T​hat’s Yiddish for enough already.

Let’s all take a deep breath and cut people some slack.

The hyperbolic outrage on the part of Israeli diplomats at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s most recent comments regarding Israel camouflages an unwillingness to acknowledge what he actually said. Speaking with ABC’s Jonathan Karl this past Sunday, Mamdani stated that (a) “I support the State of Israel as a state with equal rights,” and (b) “I think any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I cannot support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.” This happens to be consistent with what Mamdani has said in the past.

Specifically, he did not call for the eradication of Israel as a nation state but emphasized affirmatively that he supported it “as a state with equal rights,” a concept firmly engrained in Israel’s Declaration of Independence even though right-wing Israeli governments and politicians have sought to undermine it in recent years.

In an article I wrote some weeks ago after the Salute to Israel parade on Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue, I criticized Mamdani for singling out Israel as a country with a religious identity and that “to the best of my knowledge Mamdani has not come out publicly in opposition to some 24 countries in the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa that have Islam as their official state religion.”

I have no reason to believe that Mamdani ever read that article, but regardless, he has addressed my concern in this regard.

This........

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