Michael Goodwin: Mamdani’s silence in the face of vile antisemitism speaks volumes to the darkness in his soul

Ducking a heated debate can be extremely revealing about a politician.

Take the case of Mayor Mamdani’s outrageous hide-and-seek reaction after a Brooklyn coffee shop taunted Rep. Daniel Goldman over his support for Israel and banned him from its Park Slope location.

The owner of Poetica Coffee, Parviz Mukhamadkulov, took to Instagram to write “Hey Congressman Dan Goldman, we see that you stopped by our shop today for a coffee. Do you see how it doesn’t taste like genocide juice?” next to an image of the congressman at the shop’s register.

The owner is a Hamas sympathizer who has justified the atrocities of Oct. 7, 2023, while calling “Israel the Nazi Germany of current time.”

“See, here at Poetica, we don’t serve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide enablers, or anyone in between,” his taunt of Goldman continued.

“Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”

He added that the shop had issued Goldman a refund, saying the money was “probably coming from AIPAC anyways.”

Goldman’s Democratic primary opponent, former city Comptroller Brad Lander, had the decency to condemn the shop’s action, saying, “There are plenty of ways to lobby elected officials and express outrage without turning coffee shops into places people don’t feel welcome.”

Double standard

Mamdani, who endorsed Lander, sat out the fracas, until he finally opened his mouth Tuesday, only to say as close to nothing as is humanly possible.

Asked by a reporter whether he approved of the owner’s conduct, the mayor said only, “I have many political disagreements with Congressman Goldman when it comes to his votes and his views on Israel. What we saw online goes beyond that.”

Huh, that’s it?

It is impossible to escape the conclusion that Mamdani won’t condemn the owner’s behavior because it aligns with his own bigotry.

Despite getting an estimated one-third of Jewish votes last year, the mayor is seemingly on a quest to normalize Jew-hatred.

He says he will not visit Israel because he doesn’t believe it should exist as the Jewish homeland.

And last month he became the first mayor in six decades to skip the Israel Day Parade.

Moreover, he still refuses to condemn two chants often taken up by anti-Israel protestors.

One is a call to “globalize the intifada,” and another is “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Both effectively call for the elimination of Israel.

As such, it should not be a heavy lift for the mayor of the city with the world’s largest Jewish population to rule them out of bounds.

But he won’t do that, and also says he would arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyhau if he set foot in the city.

He cites as justification an indictment of the UN International Criminal Court, even though the United States does not recognize the court’s jurisdiction.

Yet nothing reveals the mayor’s double standard as much as imagining his reaction if the coffee shop had banned a Muslim patron, or a black one, or an Asian, Latino or a transgender customer.

In all those cases, the mayor would have rushed to a press conference where he would have mounted his high horse and, surrounded by his socialist comrades, denounced hate and trotted out his “warmth of collectivism” gibberish.

But his silence in this case does not come in a vacuum.

His mayoralty has made it open season on Jews and Israel. In those cases alone, hate is acceptable because it fits his radical agenda.

What ‘AIPAC’ means

He’s comfortable in the antisemitic gutter, as when he called members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee “monsters” last week and said they “move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal — to preserve their power, so that they can turn us against one another.”

The remarks followed AIPAC donations to the opponents running against his cadre of Democratic Socialist candidates.

So only the funders of the opponents running against his cronies have malign motives.

His AIPAC smear sparked condemnation from some Jewish leaders and advocacy groups, who accused him of spewing centuries-old antisemitic bile.

Yet he defended himself by digging a deeper hole, as when he said: “When I am speaking about AIPAC, I’m speaking about an organization that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people, not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region, and it is a status quo for immorality,” and pointed to Israeli operations in Gaza as an example.

“And when it comes to the way in which they defend the status quo, oftentimes they defend it through direct contributions, as we are seeing right now in New York.”

None of that makes a whit of sense, nor does it justify his prejudice.

Sadly, Mamdani has not been alone in ducking the Goldman case.

Gov. Hochul, who is desperate to keep Mamdani supporters in her corner, apparently including the antisemites, has gone missing in action, as have other city and state Democrats.

Attorney General Letitia James never misses the chance to grab a headline when she can blast a business or anyone with a conservative bent, but has been silent on this one.

Similarly, city public advocate Jumaane Williams, has been in hiding and has nothing to say.

They are all shamed by Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Department of Justice. She said she already opened a probe into the incident and will “bring an enforcement action” if warranted.

Similarly, New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer spoke Sunday about his concerns.

“Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books,” he said in a post on X.

“That’s not criticizing a lobby. That’s laundering antisemitism from your podium as the Mayor of a city with more than a million Jews. This bulls–t is dangerous.”

Leadership lacking

Civic groups are also responding to the coffee shop’s blatant prejudice against Goldman, with a group calling itself EndJewHatred announcing that it will hold a rally outside the shop Wednesday morning to make sure the discrimination does not become a new normal.

The rise of antisemitism is primarily a feature of the far left, but not exclusively.

Whatever its source, its growth is a disgraceful aspect of our contentious era.

Although America is still a far more welcoming and safer home for Jews than Europe, New York is not alone in seeing dramatic spikes in hatred and targeted violence against Jews.

In such cases, we naturally look for political leaders to condemn the ancient hatred.

But Mamdani has forfeited that role, and revealed his own dark soul.

The stain was obvious before he was elected but incidents like this one dash any hope he would grow in office.

He shows not the slightest evidence that he’s willing or wants to change.

Shame on him.