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May 14th, 2021 
Awake Goy 
It’s not exactly news that a NYC mayoral candidate is terrible on the subject of Israel, but Andrew Yang’s recent troubles indicate that the terrain might be shifting in the city.
We’ve covered the local backlash to Yang’s anti-BDS stance in this newsletter before, but things picked up this week for obvious reasons. While Palestinians ran for cover Yang tweeted, “I’m standing with the people of Israel who are coming under bombardment attacks, and condemn the Hamas terrorists. The people of NYC will always stand with our brothers and sisters in Israel who face down terrorism and persevere.”
The candidate’s erasure of Palestinian suffering was justifiably attacked all over social media, but he received praise from a handful of notable ghouls. It turns out the Yang Gang includes Stephen Miller and Ted Cruz.
Yang was set to attend a food distribution event in Astoria and, as a former resident of that neighborhood, I can’t think of a worse place to show up after sending out a tweet like that. Never mind the fact that Eid began on Wednesday.
The organizers told Yang not to come. He showed up at Astoria Park nonetheless and was immediately confronted by New Yorkers telling him that they wouldn’t vote for him. He told a woman that any loss of life is “heartbreaking”, but refused to condemn Israel’s actions.
Yang’s tweet even prompted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to weigh in on the mayoral race for the first time. “Utterly shameful for Yang to try to show up to an Eid event after sending out a chest-thumping statement of support for a strike killing 9 children, especially after his silence as Al-Aqsa was attacked,” she wrote.
AOC has been criticized by some on the left for trying to have it both ways on Palestine and some pointed out that she should also extend this kind of criticism to powerful pro-Israel lawmakers within her own party, like Nancy Pelosi.
Of course AOC should criticize Pelosi, but it’s worth pointing out that the people confronting Yang are her constituents. The state’s most popular politician saying something about a mayoral candidate is not insignificant and the criticism Yang has received should not be dismissed. This development should be understood within the context of deeper shifts in New York. It comes after DSA (an organization that backs BDS) has permeated local politics and after Eliot Engel was ousted by Jamaal Bowman.
Thousands of New Yorkers hit the streets in solidarity with Palestine this week. “You might ask yourself, what can you do in New York City to make sure that our brothers, our sisters, our family beyond the binary in Palestine are safe and free and receive justice?” Zohran Mamdani, a New York State Assembly member who represents Astoria, declared at a rally. “You can put pressure on every single elected officials. At the city council, at the state assembly, at the state senate. We have elected officials who are taking paid-for trips to Israel. They are going there paid for by your tax dollars. They show up at Israel Day parades and say, ‘We stand in solidarity. We want to let them know that there are three letters we have as an answer to what is happening in Palestine and it’s B-D-S.”
The reality is that Palestine used to be third rail issue, even among some sectors of the left. It has become a litmus test.
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