In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s resounding defeat of Andrew Cuomo in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary, politicians in both parties have tried to destroy the democratic socialist’s campaign with slanderous claims that he is antisemitic.

Defending Mamdani from defamation has prompted a renewed call to be hypervigilant about anything that could be deemed antisemitic among his supporters. The strategy among anti-Zionists hoping to avoid charges of antisemitism has been to argue that the issue should be less about Israel and more about our military and political support of Israel: The United States is driving this ethnic cleansing, and Israel, as in the past, is our attack dog—our “cop on the beat”—in the “dangerous neighborhood” of the Middle East. Therefore, the instruction goes, we need to push back when people say that US government policy is controlled by Israel—that it is their lobby, their influence, and their own fascistic political agenda that the US is following in canine fashion.

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