In recent years, Jewish and pro-Israel activists in New York City have been successful in defending favored incumbents while boosting candidates in open-seat local races. But they have struggled to go on the offensive against far-left Israel critics on the City Council aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, which has gained prominence in some districts.

Now, however, some Jewish community activists and pro-Israel strategists are expressing optimism that a competitive City Council election in southern Brooklyn could be their best pick-up opportunity in next week’s citywide primaries, delivering a possible upset that has so far proved elusive at the local level.

In one of the city’s most hotly contested local races, Alexa Avilés, a two-term councilmember backed by the DSA, is facing a formidable challenge from Ling Ye, a moderate former congressional staffer making her first bid for elective office with a focus largely on public safety.

The race is playing out in a redrawn district that now includes more moderate constituents in Dyker Heights who are likely less receptive to reelecting a socialist, strategists say, fueling hopes among allies of Ye eager to pick off an incumbent whose hostility to Israel while in office has rankled Jewish leaders.

Ye, who immigrated to the United States from China in her early teens, is also depending on the sizable population of Chinese American voters who live in the ethnically diverse district — which covers such progressive pockets as Red Hook, winds down through a heavily Latino section of Sunset Park and terminates around Bensonhurst and Dyker Heights in southwestern Brooklyn.

“She is hyper focused on the issues impacting the community she grew up in and served through her many roles in government,” Haley Scott, a spokesperson for Ye, told JI. “She’s fighting to make south Brooklyn safer and more affordable, and to make sure every community in this district is being heard and represented in City Hall.”

One political consultant supportive of Ye said that he had seen recent polling showing Avilés with an eight-point lead over her opponent, but cautioned the district is difficult to accurately survey because the electorate is so diverse and voters speak several different languages.

“There are a bunch of voting pockets, between the Asian population and working-class moderate white voters, that could break toward Ye,” the consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity to address the race, told Jewish Insider this week.

Haley Scott, a spokesperson for Ye, also projected confidence ahead of Tuesday’s primary, saying the first-time candidate “is running a campaign to win” and built “overwhelming grassroots support and an aggressive turnout operation to make sure everyone who can vote exercises that right.”

“She is hyper focused on the issues impacting the community she grew up in and served through her many roles in government,” Scott told JI. “She’s fighting to make south Brooklyn safer and more affordable, and to make sure every community in this district is being heard and represented in City Hall.”

Ye, who most recently was a staffer for Rep. Dan Goldman (D-NY), is backed by a pro-Israel super PAC as well as a group with ties to the real estate industry that has invested in attack ads targeting Avilés over past calls to defund the police, among other issues.

Like some other candidates who have previously endorsed such efforts — which have more recently become a political liability — Avilés has softened her rhetoric on public safety issues as she faces scrutiny over her positions while seeking reelection to a third term in the changed district.

As recently as last August, for instance, Avilés had explicitly advocated for “defunding the NYPD” in a platform section on her campaign site, according to archived screenshots on the Wayback Machine. But her current platform features no such language, and even acknowledges that a “police presence” coupled with public services like “better street lighting” have helped constituents “feel safe” in their communities. 

Rather than calling for a wholesale divestment from law enforcement, Avilés’ platform now pushes for increased police accountability while arguing that officers are unfit to respond to mental health calls, among other things.

Her campaign did not return a request for comment from JI on Thursday.

The Puerto Rican-born councilwoman, who chairs the Committee on Immigration, has otherwise been emphasizing constituent services, citing her efforts to protect residents from federal agents conducting what she has called “unlawful” raids and arrests as President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown targets New York City.

For her part, Ye has countered that Avilés’ tenure has been more defined by what she characterizes as performative gestures such as voting against the city budget, while suggesting that her vociferous support for defunding the police has damaged relations with law enforcement at the expense of the community’s immediate needs. Ye has called for “strengthening relationships between local police precincts and the neighborhoods they serve” amid local concerns over violent crime, among other policies that she casts as practical solutions better aligned with the district.

