Must-See X Clips of the Week

This week, the deltas hit different. Trump issued the first presidential call for a national Sabbath tied to the 250th anniversary. The DOJ launched a 15-city antisemitism awareness tour. NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani confirmed he’s ghosting the Celebrate Israel Parade (decades of tradition, gone). Feds stay on the NYC DOE for “Palestine teach-ins.” NYPD says Jewish sites are in the worst threat environment in 18 years. All verified.

Brad Lander, the Jewish Democrat running for Congress in New York’s 10th district, went to the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens on May 15. He recited from the Quran, denounced American military aid to Israel, and announced his desire to partner with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Minutes later the imam led the congregation in the Dua Nudba, the standard Shia supplication that calls for the return of the Mahdi and the killing of infidels by the sword.

Lander presented himself as a bridge builder. The setting made the performance legible to anyone paying attention. He is a Jew seeking votes by advertising his opposition to the Jewish state inside a mosque where worshippers are ritually asked to pray for the death of people like him. The calculation is straightforward. In certain New York Democratic primaries the anti-Israel vote is organized and motivated. The Jewish vote is assumed to be either captive or unimportant.

This is not empathy. It is a political transaction conducted at the expense of the candidate’s own community. Lander is not the first Jewish Democrat to pursue this route, but the spectacle has grown more grotesque as antisemitic incidents in the city remain elevated and as legislation targeting Jewish philanthropic institutions advances in Albany under the same political current. The imam did not improvise the prayer. It is part of the liturgy. Lander chose to stand beneath it and signal alignment with its political objectives.

The pattern is consistent. Progressive Jewish politicians treat opposition to Israel as the price of admission to the coalition they want to lead. They calculate that the domestic political benefits outweigh the strategic cost to Jewish security. The calculation has been tested repeatedly and has failed every time. It produces neither safety nor influence. It produces only the next demand.

At an Isra and Mi’raj event on May 21, the speaker openly celebrated how criticism of Israel aid from certain voices on the right has successfully divided MAGA. He framed it as a direct “Victory for Islam in America.” The same mosque has a long paper trail of scrutiny, including past Hamas-funding convictions tied to its network.

This isn’t assimilation. This is colonization with better branding. They’re not asking to join the American experiment; they’re explaining, on camera, how they plan to fracture the one political coalition actually willing to confront antisemitism and Islamist networks.