Hamas? Hezbollah? Israelis Found a New Villain: Zohran Mamdani
Here are a couple of headlines mentioning New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani in the Israeli press in the last few weeks: "Mamdani goes after Israel, and New York starts paying the price," and "Mamdani's public humiliation echoes across the United States." Other headlines begin with "Embarrassment for Mamdani" or "Blow to Mamdani."
Israeli media loves a villain just as much as anyone does. Considering the country's ruling party just put up a campaign billboard showing Mamdani alongside the leaders of Iran, Turkey and Hezbollah, marking him as an enemy of both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the State of Israel, it's safe to say the mayor – whose fraught relationship with New York's Jewish community is being watched closely in the U.S. as well – is now exactly the enemy Israelis were waiting for. And when the Israeli press finds a new enemy, it goes all in.
If you like simple narratives, Mamdani checks all the boxes: Muslim, pro-Palestinian, socialist. And the story comes prepackaged: good versus evil, us versus them. There is little danger of alienating viewers and plenty of opportunity for clicks. Israeli mainstream media, enjoying the abundance of anti-Mamdani coverage in America's right-wing Trumpist media universe, doesn't have to do much but cherry-pick stories that fit the narrative they want to push, strip away context and let the audience enjoy the fabricated fall of their newest enemy.
But anyone who has been following the Israeli media's playbook for the past few years – especially since October 7 – would not be surprised by its rallying around the stand taken by Israel's far-right government.
Last week, Senator Bernie Sanders, another enemy of current Israel, said: "I think many ordinary Israelis do not understand to what degree their nation has now become a pariah in the world community." Sanders added that he did not fully understand why, before suggesting that "it has a lot to do with the media in Israel as well." On that point, he is right.
Immediately after Hamas' massacre, the country's media adopted the slogan "Together we will win." At first, the enemy was Hamas, and patriotism could be excused as a given in wartime. But it didn't take long for the enemy to become anyone who had anything critical to say about Israel's actions in Gaza following the attack. The Israeli media worked overtime to shield Israelis from what their country was doing in the Strip. The public, for its part, didn't especially want to know. At best, it looked away; at worst, it celebrated the killing.
That pattern of shielding Israelis from unpleasant realities and vilifying every critic continues today. How many Israelis understand the scale of the damage their government has done to the country's standing abroad? How many know that 30 percent of Jewish American adults now say Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, according to a July AP-NORC poll? How many know that, according to a June Pew Research survey, 60 percent of Americans hold an unfavorable view of Israel?
Israelis were outraged by Mamdani's view that Netanyahu, wanted for war crimes by the International Criminal Court, should be arrested if he lands in New York. But how many Israelis know that, according to a late-July poll, nearly half of Americans believe Netanyahu should be arrested? Or that 47 percent say he has damaged U.S.-Israel relations, while the same share believe he is guilty of war crimes?
The Israeli media's obsession with Mamdani is part of a much older instinct: to cast Israel's critics as the existential enemy. Treating Mamdani as such serves a purpose. It allows the media to keep telling a familiar story about a hostile world turning against Israel, instead of confronting the possibility that sometimes the story isn't who is against you. It's why.