Ye, who has drawn donations from Jewish and pro-Israel donors, is supportive of Israel but has stressed that the City Council is not an appropriate venue for litigating foreign policy and has sought to focus on local issues throughout the race, according to her campaign. The district is home to just a small number of Jewish voters, according to experts, even as it includes some parts of Borough Park, a Hasidic enclave.

“New York’s AIPAC is spending big against me,” Avilés said during her speech on Saturday before a packed audience at Terminal 5, referring to Solidarity PAC, a local pro-Israel advocacy group supporting Ye that has no formal ties to the Washington-based federal lobbying organization. “Because I’ve stood up over and over to demand a ceasefire in Gaza,” she added defiantly to cheers from the crowd. “We want to end the genocide and we want a free Palestine!” 

Still, Israel’s ongoing wars have fueled tension in the district. Pro-Palestinian activists have heckled Ye on the campaign trail, according to video seen by JI, accusing her of supporting “genocide” and taking “blood money” from Israel, a false claim that echoes antisemitic tropes about Jewish control of American politics. Ye has also faced xenophobic rhetoric amid the race, as one of her public campaign posters was defaced with graffiti labeling her a “Zionist” as well an affiliate of the “CCP,” or the Chinese Communist Party, a photo recently shared with JI shows.

Even as Avilés has somewhat tempered her rhetoric on law enforcement, she has continued to speak out stridently in opposition to Israel, most recently at a campaign rally in Manhattan for Zohran Mamdani, a far-left state assemblyman from Queens polling in second place in the Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday. 

“New York’s AIPAC is spending big against me,” Avilés said during her speech on Saturday before a packed audience at Terminal 5, referring to Solidarity PAC, a local pro-Israel advocacy group supporting Ye that has no formal ties to the Washington-based federal lobbying organization. “Because I’ve stood up over and over to demand a ceasefire in Gaza,” she added defiantly to cheers from the crowd. “We want to end the genocide and we want a free Palestine!” 

In keeping with the DSA, which drew widespread backlash for promoting a Manhattan rally at which attendees were seen celebrating Hamas shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, Avilés backs the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions moment targeting Israel and has faced scrutiny for being among a handful of City Council members who abstained from voting in favor of a City Council resolution to establish an annual “End Jewish Hatred Day.”

Sara Forman, who leads Solidarity PAC, criticized Avilés in a statement to JI as “a DSA ideologue” who during her time in office has “sidelined” key issues such as affordable housing “in favor of empty promises, an obsession with foreign policy and political posturing.”

Solidarity PAC, Forman said, “proudly supports Ling Ye, who has called Brooklyn’s 38th District home since immigrating to the United States at 14, as someone who understands the real and pressing needs of the community.”

As she seeks to fend off her primary challenger, Aviles’ allies have raised some concerns about the race, even as she has won a range of high-profile endorsements from such progressive leaders as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and the Working Families Party. In a recent Zoom discussion about the “Israel lobby,” Yuh-Line Niou, a former far-left state assemblywoman who lost a tight congressional contest in 2022, warned that Avilés is running in “a very tough race” and urged viewers to support her campaign.

“There are people who are Asian voters who will literally see an Asian name on the ballot and be willing to vote for them,” suggested Niou, who is Taiwanese American.

Despite some unease among supporters of Avilés, the race has largely flown under the radar and has been overshadowed by a separate City Council race in Brooklyn where Shahana Hanif, the DSA-aligned incumbent, has drawn backlash from Jewish voters over her strident criticism of Israel. 

“It’s going to be the closest of the DSA races,” said one Jewish leader, speaking anonymously to discuss the primary. “But Alexa still wins,” he predicted, while speculating that Mamdani’s “coattails” in the district “will help.”

In her primary, Hanif is defending her seat against Maya Kornberg, a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat also backed by Solidarity PAC who, like Ye, has accused her opponent of failing to provide solid constituent services while advocating for policies like defunding the police that have not helped the district.

But while the race has drawn national attention as well as spending from outside groups backing both candidates, some strategists and Jewish leaders who are eager to see Kornberg win expressed skepticism she will ultimately unseat Hanif — owing largely to the ideological makeup of the district that includes deeply progressive Park Slope. 

