https://ameu.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/vol59_issue1_2026.pdf
Live from New York:
It’s Complex Algorithms and Simple Equations
Why would people vote
against personable and
plausible candidates
and in favor of tired
uninspiring incumbents
backed by big money
provided in favor of a
pariah state
This summer’s New York election results had something
for everyone. On the one hand, Fox-watcher conservatives
branded the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) as
a communist conspiracy, and/or Islamic and antisemitic
repudiation of Zionism. On the other, a thin splinter group
of Leninist-inclined DSA cadres basked in precisely what
their conservative opponents were alleging, and sought
to claim ownership of the insurgency. Perversely, the two
outliers reinforced each other’s errors, even as they both
missed the mark.
I moved to New York from Britain, where, as a trade
unionist, Labour Party member, and a speechwriter for
Labour leader Neil Kinnock, I had fought against Margaret
Thatcher, largely jointly culpable with Ronald Reagan,
for ending post-war Western security and prosperity. I
had also fought a war of attrition against Neo-Trotskyist
infiltrators who had effectively suborned Liverpool’s ruling
Labour Party. I was advantaged by my experiences as a
teenage Maoist, meeting Chinese Premier Chou En Lai,
during the Cultural Revolution, which inoculated me
against binary Leninist world views.
With this backstory, I cast critical eyes on any facile
analyses of these recent American electoral primaries.
As a longtime close observer and occasional member of
DSA I must admit that there had indeed been an active
infiltration by what one might call the Leninist Left. Many
of them who had scorned Bernie Sanders’ “reformism” in
the past had opportunistically flooded into DSA, when
they saw the upsurge in membership following Bernie’s
run against Hilary Clinton.
It’s ‘in the genes’ of these sectarian infiltrators that, faced
with their inability to get support for their own ideology,
they parasitize other people’s work. Inside DSA they built a
revolutionary base area on the organization’s “International
Committee,” posturing in solidarity with Putin and
sundry tyrants, and exercising performative ideological
correctness. This was while more grounded DSA members
were knocking on doors and collecting election petitions.
Most of the infiltrators’ posturing went unobserved except
by the rightwing press, who used it to attack DSA supported
candidates, and so it did not detract too much
from the grassroots organizing that the pragmatically
strategic majority of DSA was executing.
Obviously, DSA is not the Bolshevik organization these
cadres hoped for, and the right allege. After all, its founders
came from the anti-Vietnam war wing of the American
Socialist party, including Michael Harrington, of «Other
America» fame, Irving Howe, other Dissentniks, and
many who were old enough to have worked with Norman
Thomas, Dorothy Day at the Catholic Worker, or young
enough to have been in post-war union organizing drives,
including in the South. Those members had long track
records of trying to be the “Left Wing of the Possible”, in
Harrington’s phrase, and helped to found the NY Working
Families Party, worked Democratic floor fights for UAW funded
Democratic Agenda and Democratic Alternatives
at the 1976 and 1992 conventions in NYC, and for
decades had created a national network. They even elected
candidates to Congress and local offices here and there, on
a much smaller membership base. DSA drew lessons from
the Socialist Party’s past and never acted as a third party.
Despite national elections swamped by TV, radio and
internet ads, the complexities of state electoral law in
part forced New York progressives to regrow grass roots
organizations that could get people canvassing, phone
banking and collecting signatures just to get ballot status.
In these elections, retro is the future, which helped
provide the dynamism for Mamdani against the tired
Cuomoesque/Clintonesque corporate Dems.
The Middle East is not the touchstone issue for American
elections, even in New York, The DSA’s willingness to speak
out on the issues, even to debate it, is a welcome break after
years of effectively being frozen in the headlights. Years
ago, I asked DSA veterans about the organization’s silence
on the issue, and they explained that the various factions
basically agreed not to “mention the region,” since so many
otherwise progressive Jews were uncomfortable criticizing
Israel--think Bernie Sanders and Jerry Nadler until recently.
