Elections are a barometer. While this week’s elections don’t tell us everything, they do tell us something important: Zionism’s extraordinary power on U.S. life is coming to an end.

One of the rules of modern U.S. politics is that criticizing Israel is political suicide. After progressive Black congressional representatives Jamal Bowman and Cori Bush condemned Israel, the pro-Israel lobby decried them as antisemites, circulated mailers that distorted Bush’s face into a racist caricature (blatant misogynoir) and spent over $20 million to unseat them. Both lost in the summer of 2024. Zionism’s lesson was clear: U.S. politicians must swear loyalty to Israel.

But the tide has begun to turn. Opinion polls show that for the first time in contemporary history, more people living in the U.S. say they sympathize more with Palestine than Israel. About half of those polled in the U.S. believe that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians. Most U.S. Jews believe that the Israeli government is committing war crimes; 40 percent of U.S. Jews say it has committed genocide in Gaza.

There’s always a gap between what the people want and what the elites who govern them choose to do. But it seems that the undeniable sea change in public opinion is now having an impact even on the political class. Congresspeople are speaking out against genocide. Politicians are cancelling their tours to Israel. Twenty seven Senators have voted to block the sale of arms to Israel.

This week’s elections confirmed the trend. In Somerville, Mass., a ballot proposal calling for divestment from Israel passed by nearly 55 percent. In Virginia, Ghazala Hashmi—a Muslim immigrant from India who has publicly supported Palestine—won her race for lieutenant governor—despite attempts by Zionist outlets such as “Jewish Insider” to smear her as an antisemite. And in New York City, our very own Zohran Mamdani ’14, a Muslim immigrant from Uganda, secured his place as New York’s new democratic socialist mayor.

Mamdani has long supported Palestine. While a student at Bowdoin, he organized an academic boycott of Israeli institutions well before the recent shift in popular opinion.

“Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms,” he wrote in the Orient in 2014.

And he has continued to champion Palestinian liberation in the years since, despite the risks.

But what made this mayoral race so significant was not just that Mamdani ran as an anti-Zionist but that his opponents chose to turn the election into a referendum on Zionism itself. Interviewers interrogated Mamdani about Israel’s “right to exist.” Liberal outlets such as The Atlantic and The New York Times questioned his pro-Palestine views. Pro-Israel super PACs poured millions into attempting to defeat him. The New York Post called him “a babyfaced socialist antisemite.” And Andrew Cuomo proudly framed himself as the official Zionist candidate.

Why was so much invested in attempting to defeat this charismatic, 34-year-old Bowdoin alum who thinks Palestine should be free? Because, as a public letter put it, Mamdani’s campaign represents the “political normalization” of anti-Zionism. This had to be stopped.

Yet, Mamdani won with over 50 percent of the vote—and this in New York, the most populous Jewish city in the world and one of the historic strongholds of Zionism. And he did it with a diverse and inclusive coalition that included Muslims and Jews—the very opposite of the divisive narratives of his opponents. His victory is a consequence of the dramatic shift in popular opinion, but it has also had the effect of further solidifying the normalization of anti-Zionism. Among his many accomplishments, Mamdani has proven that instead of something to hide, anti-Zionism is not only a righteous cause, but now a popular, even winning position.

The consequences are staggering. The Israeli state is now a pariah, much as apartheid South Africa once was. All Israel has left is the United States. It desperately needs U.S. taxpayer money, U.S. weaponry and U.S. diplomatic cover. And now that the majority of people in the United States are finally turning against the Israeli state for its decades-long cleansing of the Palestinian people, and anti-Zionists like Mamdani are winning major elections, it’s unclear how long the out-of-touch elites who run the many institutions of this country will be able to continue putting Israel first. The majority who elected Mamdani has sent a message to all these institutions.

This includes Mamdani’s own alma mater. A decade after Mamdani organized a boycott campaign, condemnation of Israeli apartheid and genocide has become the majority opinion on campus. But like institutions elsewhere, Bowdoin has resisted the change. Bowdoin’s senior administration has wholly rejected the overwhelmingly popular student referendum on divestment. They have failed to put forth any serious official pro-Palestine programming. They’ve punished dozens of students for protesting genocide. And they banned Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)—the group that Mamdani himself founded while he was a student at Bowdoin.

Beholden to some of the same powerful donors that tried to sink Mamdani’s campaign, Bowdoin is busy promoting Zionism on campus. College resources are poured into platforming a string of Zionist speakers. Meanwhile, pro-Palestine students following in Mamdani’s footsteps are prohibited from tabling, organizing, recruiting, booking rooms, inviting speakers, hosting events or securing funds. As for Mamdani himself, Bowdoin’s official message after the election was a bland Instagram post that tried to hide his politics, which sparked massive outcry among alumni and current students.

Mamdani’s decisive victory—made possible in part by a critical mass of Bowdoin alums who voted and canvassed for him—shows that this situation cannot last. Over the last two years, the world has borne witness to one of the great moral atrocities of not just our time but history at large. What makes the Gaza genocide so galling to so much of humanity isn’t simply the horrific amount of administered death, but the way this genocide has been aided and abetted by so many of the political elites of liberal democratic society, not least in the university. Mamdani’s victory and the enormous enthusiasm it has ignited is a rejection of precisely this callous and instrumental elite politics everywhere, from Gaza to the Bronx. It’s time for the institution that educated Mamdani to learn one of the most important lessons from their alum’s historic campaign: You can’t erase a call for justice.

For inquiries, please contact bowdoinfsjp@proton.me.

– The 40+ members of Bowdoin Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP).

FSJP was founded in 2024.