Some Jewish community activists are also cautious about Ye’s race further south. “It’s going to be the closest of the DSA races,” said one Jewish leader, speaking anonymously to discuss the primary. “But Alexa still wins,” he predicted, while speculating that Mamdani’s “coattails” in the district “will help.”

Still, others following the race are holding out hope that Avilés’ new district lines will favor a moderate Democrat like Ye, who has argued the community “doesn’t need another professional protester” in City Hall.

“There’s a really good chance for a pick-up here,” said another Jewish community activist who has tracked the race.

For a brief moment, it looked like 2024 all over again: Tents were erected at Yale University’s central plaza on Tuesday night, with anti-Israel activists hoping to loudly protest the visit of far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir to campus. Videos of students in keffiyehs, shouting protest slogans, started to spread online on Tuesday night.

But then something unexpected happened. University administrators showed up, threatening disciplinary action, and the protesters were told to leave — or face consequences. So they left. The new encampment didn’t last a couple hours, let alone overnight. The next day, Yale announced that it had revoked its recognition of Yalies4Palestine, the student group that organized the protest. (On Wednesday night, a large protest occurred outside the off-campus building where Ben-Gvir was speaking.)

Meanwhile, at Cornell University, President Michael Kotlikoff announced on Wednesday that he had canceled an upcoming campus performance by R&B singer Kehlani because of her history of anti-Israel social media posts. He wrote in an email to Cornell affiliates that he had heard from many people who were “angry, hurt and confused” that the school’s annual spring music festival “would feature a performer who has espoused antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiments in performances, videos and on social media.” 

The quick decisions from administrators at Yale and Cornell to shut down anti-Israel activity reflect something of a vibe shift on American campuses. One year ago, anti-Israel encampments were, for a few weeks, de rigueur on campus quads across the nation. University leaders seemed paralyzed, unsure of how to handle protests that in many cases explicitly excluded Jewish or Zionist students and at times became violent. That’s a markedly different environment from what’s happening at those same schools so far this spring. 

“In general, protest activity is way down this year as compared to last year,” Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman told Jewish Insider. 

There is no single reason that protests have subsided. Jewish students, campus Jewish leaders and professionals at Jewish advocacy organizations attribute the change to a mix of factors: stricter consequences from university leaders, fear of running afoul of President Donald Trump’s pledge to deport pro-Hamas foreign students and the issue generally losing steam and cachet among easily distracted students. 

Last spring, an encampment at The George Washington University was only dismantled after the university faced threats from Congress. Now, no such protest is taking place — which Daniel Schwartz, a Jewish history professor, said was likely due in part to the “sense that the university was going to be responding much more fiercely to anything resembling what happened last year.” 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

Michael Simon, the executive director at Northwestern Hillel, came into the school year with a “big question mark” of how the school’s new policies, which provide strict guidance for student protests and the type of behavior allowed at them, would be applied. “I’m going to say it with a real hedging: at least up until now, I would say we’ve seen the lower end of what I would have expected,” he said of campus anti-Israel protests.

Many major universities like Northwestern spent last summer honing their campus codes of conduct and their regulations for student protests, making clear at the start of the school year that similar actions would not be tolerated again. In February, for instance, Barnard College expelled two students who loudly disrupted an Israeli history class at Columbia,. 

“For the most part, the enforcement of rules, the understanding of what the rules are, what you can do, what you can’t do, requiring people to get permits for protests, has really calmed things down [from] the sort of violence that we saw last year,” said Jordan Acker, a member of the Board of Regents of the University of Michigan, who has faced antisemitic vandalism and targeted, personal protests from Michigan students.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has pressured top universities to crack down on antisemitic activity. The president’s threats to revoke federal funding if universities don’t get antisemitism under control has drawn pushback — Harvard is suing the Trump administration over its decision to withhold $2.2 billion in federal funds from the school — but it has also led universities to take action to address the problem. 