I had seen the same issue in the British Labour Party, where
Left icons, like Tony Benn, had often been prominent in the
group Labour Friends of Israel until the 1982 Israeli invasion
of Lebanon and the Sabra and Shatila massacre. Gaza is now
doing same for American progressives. Until recently, this
tactical evasion dampened any infighting. Elections had
been won on housing and the cost of living, and any
criticism of Israel risked being tarred with accusations of
anti-Semitism to frighten off aspirant politicians.
Sept. 2026
That is not to discount the importance of the Israel
Lobby’s power in politics. It is no longer just an
American phenomenon, but has spread across the whole
Anglosphere (and of course, for special reasons, Germany).
With minimal backing from their electorates or party
members, leaders like Keir Starmer in Britain mounted an
unprecedented purge against Netanyahu-skeptic members
(which in Starmer’s case, were mostly the left he was
ruthlessly supplanting in the party).
The charge of anti-Semitism is wielded exclusively against
the Left, which has a large Jewish cohort on both sides of
the Atlantic. Conservative and other rightist antisemitism
customary from time immemorial was often overlooked
and erased by the Murdoch empires.
The three years since the onslaught on Gaza have seen
a dramatic decrease in politicians’ hypersensitivity to
alleged Jewish concerns about anti-Semitism. Popular
support for Middle East justice in the electorate and
among Democratic Party and Labour supporters and
members has outpaced anything the DSA could have
mustered. UK Labour and US Democrat voters could see
what was happening in Gaza. The reluctance of Starmer
(UK), Cuomo and Goldman (NYC), and others to criticize
actions in Gaza has now demonstrably lost them elections.
One of the secrets of Mamdani’s success had been that
his campaign for the general electorate only tangentially
touched on foreign policy, and when it did, it was often
in response to others raising the issue. The “Little Boy
blowing the whistle” moment on the Emperor’s new
clothes was Mamdani’s neat bridging about the trip to
Israel other candidates assumed was mandatory for a New
York politician (along with Ireland and Italy for decades).
Mamdani’s gotcha riposte --effectively “Why should I?”--
upended all the other candidates.
The Middle East remained a hot-button issue in the NY
Congressional Seat Democratic Primary between Goldman
and Lander, but even there, assumed loyalties to Israel
evaporated in the heat of Gaza bombing, bolstered by a
resurgent sense of rebellion against the “entitled” heir to the
Levi Strauss millions. The reflexive “anti-Semitic” slur thrown
against Brad Lander splashed back, perhaps epitomized when
the New York Times headline “Jewish Candidate Defeated”
about Goldman, without mentioning that Lander, a clearly
Jewish and progressive candidate, had won.
NYC voters know and recognize the cognitive dissonance.
Being seasoned urbanites, New York voters scorned the
hysterical Islamophobia that greeted Mamdani’s first 100
days. They remember that there had indeed been heavy
snow and floods even before he took office and the garbage
and rats have been a perennial problem. The more he is
attacked, the stronger he gets.
Now, for obvious reasons, even passivity and silence
on Israeli actions is unpopular, while active support
for Netanyahu revolts voters across the electoral
spectrum including Jewish voters. In New York, AIPAC
candidates had taken for granted electoral support from
the many Jews in the region, but they clearly
discounted the community’s high ethical standards
and its consequent growing preference for Mamdani over
Netanyahu.
AIPAC’s historic track record of previous
electoral victories understandably imbues “the Lobby”
with an aura of omnipotence.
However, those depended on sheer cash volume. Neither
they nor their supported candidates usually allowed
substantive discussion of the Middle East to intrude on
their campaigns and perceptibly squirm when explaining
their voting record and the source of their funds. Their
situation has not improved since Gaza, as reflected in
recent election results. Why would people vote against
personable and plausible candidates and in favor of tired
uninspiring incumbents backed by big money provided in
favor of a pariah state by people who hide their funding
and motivations?
This reached its epitome in the recent Michigan campaign.
$60 million dollars in AIPAC funding failed to seat a
candidate who “dreamt of Israel,” against a candidate who
repeatedly and loudly wanted justice for his constituents
and, when challenged, also for Palestinians.
