By Jonathan S. Tobin
(JNS) — Former Rep. Eliot Engel outlived the paradigm he once exemplified, but not by much. The former member of Congress, who died on April 17 at the age of 79, was one of the last of his kind. He was a die-hard political liberal who was an ardent supporter of a raft of causes dear to the hearts of left-wing Democrats like single-payer health insurance for all, abortion rights and gun control. But he was just as passionate in his support for Israel and utterly opposed to efforts to pressure it to make concessions to its foes that seek its destruction.
That combination of positions is rarely found in the current political environment. In fact, it’s something that no one who hopes to have a future in the Democratic Party could possibly adopt in 2026. That is why it was almost fitting that in the week following Engel’s passing, the Democrat who runs New York City once again made clear that his support for the war on the Jewish state was his priority.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s decision to veto a bill that would have created buffer zones around houses of worship and educational institutions in the city for protection against efforts to harass congregations and students sent an unmistakable signal to New Yorkers. The impetus for the bill was the siege by a pro-Hamas mob last fall against people entering a synagogue on the Upper East Side. It was also motivated by the appalling targeting of Jews on college campuses since the Hamas-led Palestinian-Arab terror attacks on Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023.
The mayor chose not to veto a similar bill that only affected houses of worship because it was passed with a veto-proof majority. But the reasoning for his choice was not so much a defense of the right to conduct antisemitic protests on campuses, even those that are violent and illegal, as it was a desire to show the left-wing Democrats responsible for his election last year that he was not abandoning his lifelong opposition to the existence of Israel. As such, it made it obvious once again that he was on the side of those trying to intimidate Jews wherever they happened to gather.
In the same week, Phylisa Wisdom, the left-wing activist that Mamdani appointed to head an office to combat antisemitism, told a New York City Council hearing that she could not define the term. The point of that statement was not merely to demonstrate that Mamdani’s administration would not use the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of the term. By not adopting any definition, especially the IHRA document that rightly linked efforts to destroy the one Jewish state on the planet and call Jews Nazis to Jew-hatred, she was similarly signaling to antisemites that the city government didn’t take the subject seriously.
Taken together with other developments like the recent Senate vote where 40 out of 47 Democrats voted to cut off arms sales to Israel, it’s no longer possible to deny the obvious. At a time when Jew-hatred has surged to unprecedented levels in New York and around the globe, the Democratic Party and the government of the city with the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel are both largely hostile to the cause that Engel held dear.
How has this happened?
The hijacking of liberal political institutions like the Democratic Party by so-called progressives is linked to the same trend that has occurred in academia, the arts and popular culture. Advocates of toxic ideologies like critical race theory, intersectionality and settler-colonialism that exacerbate racial divisions, as well as falsely labeling Israel and Jews as “white” oppressors, have assumed a dominant position throughout these sectors of American life. They’ve made it difficult for people who support Jewish rights and Zionism to stay within them while making them safe places for antisemites.
The situation in New York City, however, is also one that is a function of demography.
Engel, who was born, raised, educated and died in the Bronx, was a product of a now-bygone era of life in Gotham when Jews and white ethnic groups like Irish and Italian-Americans were important, if not dominant forces in local politics. It was once axiomatic that mayoral aspirants would precede their campaigns with visits to the “three I’s” — Ireland, Italy and Israel — to signal their identification with core constituencies. But in the current age of Mamdani, perhaps the moral equivalent would be the two “P’s” — Pakistan and “Palestine.”
That is partly a product of factors like the enormous increase in immigrants from South Asia and other Muslim-majority countries. It’s also a function of the way hostility to Israel — and backing for Palestinian Arabs, whose national identity is inextricably linked with their century-long war on Zionism and the Jews — has become not so much an intellectual fashion on the left as it is the new orthodoxy from which dissent is difficult if not impossible for Democrats.
It’s also the result of the flight from New York of those groups that made the outer boroughs — specifically Brooklyn, Queens and Engel’s native Bronx, along with little Staten Island, which remains a red outlier in a deep-blue city — a check on the power of the left-wing elites who run Manhattan. While the Jewish population of New York City has remained relatively stable in recent decades due to the high birth rates of Orthodox and Chassidic enclaves, the decline of the non-Jewish, white ethnic population has had an enormous impact on New York politics.
Approximately half of New Yorkers are Hispanic or African-American. But even their influence has been offset by others like Asians, South Asians and other diverse groups in a city where voter turnout is low in many areas where the population is economically disadvantaged.
That population shift explains why a New York that elected a Republican like Rudy Giuliani as mayor twice (1993 and 1997) and then an independent like Michael Bloomberg three times (2001, 2005 and 2009), despite the overwhelming registration advantage of the Democrats, simply doesn’t exist anymore. That’s something former Gov. Andrew Cuomo learned when he was easily defeated by Mamdani in a mayoral primary and then again last fall in the general election. That’s why the city is now governed by radicals like Mamdani. And where once it was represented in Congress by Democrats and Republicans who were uniformly pro-Israel, that is no longer the case.
The ranks of New York City’s congressional representatives are now increasingly filled with those like left-wing “Squad” ringleader Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and those aligned with her. There are still those who are supportive of the Jewish state — like Rep. Nicolle Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), the sole Republican from Staten Island; Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) from the Bronx; and Minority Leader Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.), who is now more focused on the national party rather than local politics. But with each incoming class arriving in Washington, their ranks become thinner.
And in keeping with these demographic and ideological shifts, the number of Jews in Congress from New York City has also declined. In 1992, when Engel was serving the second of his 16 terms, he was one of eight Jews representing the city. Now, with Rep. Jerry Nadler (who began his career as a steadfast backer of Israel and is leaving it as just one more liberal who has abandoned it) retiring from Congress at the end of the year, there may be only one: Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.).
Goldman is a lukewarm supporter of Israel who represents a district in Manhattan and Brooklyn with a significant Jewish population. He is currently facing a stiff primary challenge from former New York City Controller Brad Lander, a Jewish opponent of Israel who’s running with the endorsement of Mamdani. The congressman is an anti-Trump stalwart who was the counsel for the Democrats in their first attempt to impeach the president in 2019. But he is under enormous pressure on the issue of Israel — to the point where he felt compelled to distance himself from his wife and campaign treasurer, Corrine Levy Goldman, because of her online outrage about the Palestinian Arab terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023.
No matter the outcome of the midterms in New York, in the foreseeable future, there will be no one representing the city in the same manner as Engel.
In 2015, at a point when he was a leading opponent of President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, he said that, “It’s an honor to shake the hand of the president of the United States, no matter who it is.” He only discontinued that practice in 2017, when the hand he would have shaken was that of President Donald Trump, a disturbing sign of changing times.
That was ironic because support for Israel was always a priority for Engel. While some, like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), have posed as faithful defenders of the Jewish state, it was genuinely true of Engel.