The ADL’s “Mamdani Monitor” and the Politics of Fear

Preemptive Oversight: Weaponizing Vigilance

The Anti-Defamation League’s decision to create a “Mamdani Monitor” before New York’s first Muslim mayor even takes office is not vigilance — it’s intimidation wrapped in moral language. By framing Zohran Mamdani as a potential threat to Jewish safety, the ADL has crossed from protecting communities to policing dissent. Its initiative — complete with a tip line and talk of “permission structures” for antisemitism — turns suspicion into policy. The message is unmistakable: to criticize Israel is to endanger Jews. This conflation of Jewish identity with Israeli policy has long been the ADL’s blind spot, but now it’s become its entire vision — a mission corrupted by fear and politics, not principle.

The ADL no longer tracks antisemitism; it manufactures it, defining danger not by hate but by heresy. What once was a moral cause has become a mechanism of control — using Jewish safety as a shield for state power and silencing anyone who breaks the script. This won’t protect Jewish life; it will erode trust, dilute the meaning of antisemitism, and isolate those who speak truth. The real task ahead is not to confront the ADL, but to reclaim the moral language it has hijacked — to let “safety” mean safety again, and “justice” mean justice, without political permission.