Opinion

Will Mamdani’s Victory Signal an Exodus - or a New Jewish Strategy?

In the week when New York experienced a political earthquake with Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s win in the Democratic mayoral primary, Bari Pork Store in Bensonhurst sold its last sausages.

I went to sleep last night after hearing the news that Iran had fired missiles at the largest American airbase in the region, with no casualties or damage. I woke up this morning to the news that President Trump announced that Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire. Predictably, both sides proclaimed victory. Iran claimed that the ceasefire had been imposed on Israel in the wake of its attack on the US airbase. Israel said that it was ending the war because its aims of ending the nuclear and ballistic missile threats from Iran had been achieved. What is the truth, and what can we anticipate in the days ahead?

Turning on the phones after Shabbos ended this week came with some of the best news imaginable for anyone who cheers for a safer world. It’s also the worst news imaginable for anyone who seeks the destruction of Israel and the retreat and isolation of America.

By acting to avert an existential threat to the West and Israel that his predecessors had allowed to grow, the president has secured his place in American and Jewish history.

Donald Trump appears to have fooled both his friends and foes. And he has done something none of his predecessors dared to do. With a single stroke, his orders to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities may well have altered the path of history. The Islamist regime’s goal of building a nuclear weapon with which it could destroy Israel, intimidate America’s allies in the region into subservience and threaten the rest of the West with which it continues itself to be in a religious war is effectively finished.

At 3 a.m. this morning, my wife and I were roused from slumber by a loud, high-pitched warning on our cell phone, heralding the imminent triggering of air raid sirens. We navigated the short distance to our safe room (mamad), locked the heavy metal door that secured its entrance, and huddled together on the sofa. Air raid sirens shrieked, followed by booms which rattled our surroundings. Twenty to thirty minutes later, an all-clear signal permitted us to go back to sleep.

In the 46-year history of Iran’s theocratic government, American political leaders in both parties stood by sanctions and condemnation of the country’s sponsorship of terrorism, repression of dissent, and nuclear ambitions, even when the door was open to negotiations. In the dozen days after Israeli warplanes struck Iranian military targets, with American stealth bombers delivering the much-sought coup de grâce with 30,000-pound bunker-busters on the Fordow nuclear enrichment site, the outcome remains uncertain domestically and abroad.