One Woman Still Chose to Make Aliyah
On June 12, Eve Karlin made Aliyah to Israel with the assistance of Nefesh B’Nefesh. Twelve hours later, at 3:30 a.m., she woke up to the sounds of loud sirens.
A Snapshot of Love and Herby Fish Brochettes
Pairing the tender fish brochettes with the vibrant herb sauce and crispy potatoes reminded us of eating by the sea with the scent of saltwater in the air.
National Ice Cream Month: Delicious Decadence, Along with Some Healthy Recipes
While you don’t need a reason to try some new cool, sweet ice cream — or ice-cream adjacent — recipes, it’s certainly fun to have one.
Table for Five: Balak
Doing God’s Will
More news and opinions than at a
Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.
More news and opinions than at a Shabbat dinner, right in your inbox.