New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) speaking with the press in the Bronx, New York City, May 18, 2026. Photo: Michael Brochstein/ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

Many Americans will read Tuesday’s election results as a rebuke of President Trump, but I spent the night watching something that worries me far more: A political movement that has made hostility toward Israel central to its identity has gained a real foothold in Washington. Jews have watched this pattern repeat across 2,000 years of exile, and history has shown that once a movement learns it can rise by blaming the Jews, the damage rarely stays confined to our community.

The most troubling result came from Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed won a seat in the United States Senate. Throughout his campaign, he attacked our community constantly, and whenever anyone pushed back, he reached for the charge of Islamophobia as if it were a bulletproof vest. Every religion deserves respect under American freedom, and I only wish he had shown the same conscience about antisemitism that he demands of others. El-Sayed’s continued denial of Israel’s right to exist and its self-determination is one of the definitions of antisemitism according to the IHRA definition.

Michigan also sent Donavan McKinney, a Democratic Socialist candidate who pledged to sever military aid to Israel, carried by the same wave, to the House.

In New York, a number of anti-Israel candidates backed by Mayor Zohran Mamdani won House seats. Among them, Darializa Avila Chevalier has been unusually candid, publicly demanding that the US end funding to Israel, initiate a full arms embargo, and states that the Palestinians must be granted the right of return, which is something that Israel can never agree to if it wishes to remain a Jewish state. What she is advocating for, in other words, is the destruction of Israel.

For years the loudest of these voices sat on the fringe of the House, until Bernie Sanders helped bring the Squad’s outlook into the Senate. With these new wins, the newcomers and the DSA group within the Democratic Party will read it as a mandate to push further. In a closely divided Congress, even a small bloc can steer a major party, and opposition to Israel risks moving from campaign slogan to governing agenda.

Since President Trump announced his intention to end American aid to Israel, critics such as Congressman Ro Khanna have hailed it as proof that their pressure is working. I have long believed Israel should aim for greater financial independence, though I doubt ending aid will satisfy a movement whose demands already reach as far as an embargo and the Palestinian right of return.

One day before the election, four school buses serving Jewish children in Williamsburg were covered with swastikas. The vandals bear the responsibility, but many Jews believe the relentless demonization of Israel by people in power, Mayor Mamdani included, has fed the climate that made it possible, and a statement of condemnation after the fact cannot substitute for accountability. I fear more is coming, and American Jews would be wise to fasten their seatbelts.

Politicians who ride hatred into office rarely let go of it after they win, because an enemy keeps supporters angry and explains away every failure. When voters start asking about housing, healthcare, and the cost of living and the answers fail to arrive, the temptation will be to find new ways to blame the Jews. Antisemitism has surfaced on the far left and the far right alike, carrying an ancient lie that has never solved a single problem and has caused immeasurable suffering, for the Jews as well as many millions of others.

This situation reminds me of the warning of German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller, who himself was an anti-communisit and antisemite, until he himself was thrown into a concentration camp for speaking out about the Nazis taking control of Protestant churches. After the war he recognized his folly about staying silent when groups of citizens are attacked. That is a warning that must now speak to every American, whatever they think of Israel, because a society that excuses hatred from politicians it otherwise likes quickly wears away its own moral foundation.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks echoed the same message when he told the European Parliament in 2016, “What starts with the Jews, never ends with the Jews.” When a country turns on its Jews, something deeper is usually breaking.

I love America, which has given my family and millions like it freedoms our ancestors could barely imagine, and that love is exactly why this moment alarms me. American Jews will need to become more organized, more engaged, and more confident in our identity, while building ties with Americans of every political persuasion who see antisemitism as a threat to them too. I hope the new members of Congress prove me wrong and choose to govern by building and uniting. Our people will outlast this, as we have outlasted so much else, but I worry about what our communities in particular, and what America as a whole, may lose along the way. Movements that ride hatred all the way to power never manage to build a great country with it.

Rabbi Steven Burg is the International CEO of Aish, a global Jewish educational movement. He formerly served as Eastern Director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, where he oversaw the Museum of Tolerance in New York City.