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The New Pogrom

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18.05.2026

There are moments in history when societies reveal not merely their political divisions but also their moral collapse. New York City, once the symbolic capital of Jewish security in the Diaspora, is beginning to show signs of such a rupture.

What is unfolding is no longer simply “anti-Israel activism.” Nor is it reducible to the language of ordinary protest politics. The escalation of antisemitic intimidation, mob harassment, open incitement, and ideological radicalization now visible in New York City reflects something darker, the normalization of political violence against Jews under the banner of “resistance.” It is not only a new pogrom but also the proof that antisemitism in New York reveals the the ‘Globalization of Intifada politics.

The chant “Globalize the Intifada” is not metaphorical rhetoric. It is not an abstract slogan about solidarity. Historically, the intifadas were campaigns marked by suicide bombings, mass murder, lynchings, knife attacks, shootings, and deliberate terror against civilians. To globalize such a movement is to universalize political violence against Jews everywhere.

And increasingly, that is precisely what we are witnessing.

Recent demonstrations in New York have featured explicit calls for violence, glorification of Hamas, threats directed at Jewish institutions, and mob-style intimidation campaigns targeting synagogues and Jewish neighborhoods. Waving Hezbollah flags and screaming abuse at Jewish families on their own stoops. Children watched from doorways. Teenagers were led away by police. Demonstrators chanted, “Death to the IDF.” “There is only one solution: intifada revolution.” One protester invoked Khaybar, the seventh-century massacre of Jews by early Muslim forces, as a taunt directed at Jewish residents. Such chanted slogans openly celebrate so-called “resistance,” while social media ecosystems amplify imagery portraying Jews collectively as legitimate targets. It is an open embrace of terror and a direct call for violence against Jews

This is not merely political radicalism. It is the re-entry of pogromist logic into democratic society.

From Political Protest to Civilizational Threat The danger lies not only in the extremists themselves but also in the political and institutional environment that enables them.

New York’s political leadership has too often responded with equivocation, selective outrage, or ideological hedging. Rather than forcefully isolating movements openly trafficking in antisemitic intimidation, elements within city politics have treated them as legitimate participants in progressive coalition politics.

New York City’s mayor has responded with a combination of bureaucratic gestures and political cowardice that would be shocking if it were not, by now, entirely predictable. Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office at the start of the year and immediately, on his first day, revoked the city’s use of the IHRA definition of antisemitism, has presided over this escalation with studied ambiguity. When the Brooklyn mob descended on Midwood, he did not go to........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)