Sharon Nazarian, an adjunct professor at UCLA and the vice chair of the Anti-Defamation League’s board of directors, said there is “no question” that “the national atmosphere of fear among university administrators for castigation and targeting by the [Trump] administration is also present” at UCLA and other University of California campuses.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

Rule-breaking student activists also face a heightened risk of law enforcement action. A dozen anti-Israel student protesters were charged with felonies this month for vandalizing the Stanford University president’s office last June. On Wednesday, local, state and federal law enforcement officials in Michigan raided the homes of three people connected to anti-Israel protests at the University of Michigan. Protesters’ extreme tactics  have scared off some would-be allies.

“I think some of the most activist students went too far at the end of last year with the takeover of the president’s office and a lot of pretty intense graffiti in important places on campus,” said Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, the executive director of Hillel at Stanford. “I think a lot of other students looked at that and said, ‘Oh, this is perhaps not where we want to be.’”

Students’ priorities shift each year, and other issues beyond Israel are also vying for their attention. Trump’s policies targeting foreign students are drawing ire from students at liberal universities, many of which have large populations of international students.

“My sense is that being anti-Israel is not as much of the popular thing anymore,” Evan Cohen, a senior at the University of Michigan, said at a Wednesday webinar hosted by Hillel International for Jewish high school seniors. “On my campus, there are other hot topic issues. There might be more focus on what’s happening with U.S. domestic politics.” 

But the lack of protests does not mean that campus life has returned to normal for Jewish students, many of whom still fear — and face — opprobrium for their pro-Israel views.

“It’s easy to avoid the protests but if you are an Israeli student or a Jewish student perceived to be a Zionist, you should expect to be discriminated against in social spaces at the university,” Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told JI. “That is the most powerful way students are impacted by all of this.”

Ken Marcus, founder and chairman of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which since Oct. 7 has represented dozens of Jewish students in Title VI civil rights cases against their universities, said that campus-related lawsuits are only faintly slowing down this semester. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.”

“Some campuses have been less intense than during last year’s historically awful period, but others have been bad enough,” Marcus told JI. “I believe that the federal crackdown, coupled with the impact of lawsuits and Title VI cases, has had a favorable impact at many campuses, but the problems have hardly gone away.”

Or Yahalom, a senior at Northwestern University who was born in Israel, recently attended a dinner with Northwestern President Michael Schill, who has faced criticism from Jewish Northwestern affiliates — including several members of its antisemitism advisory committee — for what they saw as the administration’s failure to adequately address antisemitism. 

“A lot of the staff and the administration think that, ‘OK, since there’s no protest outside, all the Jewish students must feel OK, and let’s put all this stuff that happened in the spring behind us.’ It’s really not the case,” said Yahalom. “That doesn’t mean that it’s all better for students. Jewish students are increasingly afraid to speak openly about their identity or connection to Israel, except in private, safe Jewish spaces.” 

Even without massive encampments, disruptive anti-Israel protests and campus actions have not gone away entirely, though they have been more infrequent this academic year. A Northwestern academic building housing the school’s Holocaust center was vandalized with “DEATH TO ISRAEL” graffiti last week. The office of Joseph Pelzman, an economist at The George Washington University who authored a plan calling for the U.S. to relocate Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and redevelop the enclave, was vandalized in February. The Georgetown University Student Government Association is slated to hold a campus-wide referendum on university divestment from companies and academic institutions with ties to Israel at the end of the month. Smaller-scale protests continue at Columbia, with students chaining themselves to the Manhattan university’s main gate this week to protest the ICE detention of ​​Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, two foreign students who had led protests last year. 

Leaders of the University of Michigan’s anti-Israel coalition held a sham trial for the university president and Board of Regents members in the middle of the Diag, the main campus quad, this week. The event took place without issue, and the activists left when it ended. 

“I wouldn’t want to say that it’s perfect,” said Acker, the Board of Regents member. “But it’s certainly much better than a year ago.” 

The school year isn’t over. Some students at Columbia are planning to erect another encampment this month, NBC News reported on Wednesday. 

But they’ll be doing so at an institution with new leadership, weeks after Columbia reached an agreement with the Trump administration, where the Ivy League university pledged to take stronger action against antisemitism to avoid a massive funding cut. The pressure on Columbia to crack down on any encampment will be massive.