Every generation eventually asks the same haunting question.
After Pearl Harbor, Americans asked how so many warning signs had been missed.
After September 11, the question was repeated.
After October 7, Israelis again wondered how years of accumulating warnings failed to produce action before catastrophe struck.
I am not suggesting that New York City is about to experience another Pearl Harbor or another October 7.
I am suggesting something equally important.
History teaches that democracies rarely fail because warning signs are absent. They fail because too many people convince themselves that someone else will act.
As I write these words from Jerusalem, I find myself thinking of my parents. In many ways, I am grateful they are no longer here to witness what has become of the New York they loved.
I am a fourth-generation New Yorker on my father’s side, and like millions of American Jews, I grew up believing New York represented something extraordinary: a city where freedom, pluralism, and the rule of law protected everyone.
That belief shaped my life.
In 1980, while studying at Brooklyn College, I had the privilege of serving as a research assistant to Dr. Hillel Seidman, a Holocaust survivor, distinguished scholar, and journalist.
He was a prominent Orthodox journalist, author, historian, and activist for Agudath Israel, who later wrote critical analyses of international diplomacy and the United Nations (such as his 1982 book United Nations: Perfidy and Perversion).
He taught me that the UN was never merely a diplomatic institution. It was often the stage upon which tomorrow’s political realities first appeared.
Dr. Seidman followed the tenure of UN secretary-general Kurt Waldheim. He and prime minister Menachem Begin shared a deep friendship and commitment to Holocaust remembrance and to the principle that powerful public officials should never be beyond scrutiny.
Following Yasser Arafat’s 1974 address to the General Assembly, when Arafat famously appeared with both an olive branch and a gun, Dr. Seidman and Begin believed the greater danger was not the gun. It was the olive branch, because it carried legitimacy while concealing a more dangerous reality.
That conviction eventually led to the investigation into Waldheim’s wartime record. I was privileged to assist in portions of that research before the effort was later expanded by the World Jewish Congress, sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and others. The lesson has remained with me throughout my career.
No public official is above the law.
No public official is above scrutiny.
Today, history feels as though it is echoing.
History repeats itself
Within weeks, the opening of the 81st United Nations General Assembly will once again place New York at the center of global attention. But this year’s gathering threatens to become something far more consequential than an annual diplomatic event.
It risks becoming one of the largest internationally televised anti-Israel demonstrations ever staged on American soil.
Reports already point to extraordinarily large demonstrations surrounding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s expected visit. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s public statements suggesting that Netanyahu should be arrested if circumstances permitted have added fuel to an already volatile atmosphere.
Chances for violent outbreaks are serious, given the intense polarization surrounding Netanyahu’s presence, the deep entrenchment of activist networks, and the physical constraints of narrow Manhattan side streets.
The likelihood of severe, localized structural breaches, violent skirmishes with police lines, and destructive clashes between rival demonstrators shifts from “low” to “moderate-to-high.”
Whether Mandani’s public statements about Netanyahu’s guilt of war crimes carry legal significance or political symbolism is ultimately for others to debate. Their cumulative effect, however, is impossible to ignore.
The irony should trouble every American.
Earlier this year, the mayor declined to participate in New York’s Israel Day Parade. Yet New York now appears poised to become the backdrop for what may become the most significant anti-Israel spectacle ever broadcast globally from the US.
This matters because New York is no ordinary city.
It is America’s financial capital. It is one of the world’s media capitals. It is home to the UN.
What happens there rarely stays there.
At precisely the same time, antisemitic incidents account for more than half of all reported hate crimes in New York City. Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch has described antisemitism as part of a broader and persistent assault on Jewish life requiring extraordinary security measures.
Warning signs are accumulating.
The question is whether anyone intends to act before history asks why no one did.
This is no longer simply a political disagreement.
It is a constitutional question.
America’s founders never expected citizens to rely solely upon elections to restrain public officials. They created independent courts, civil rights statutes, public-records laws, and constitutional safeguards so executive conduct could be tested peacefully under the rule of law.
That is exactly what should happen now.
If executive actions raise legitimate constitutional questions, they should be challenged.
If public records deserve examination, they should be sought.
If civil rights laws may have been violated, those claims should be tested.
If ethics rules have been breached, appropriate authorities should investigate.
If statutory mechanisms exist to review official conduct, they should be examined.
None of these actions presumes guilt. They presume accountability.
Our constitutional system is strongest when courts, not commentators, determine whether public officials have remained within the limits of the law. My own research identified multiple legal avenues through which executive actions and official conduct may be reviewed under federal, state, and municipal law.
Mamdani’s mother’s ties to Qatar
There is another issue that deserves transparent public discussion.
Public reporting has documented longstanding institutional and financial relationships between Mamdani’s mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, and Qatari state-backed cultural institutions. Public reporting has also described her as one of the mayor’s closest advisers.
Those facts do not establish foreign influence over municipal policy, and no one should claim otherwise without evidence.
They do, however, raise legitimate questions deserving public scrutiny, particularly given Qatar’s well-documented role in regional diplomacy and its prominence in debates surrounding Israel. Questions are not accusations. They are invitations to transparency.
Finally, I find myself asking another question: Where are America’s constitutional lawyers?
New York is home to one of the largest concentrations of lawyers anywhere in the world, including a remarkable number from the Jewish community. Where are the attorneys-general, former judges, law school deans, civil rights advocates, pastors, rabbis, and civic leaders who have devoted their lives to defending the Constitution?
If they believe the mayor has acted lawfully, the courts will confirm it.
If they believe he has crossed legal boundaries, they should test those questions through every lawful mechanism available: Freedom of Information litigation, civil rights actions where appropriate, administrative complaints, ethics investigations, and judicial review.
The objective is not to silence a political opponent. It is to insist that no elected official is beyond legal accountability. The rule of law cannot defend itself.
It depends on citizens’ willingness to use it.
This is not only about New York.
It is not only about Israel.
It is not only about the Jewish people.
It is about whether the United States still possesses the confidence to defend its constitutional order before, not after, it is forced to explain why obvious warning signs were ignored.
History rarely judges free societies because they failed to recognize danger after it arrived.
It judges them because they refused to confront it while they still could, lawfully, peacefully, and in time.
The writer is a global strategist and a strategic adviser at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs. He can be reached at globalstrategist2020@gmail.com