Mamdani’s team objects after ‘The View’ brands an endorsed candidate antisemitic over a Palestine demonstration
Clash over congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier shows how routinely support for Palestinian rights is recast as antisemitism
NEW YORK, United States (MNTV) — A dispute between New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s team and ABC’s “The View” has put a spotlight on how easily support for Palestinian rights gets relabeled as antisemitism in American political media.
Mamdani’s organization had sought airtime for three Democratic congressional candidates he endorsed — Brad Lander, Claire Valdez, and Darializa Avila Chevalier — after they beat establishment opponents and strengthened the party’s progressive wing. “The View” declined to book them.
On a June 24 episode, co-hosts Alyssa Farah Griffin and Sara Haines went through the candidates’ records, and Haines singled out Chevalier for joining a pro-Palestine demonstration shortly after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack, calling her views antisemitic.
A Mamdani aide contacted ABC executives to object and warned the remarks could affect future appearances by the mayor and his allies.
The label is the heart of the matter. Chevalier’s offense, as described on air, was attending a demonstration for Palestinian rights — not any statement about Jewish people.
Treating participation in Palestinian solidarity as inherently antisemitic collapses a political position about Israeli state policy into bigotry, a conflation that has become a routine tool for narrowing what progressive and pro-Palestinian candidates are permitted to say.
Chevalier has also drawn attacks over deleted social-media posts referencing Marxist and communist writings, past comments on police abolition, and symbolic acts involving the American flag — the standard portfolio of material assembled to cast a young left-wing candidate as extreme.
Holding socialist views, criticizing policing, or opposing the Israeli government’s conduct is political speech, not evidence of extremism or hatred.
The fight also intersects with a regulatory question: the FCC has been examining whether “The View” is a news program exempt from equal-time rules or opinion entertainment.
ABC insists it is a news program and has campaigned against government say over its guest list. Underneath the procedural dispute is a larger one over who gets a national platform — and how quickly Palestinian solidarity can be used to deny it.
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