The New York Times seems to believe Islamophobia cancels out anti-Semitism as it downplays Trump's remarks and publishes a racist piece
When US President Donald Trump referred to gouging bankers as “Shylocks” in a rally in Iowa on 3 July 2025, he was widely called out for anti-Semitism (this is one of the older anti-Semitic tropes, going back to Shakespeare). But not by The New York Times. It reported the speech with no mention of this anti-Semitic reference. Only after Jewish leaders denounced this use did The New York Times report that this had happened.
What’s wrong, New York Times? Have you forgotten all the times when politicians and activists on the left strayed into anti-Semitic tropes — sometimes more subtle than this, with a plausible claim that it was a mistake? Remember how they were denounced with no possibility of an acceptable excuse? Why are you not denouncing Trump yourself? Why did you not report what he said when he said it?
Could it be that you believe that his Islamophobia cancels out his anti-Semitism? This is a widely held view that makes it possible for Zionists not only to be comfortable with support from fascists (the home of anti-Semitism going back to Mussolini’s alliance with Hitler) but even to embrace fascism themselves.
But using Islamophobia as a fig leaf to cover anti-Semitism is a fundamentally flawed concept.
Islamophobia and anti-Semitism come from the same place: demonising the other, particularly by fundamentalist far-right Christians.
These views go back a long way. Islamophobia has its roots in the Crusades, a series of conflicts in which European countries attempted to take back the “holy land” from its Muslim rulers over a period of nearly 200 years, starting in 1096.
Anti-Semitism goes back even further. Though Christianity originally grew out of Judaism, it has long left those roots behind. In the first millennium of Christianity, the view developed that Jews were collectively responsible for the death of Christ and that the destruction of Israel at the hands of the Romans and the subsequent diaspora were collective punishment for refusing to accept Christianity. Arising out of this was “blood libel”, a baseless belief that Jews used the blood of Christians in rituals.
Both anti-Semitism and Islamophobia start from the view that Christianity is the only true form of monotheism. Judaism and Islam are attacked as refusing to accept that divinity of Christ; Islam accepts that he was a prophet and no more than that.
The similarities between Islamophobia and anti-Semitism make it bizarre that anyone would accept one as a camouflage for the other, no less because those doing this are happy to embrace fascism, long one of the pillars of political anti-Semitism.
This weird blurring of moral boundaries is not new, nor is it confined to the US.
In Britain, one of the strategies used to undo Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party was fake anti-Semitism accusations. There were a few instances of someone apologising after claiming to have inadvertently used an anti-Semitic trope but what was particularly bizarre about this period was the number of Jewish — even some who were Holocaust survivors — members of Labour who were accused of being anti-Semites. According Jewish Voice for Labour, Jewish members were five times as likely as non-Jewish members to be accused of anti-Semitism.
Who is really behind this weird campaign against the Labour left? UK Zionists played a major role. The actual target was Corbyn’s sympathy for the Palestinian cause. Supporting Palestinians’ rights is not fundamentally anti-Semitic but it is anti-Zionist. That is a clear distinction.
If anyone promotes the Palestinian cause using anti-Semitism, that clearly is as problematic as using anti-Semitism as a cover for Islamophobia. However, that does not mean that all support of Palestinian rights is anti-Semitism. Making such a claim gives Zionists a free pass to commit any and all crimes against Palestinians. We see that today, not only in Gaza, but on the West Bank. Numerous Israeli acts that in any other context would clearly be war crimes cannot be discussed without accusations of “blood libel” or other forms of anti-Semitism.
Back to the US — after Zohran Mamdani won the 24 June 2025 New York Democratic mayoral primary, Islamophobia went ballistic. The New York Times published a hit piece based on a leak from a person using the pseudonym Cremieux, revealed to be eugenicist, Jordan Lasker. Why is the supposedly liberal New York Times giving space to a leak from a racist, particularly with the protection of a pseudonym?
One of the factors in Mamdani’s massive win was his support from a Jewish opponent, Brad Lander, the city’s comptroller (chief financial officer, in South African terminology).
New York City uses ranked-choice voting. Voters number candidates, with one being first choice. If no candidate achieves more than 50%, candidates are dropped out of the count and second preferences of those candidates are used and this process continues until someone achieves over 50%. Lander not only advised his voters to rank Mamdani second but also defended him against Islamophobic attacks.
Lander also strongly opposed ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and was at one point arrested for doing so.
All of this points to a clear and obvious contradiction. You cannot run a racist campaign to see off racism against yourself. Lander got this, as did Jewish members of British Labour.
Zionists are increasingly working against the best interests of Jews by promoting and defending war crimes against Palestinians, hence creating a new wave of hatred, unrelated to historical anti-Semitism. While I argue strongly that it is wrong to blame all Jews for this hatred, hard-core Zionists are attempting to corral all Jews into their worldview by equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.
So can I call Zionists out as anti-Semites? Isn’t this ridiculously reductionist?
Why not? If Zionist campaigners against Palestinian rights in the UK could call Holocaust survivors anti-Semites, they set the precedent.
And The New York Times? Clearly an anti-Semitic publication. Their scandal is far worse than the fake accusations against Corbyn’s Labour. They have published a racist article sourced from a eugenicist; has everyone forgotten what side of World War II embraced this sort of racist drivel? They have allowed Trump to get away with a clearly anti-Semitic trope without reporting it until it was called out by Jewish leaders.
The future of the Jewish people is not with siding with their own worst enemies. It is time to call the bullshit now.
Philip Machanick is an emeritus associate professor of computer science at Rhodes University. https://www.facebook.com/MakanaCitizensFront.