Letter to US Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, NY-08

Hello Rep. Jeffries,

Apologies for combining two seemingly disparate requests in one, but in my perspective they are at least partially linked.

Should you receive the House budget bill back for reconciliation with a version of the Senate bill, I think you should put every wrench in the way of allowing it to pass with the budget increases to border patrol and customs enforcement as they exist now in the bill. This article from The Cato Institute shows the astounding cost, but I care more about what it would say about our priorities to increase ICE's funding pool by an order of magnitude. In addition to be authoritarian and unconstitutional, ICE's behavior is wildly unpopular, as I'm sure you're aware since you felt it important to place a "know your immigration rights" popup on your office website. I'm asking you to make sure the world knows just how different the country would be if we pass the budget bill as it is. I am asking you to make it the only thing you talk about while we can still prevent its passing or reshape it. I am asking you as a new constituent of yours to put your political weight behind making sure this administration cannot govern if they are going to govern in this manner. Please sir, you have many tools at your disposal, the overwhelming support of your constituents behind you, and the truth about the vital role of immigration to our functioning economy and democracy on your side.

It is here that I turn to Mr. Mamdani. Please endorse him. This is a non-issue; he ran an entirely positive campaign. In an interview with ABC's "This Week" you are quoted as saying "‘Globalizing the intifada’ by way of example is not an acceptable phrasing". I am unable to find any examples of Mr. Mamdani using this phrasing anywhere, was it somewhere I missed? I'm a little perplexed by the sentence in that same article, which reads, "Jeffries criticized Mamdani’s use of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which fueled his detractors’ accusations of antisemitism", but links to an article which contains no quotes of Mr. Mamdani ever using that phrase. I think Rachel Scully of The Hill and you might be making a mental leap, equating Mr. Mamdani "failing to condemn a phrase" because of it's sad and tortured history, and him saying it, endorsing it, and calling for it in NYC.

As Mr. Mamdani has said many times, there is no place for antisemitism in NYC. I believe that the collective trauma of the last 5, 10, 50 years of open violence in Israel and an unknowable amount of pervasive antisemitism here at home has led a portion of my Jewish neighbors to develop an acute sensitivity to anything that might sound like aid or moral cover to their enemies. Even if that moral cover is empathy for the plight of a plainly brutalized citizenry. While I can understand their pain and their paranoia toward someone who looks like Mr. Mamdani winning the mayoral primary—I was 8 when I watched the towers fall, I was a Fox News-watcher when the Islamic cultural center was built next door—we do not have to agree with the assessments of facts.

Mr. Mamdani has stated publicly that:

1. He believes in sanctity of the state of Israel, but that he wishes it operated as a state with equal rights similar to America's goals.
2. Mr. Mamdani has never said anything of the sort similar to "globalize the intifada"
3. Mr. Mamdani has condemn antisemitism in all forms. His critics simply fuse criticism of the occupation of Gaza and of the Israeli government's unequal rights framework as antisemitism, which he and I disagree with, as does M. Gessen

Please do not let the warping of a media game of telephone reshape the facts, please do not allow the media to make Mr. Mamdani into something he's not, in your mind or in the mind of the American public. Please listen to the voters in your district that voted overwhelmingly to hire this man as mayor. Please reach out to him and start building a winning Democratic big tent coalition around him.

Apologies for the length here, and thank you for your time. In summary, I have the following questions:

1. Will you commit to trying to remove the 10x budget increase to ICE from the budget bill? If so, what will you do?
2. Will you endorse Zohran Mamdani? Will you state publicly that the matter is settled, once Mr. Mamdani and you can have a substantive conversation?
3. Will you clarify for me whether you see condemnation of the destruction of Gaza, or criticism of the civil rights structure of the Israeli government, as a form of antisemitism? Am I wrong to be critical of that state, perhaps because there is no other option than the destruction of the Muslim population of Gaza? I want to understand.

Best regards, Frank