(SeaPRwire) –
Something telling happened this week on opposite sides of the Atlantic. London accepted all 27 recommendations from an independent review into antisemitism in schools. New York’s new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, put out a 33-page strategy that pointedly refuses to define the problem it claims to fight. Having covered municipal politics and communal security in Europe for two decades, I find the contrast almost too clean to be accidental. Britain’s review, led by former senior education official Sir David Bell, found that nearly three in five Jewish people aged 16 to 19 had experienced or witnessed antisemitism. That is a staggering figure in a country often accused of moving too slowly on this file. Yet when London finally moved, it moved with definitions, benchmarks, and oversight. New York, the most Jewish city in America, moved with museum visits and vague grants. The gap says more about political will than about resources.
Start with what the official documents actually say. The U.K. government embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism. It commissioned specialized educator training, strengthened reporting procedures, and independent oversight, with Bell himself returning after one year to assess progress. Dov Forman, the British Jewish author and Holocaust educator, called the recommendations “the bare minimum,” then turned his fire on Mamdani. The least the mayor could do, Forman argued, is adopt the IHRA definition, which he described as the agreed standard worldwide. His logic is blunt. You cannot solve antisemitism without agreeing on what it is, and targeting a Jew because of events in Israel is antisemitic by that definition. Mamdani’s strategy, by contrast, adopts no single definition, never addresses the relationship between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, and sets no numerical benchmarks for success. One of his first acts as mayor was revoking the executive order by Eric Adams that had adopted IHRA for city agencies.
Now read the subtext. Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side called Mamdani’s plan a “paper tiger.” The math is brutal. Of the announced $36 million, only $1 million supports physical security for vulnerable nonprofits, including synagogues. As Steinmetz put it, that is a dollar a Jew in a city with a million Jews. Another $6.4 million flows through the Partners Against the Hate initiative, much of it toward cultural centers and broadly defined community programming rather than guards and cameras. A joint statement from UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Community Relations Council, the American Jewish Committee’s New York office, and the New York Board of Rabbis warned that the plan refuses to name a central source of contemporary antisemitism, namely rhetoric demonizing Israel. “How can you have a strategy to keep New York Jews safe when you can’t even name what the danger is?” Steinmetz asked. Mamdani’s office did not respond when asked why IHRA and measurable benchmarks were omitted. Forman, for his part, is no cheerleader for London either. He called it “very rich” for British ministers to endorse IHRA in schools while blaming Israel weekly at the dispatch box, and he demanded action against Islamist extremism and the Muslim Brotherhood. “Stop talking and start acting,” he said.
The pendulum in Western politics now swings between governments that define threats and governments that manage them rhetorically. Britain, after years of justified criticism for sluggishness, has chosen the first path, however imperfect and however optional its recommendations remain. Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, welcomed the 27 recommendations but stressed that implementation and enforcement are the real test. He is right, and that caveat applies with double force to City Hall in New York. A strategy that cannot define antisemitism, cannot quantify success, and spends one dollar per Jewish resident on physical security is not a strategy. It is a press release with a budget attached. Jewish leaders in New York are still waiting for an answer to the simplest question in politics: what, exactly, is the threat you intend to confront?