New York Magazine’s new Habibi City issue is the latest example of an editorial pattern that has been building since October 7, 2023.
For nearly three years, New York has repeatedly portrayed Israel through the libelous accusations of colonialism, apartheid, and genocide. Now that same worldview is being applied to Jewish history, Israeli identity, Zionism, culture, food, and even the question of who gets to belong in the Middle East. This goes far beyond criticism of Israeli government policy. This is anti-Jewish hatred. It is time to expose this hate.
ZIONISM IS NOW SOMETHING PEOPLE “FACE”
In Habibi City, New York writes that SWANA New Yorkers still “face xenophobia, Islamophobia, and Zionism.”
Read that sentence carefully. Xenophobia is hatred directed at foreigners. Islamophobia is prejudice directed at Muslims.
Zionism is the movement for Jewish national self-determination in the Jewish people’s ancestral homeland.
Yet New York places Zionism alongside forms of bigotry as another hostility people must “face.”
That is a profoundly hostile way for a mainstream American magazine to portray Jewish national self-determination – as another social harm inflicted on others.
THEN COMES THE IDENTITY TEST
The contradiction inside the article is remarkable.
The article itself presents SWANA as a ‘decolonial framework,’ rejecting the term ‘Middle East’ & MENA as a Western construct. Yet inside this supposedly decolonized framework, Jewish and Israeli belonging somehow becomes the part that is ‘complicated.’
New York acknowledges that Zohran Mamdani is “not technically from the SWANA region.”
No problem.
He is described as “deeply embedded in its culture” and happily “SWANA adjacent.”
Then the article turns to Israelis and asks whether Israelis can truly claim a connection to the region. It becomes “complicated.”
Why does that belonging suddenly become ‘complicated’ when the people concerned are Jews and Israelis?
When Jewish and Israeli identity enter the picture, belonging suddenly requires an explanation.
JEWISH HISTORY DOES NOT NEED A PERMISSION SLIP
Jews did not suddenly appear in the Middle East with the creation of Israel in 1948.
Jewish communities lived throughout the region for centuries and, in some places, for millennia.
In what is now Iraq alone, Jewish communities existed from at least the sixth century BCE. Jerusalem has been a majority Jewish for centuries.
Generations of Jews lived across the land of Israel, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Syria, Egypt, Lebanon, and North Africa. Their languages, music, food, traditions, and memories are part of the history of the region.
Yet New York tells readers that whether Israelis can claim a connection to this region is “complicated.”
Jewish Middle Eastern history is ancient. The discomfort with acknowledging it is Jew hatred.
EVEN THE FOOD GETS RETROACTIVELY NATIONALIZED
New York repeatedly describes dishes shared across the Levant as “Palestinian,” then casts Israeli Jews as appropriators for cooking them.
But, these foods are older than today’s borders and modern national identities, including Palestinian national identity.
For centuries, the region was home to overlapping Arab, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Ottoman, Syrian, Jerusalemite, Damascene, Aleppine, and other communities. Modern Palestinian national identity developed much later, primarily in the late Ottoman and early twentieth-century periods.
Jews were already living in Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, Tiberias, and elsewhere long before the establishment of modern Israel, long before modern political Zionism, and certainly long before anyone called this region “Palestine.”
So yes, a dish can be called Palestinian today. But presenting centuries-old regional foods as exclusively Palestinian, then accusing Jews of stealing them, rewrites the history of the region.
Shared regional cuisine does not become cultural theft because Jews are cooking it.
NOT SURPRISING. NEW YORK HATRED STARTED DAYS AFTER OCTOBER 7
Look at the record.
OCTOBER 13, 2023
Six days after the Hamas massacre, New York ran:
“The U.S. Is Giving Israel Permission for War Crimes”
OCTOBER 16, 2023
Nine days after the Hamas massacre, New York published an essay describing American support for Israel as
“as though having been through genocide entitled them to commit it.”
The author also accused Israel of decades of “colonial repression” and defended describing Israel through the framework of apartheid.
The hostility was already on full display while Israel had barely begun responding to the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.
THE HATRED KEPT ESCALATING
FEBRUARY 2024
New York published:
“What Happens If Israel Is Found Guilty of Genocide?”
The framing asked whether America could become implicated in what it called “the worst crime.”
JUNE 2025
A major New York cover story was titled:
“ISRAEL’S CRIMES OF THE CENTURY”
Inside, the author wrote that what was happening in Gaza was “not really a war” and described it as the “ceaseless pummeling of one side by the other.”
AUGUST 2026
Now Habibi City tells readers that Zionism is something SWANA New Yorkers “face.”
This latest issue is nothing new. It is simply the latest hate piece in a long line of anti-Israel literature from this once reputable outlet.
NOW “GENOCIDE” IS PART OF THE IDENTITY TEST
Habibi City explains what it means
“to be in SWANA community.”
The author says it means embracing certain “shared beliefs.”
Among them:
“That what happened in Gaza in the aftermath of October 7 constitutes a genocide.”
Think about what New York is presenting here.
A modern day blood libel against the Jewish state is being woven into a description of cultural and political belonging.
Creative Community for Peace categorically rejects the genocide accusation.
Tellingly, Habibi City presents this libel as one of the beliefs holding their community together. A community built on a lie.
THE DOUBLE STANDARD IS IMPOSSIBLE TO MISS
Throughout the issue, communities are celebrated for embracing their homeland, ancestry, inherited memory, political consciousness, food, language, and collective identity.
Then Jewish and Israeli identity enter the story.
Zionism becomes a social hostility.
Jews belonging to the Middle East become “complicated.”
Israeli cuisine becomes a story of appropriation and privilege.
Israel becomes “the land mass currently called Israel.”
Again and again, Jews and Israelis are demonized.
There is nothing progressive about demanding that Jews surrender their right to self-determination before their history, culture, and identity become acceptable.
JEWISH BELONGING REQUIRES NO ONE’S PERMISSION
Criticism of Israeli policies and governments is legitimate. Israelis themselves engage in it every day.
The lies and misinformation New York Magazine has published over nearly three years are shameful.
When a publication repeatedly casts Jewish national self-determination as sinister, Israeli identity as suspect, Jewish regional belonging as questionable, and the Jewish state through the vocabulary of colonialism, apartheid, and genocide, the cumulative effect cannot simply be waved away as criticism of a government.
For Creative Community for Peace, this is antisemitism.
We will continue standing against the cultural demonization and isolation of Israel and the Jewish people.
Jewish identity needs no loyalty test.
Israeli culture needs no apology.
Zionism should never be treated as a form of hate.
