The great mystery of our time is why most Jewish Americans continue to vote for Democrats, who have become the party of virulent anti-Semitism not seen since 1930s Germany.
Which brings me to Darializa Avila Chevalier, the Democratic Socialist candidate who is almost certainly the next congresswoman from New York’s 13th District. She knocked off a five-term Democrat incumbent in the primary, the seat is about as safely left as any in America, and November is a formality. So the interesting question isn’t whether she’ll be sworn in. It’s what she’s chosen to do with the ten weeks before it happens.
On Thursday she got herself arrested outside the United Nations, along with a city councilman and a comedian, while Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the General Assembly. Her framing afterward was that she’d been arrested for protesting Netanyahu. The NYPD’s version is less romantic. Roughly 250 people gathered at First Avenue and 39th Street. Some sat down in the roadway. Police asked them to move. They declined. That’s the offense — not dissent, which is protected and costs nothing, but blocking a public street, which is a decision to make your point by interfering with everyone else’s day.
She posted about it proudly, of course, because the arrest was the deliverable. Nobody sits in a Manhattan roadway by accident. You do it knowing the cuffs are coming and the photo is the reason you came. The anti-Semitism was rampant.
Video of the moment congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier, New York City Council Member Chi Ossé and comedian Caleb Hearon were arrested by NYPD while protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's UNGA speech today. pic.twitter.com/Oe5OEb5t2A
— Shannon Ryan (@_shanryan) September 24, 2026
“Darializa was just arrested while peacefully protesting Netanyahu’s speech at the United Nations,” a Thursday afternoon post from the candidate’s social media account said. “Our government has unlimited funds to arm a genocide against Palestinians but tells us there’s nothing left to feed and house our own people. Stop arming Israel!”
The big lie here, of course, is that a) Israel was attacked by Islamo-fascists and saw nearly 1,300 of its people slaughtered (unarmed men, along with women and children); and b) Gaza is destroyed and Hamas is neutered but there has been no genocide by a country that has actually provided tons in food and other aide to Palestinians.
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Darializa Avila Chevalier, the DSA-backed Democrat who just knocked off a five-term congressman,… pic.twitter.com/9Ums3AOmM2
— M.A. Rothman (@MichaelARothman) September 25, 2026
Anyway, then came the part that tells you more than the arrest did. Chevalier posed for a picture with Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer with a long record of saying things most elected Democrats would have to spend a week walking back, and posted it approvingly. Piker had stopped by on his way to Cornell, where he reportedly joined a chant of “from the river to the sea” — a slogan that, whatever its defenders claim about it, describes a territory in which Israel does not exist. A congresswoman-in-waiting treated the association as an asset worth advertising.
To answer everyone’s question, @hasanthehun was crouching and I was on my tip toes. Also, I was released safely, thank you for your well wishes everyone.
And as always, it’s Free Palestine till Palestine is free. https://t.co/z4LW4Yo6mB
— Darializa for Congress (@DarializaforNY) September 24, 2026
Understand the incentives, because they explain everything. In a district this safe, the general election disciplines nothing. The only audience that matters is the primary electorate she already won and the online left that supplies the energy and the donations. For that audience, an arrest is a résumé line and a photo with the right streamer is a loyalty check. Moderation carries no reward. Restraint is a liability.
This is the machine that produced New York City Mayor and resident anti-Semite Zohran Mamdani, who spent the week calling for the arrest of a Netanyahu and encouraging the demonstrations she joined. It produced Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, whose own party’s attorney general has publicly warned about his rhetoric. It is producing nominees in safe seats across the country, and each one arrives in Washington with no incentive to ever compromise on anything.
House Democratic leadership will welcome her, seat her, and say nothing. Cowardly House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has a majority to chase and no appetite for a fight with the wing that now selects his colleagues.
So the caucus gets another member whose first act as a nominee was to sit down in traffic for a camera. The rest of us get to watch a national party discover, seat by seat, that it no longer picks its own candidates.
