Mamdani remains forceful on opposition to Israel lobby

Democratic primary results on 23 June saw victories for Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier; Zohran Mamdani endorsed all of them in the New York City Democratic primaries. And, he made a point of criticising those in the race who took money from American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

Dan Goldman was defeated by Lander. Goldman, an heir to the Levi Strauss denim fortune, was endorsed by AIPAC.

Palestine has become a litmus test in Democratic primaries, Rania Khalek, a Lebanese-American journalist, said, as Democratic voters punished incumbents who took money from AIPAC

Palestine has become a litmus test in Democratic primaries.

If AIPAC can buy your soul on genocide, on the defining moral issue of our time, voters now take it as proof you can be bought on literally anything.

Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander proved…

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) June 24, 2026

The BBC said this of the three Mamdani-backed candidates – Lander, Valdez, and Chevalier:

All three candidates backed by Mamdani have vowed to “abolish ICE” and “tax the rich”, and they have accused Israel of genocide, which it denies.

Khalek called it a Mamdani earthquake. She said:

Claire Valdez, Darializa Avila Chevalier, and Brad Lander proved running for Palestinian rights and social and economic justice is a winning platform. Let this be a lesson for others.

Mamdani AIPAC diss

During a press conference Mamdani defended his criticisms of AIPAC lobbying:

When I am speaking about AIPAC, I’m speaking about an organisation 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. It is one that I will not accept.

He pointed out Israel’s killing of Palestinians during the so-called ceasefire and the recent killing of Ahmed Wishah.

Wishah was the 12th Al Jazeera journalist killed by Israel in Gaza since October 2023.

Meanwhile, Mamdani defended his view of AIPAC as one of the “monsters.”

He said:

I was quoting Gramsci, who said, ‘The old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.’ I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world. Not solely AIPAC, but frankly super PACs at large, who are spending millions of dollars in deceptive and misleading ads that are blanketing the airwaves.

Mamdani is right.

Gramsci was once the leader of the Italian Communist Party. In 1926, after a rigged trial, Benito Mussolini’s fascist regime sentenced Gramsci to 20 years in prison. During this time, he wrote his famous Prison Notebooks. His well-known quote about monsters is from those Notebooks

For Gramsci, crises of the system, like today’s genocide of Palestinians by Israel, don’t automatically produce progressive change or guarantee the collapse of the old order.

Rather, they create the terrain for political forces defending the status quo to manage the crisis and reassert their hegemony against challenges. AIPAC is just one of the tools being used to maintain that hegemony, along with super PACs, as Mamdani says.

Featured image via the Canary