Opinion | A ‘city that works for everyone’ cannot boycott its Jewish community

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When candidates for public office make pledges, voters should pay attention — they reveal not only priorities but values.

In exchange for the Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) endorsement, state Sen. and Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh pledged to “refrain from any and all affiliation” with Israel and a list of “Zionist lobby groups.”

The DSA list — from the hawkish American Israel Public Affairs Committee to dovish J Street — also includes my organization, Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas (JCRC), the consensus public affairs voice for our region’s Jewish community.

Demonizing local Jewish voices echoes the hostility Jews faced in 1939 — the year of JCRC’s founding — when white Christian nationalists circulated leaflets to 50,000 Minneapolis churchgoers declaring: “When Christians Vote, They Vote Right,” as Columbia journalism professor Samuel Freedman unearthed from JCRC’s archives. The message was unmistakable: Because most Jews voted left, their votes and voices were illegitimate and dangerous.

Today, amid historic antisemitism, Fateh’s pledge to boycott Jewish organizations revives that same exclusionary strategy — singling out the vast majority of Jews as unworthy of equal participation in civic life.

Fateh hired aides who call for Israel’s destruction, deny Hamas’s sexual atrocities, and even praise the Oct. 7 massacre — in which more than 1,200 people were murdered and over 250 kidnapped — as “heroic.”

Thankfully, some elected leaders have called out these appalling remarks.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s spokesperson said, “These comments are outrageous and have no place in our politics.”

Minneapolis City Council Member Linea Palmisano was also clear: “Defending the Oct. 7 terrorist attack is disgraceful, and it’s embarrassing that Sen. Fateh is OK with this behavior.”

Supporting terrorism is not progressive. It is vile — threatening public safety, deepening polarization and making it impossible for us to work across differences on urgent local problems.

That prejudicial pattern underpins today’s antizionist mutation of antisemitism.

Along with the far-right’s “great replacement” ideology, antizionism fuels today’s most dangerous antisemitic lie: The Jewish peoples’ post-Holocaust renewal in our homeland is recast as a racist, colonialist project and the vast majority of Jews are framed as obstacles to justice and peace.

Anti-Jewish lies spread by persuading people that being on the “right side of history” means demonizing Jews and erasing Jewish identity and legitimacy.

A recent commentary in the Minnesota Star Tribune by Taher Herzallah, a national antizionist leader, followed this pattern, invoking the human catastrophe in Gaza to justify incendiary claims against Jews while omitting any mention of Hamas.

In October 2023, Herzallah decried Jews as “enemy number one,” and now, in these pages, baselessly accused synagogues of encouraging “war crimes.” Such incitement is a feature, not a bug, of the antizionist boycott, divestment and sanctions movement Fateh and his DSA allies support.

Recognizing the suffering, stories and indigeneity of both peoples to the same land is neither a zero-sum calculation nor a contradiction. In any conflict — whether between two people or two peoples — it is immoral and destructive to demand empathy for only one side.

Our credibility comes from calling things as we see them: Just as Israel’s far-right harms Palestinians and Jews alike, the DSA far-left isolates Jews, deepens polarization and ultimately harms Palestinians, too — replacing the hard work of engagement with cheap boycotts that only entrench conflict.

Fateh’s campaign promises “a city that works for everyone.” But a city that works for everyone does not boycott Jewish organizations, hire staff who cheer terrorism and sexual violence, or normalize propaganda that erodes truth and divides neighbors.

Antisemitism is not progress. It is an ancient lie that thrives in movements that claim moral superiority while demanding conformity and denying the humanity of others.

Minneapolis deserves better.