Although right wing conspiracy theorist and triumphalist
leftists both have a vested interest in bemoaning or
crowing the overthrow AIPAC, it of course not that simple,
Why would people vote
against personable and
plausible candidates
and in favor of tired
uninspiring incumbents
backed by big money
provided in favor of a
pariah state
as the defeated Jamal Bowman in New York can testify.
Sympathizers told me, even before the election, that they
had warned him that his campaign neglected the new
constituents that redistricting had given him.
There is a historically attested danger to concentrating on
foreign affairs. I interviewed both Senator J William
Fulbright and Senator Charles Percy for a book project
on AIPAC. Both acknowledged the role of the Lobby in
their defeat, and both mentioned that the Middle East was
not raised as issue in their campaign. But, both adduced
that AIPAC’s big telling point was that their active role in
the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, implied neglect
of in the appropriations committee and rolling the pork
barrels home. In the past the Lobby could also rely on an
extensive grassroots community network among voters,
without making the mistake of conflating Jews with Israel.
That has been subsumed as Israel has alienated Jewish
voters and AIPAC has become a surrogate for dubious and
unpopular corporate interests and billionaires, often with
demolished homes with residents still inside, destroyed
entire neighborhoods, and leveled cities to the ground,
including Rafah, the city where I was born. Nearly all of
Gaza’s population was displaced and under constant fire.
More than 70,000 people were killed, entire families were
erased from the civil registry, and hundreds of thousands
were wounded. Hospitals, schools, and infrastructure were
devastated, and more than 85 percent of Gaza’s population
was made homeless.
On the 17th day of the genocide, on the morning of
October 24th, 2023, I was having tea with my children in
the living room of my father’s house when Israel struck our
home with a U.S.-made F-16 missile. Six of my relatives
were killed in the attack, including my 12-year-old son,
Abdullah. The seventh victim was our neighbor. The rest of
us who were in the house, including my two children and
I, were injured. The house was destroyed.
October 2026 will mark the third year of this genocide.
There is not a single family in Gaza that has escaped its
devastation and there are no indications that the Israeli
killing machine will be brought to heel, or that Israeli war
criminals will face justice. Israel’s belief that unconditional
international support– especially America’s weapons,
money, and political cover– is its entitlement, not its
privilege. It literally believes it will not be held to account.
My people in the Gaza Strip have lost everything. They
have been deprived of safety, peace, and joy, reduced
to living in tattered tents, without electricity, adequate
healthcare, or basic infrastructure. Their hearts are torn
between grief over the loss of their loved ones and the fear
of further Israeli aggression. They watch with despair as
their children grow old, their futures lost in the collapse of
the education system and absent so many of the things that
give life dignity.
Gaza today is not only an icon of suffering; it is a witness
to the lies and hypocrisy of the global system. Gaza, where
tears and blood have never dried, and where joy and safety
have become distant memories, continues to confront a
machinery of annihilation supported by the global colonial
system. Gaza is fighting an unequal battle: the battle of a
besieged and defenseless people struggling for survival
against a genocidal force backed by overwhelming military
power and unconditional international support.
I appreciate AMEU’s honoring me with the 2026 John and
Sharon Mahoney Award for Service, and am grateful for
the confidence it represents. But there can be no doubt:
the people of Gaza are the true heroes. They deserve the
honor and support of all who believe in justice and human
dignity.
more than a whiff of genuine anti-Semitism about them.
There is a paradigm here, if I may use the word despite
its Clintonian connotations. While machine democrats
have shifted to DNC Clintonian style funding, DSA and
Working Families Party have provided a network of
political activists who are mostly attuned to local issues
(the DNC International Committee notwithstanding).
They have brought forward personable and politically
savvy candidates, like Abdul Sayed and Mamdani, and in
general they have paid attention to ethnic politics without
succumbing to identity politics. It’s a complex algorithm
rather than a simple equation, but appears to work in
a context of popular revulsion against unprincipled
opponents paid for by oligarchs and bigots.
Ian Williams is an author, writer and broadcaster. He has
reported from over 60 countries and has been President of
the Foreign Press Association of the U.S. since 2019.
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