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By Liam Stack
Mayor Zohran Mamdani helped propel three left-wing candidates with sharply critical views of Israel to primary victories in House races on Tuesday, reshaping New York City’s political landscape and confronting pro-Israel Jewish leaders with the prospect of an increasingly pro-Palestinian congressional delegation.
The candidates’ success represented a striking contrast with the political status quo in New York, which is home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel and where support for that country has for decades been the default for elected officials and office seekers.
The war in Gaza and subsequent Israeli conflicts elsewhere in the Middle East have changed that political calculus, a shift demonstrated by the candidates who won on Tuesday: the former city comptroller Brad Lander, the activist Darializa Avila Chevalier and the state lawmaker Claire Valdez.
Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, which backed Ms. Valdez and Ms. Avila Chevalier, celebrated on Tuesday night.
“Tonight there was a pro-Palestine sweep of New York City,” she said, adding, “The Democratic establishment would do well to pay attention.”
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Rabbi Bachman said the primary results might also be an expression of a decades-long pattern among Jewish Americans, which he characterized as “an erosion of attachment to a sense of Jewish peoplehood, language, culture, land — the things that really bound us together for generations.”
“When those wear away, what’s left are universalist values,” he said. “And Israel doesn’t represent universalist values for a whole swath of younger American Jews.”
Mr. Lander pushed back on that sentiment in his victory speech on Tuesday, saying he wanted to stand up for the rights of both Jews and Palestinians as a member of Congress. “Those are not two different jobs,” he said. “They are the same job.”
He added: “You can criticize Israel and not be antisemitic. You can be an anti-Zionist and not be antisemitic — many Jews are, and non-Jews too.”
That is an argument that left-wing Jewish groups have long made, and on Tuesday they celebrated the victory of Mr. Mamdani’s slate. Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive group that has supported the mayor and Mr. Lander, said the primary had been “a fight for both the future of the Democratic Party and the future of the Jewish community.”
“It was a fight between an out-of-touch establishment and a Jewish left with a real vision for our community that is grounded in human rights and dignity for all,” the group said. “And tonight, just like we did last June and this past November, the Jewish left won.”