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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani's decision not to march in Sunday's Israel Day Parade, themed "Proud Americans, Proud Zionists," has been met with an avalanche of condemnation. A wide array of community leaders from former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett to Jonathan Greenblatt's Anti-Defamation League have joined in to brand his absence as a slight against New York's Jews.

According to this narrative, Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer, Representative Dan Goldman and State Attorney General Letitia James, among the other prominent New York politicians who were in attendance, can say that they were there (in Greenblatt's words) not as a "political statement" but merely to affirm that they are bona fide "friends of the Jewish community."

Attendance at "the city's largest and most visible Jewish celebration" is, it seems, a basic requirement to assuage Jewish communal anxieties, amid rising antisemitism, that the mayor cares about protecting this community.

I demonstrated against the parade along with around two dozen activists from the grassroots activist group Israelis for Peace; we held up signs that read "This Israeli government belongs in the Hague, not NYC," "Yes, peace" [in Hebrew, English and Arabic]" and "Equality and Justice for Palestinians and Jews!" Having seen the parade firsthand, the actual offense here isn't Mamdani's absence.

The real one is that American politicians, Jewish communal leaders and thousands of individual participants would show up to legitimize such a grotesque spectacle lauding war criminals.

New York, and especially New York City, leans heavily Democratic, and this was reflected in the partisan lean of the elected American politicians who came to the parade. However, this is decidedly not the lean of the Israeli government, which is the most right-wing in the country's history.

Among those attending the parade were Likud Knesset member Ariel Kallner and Speaker Amir Ohana. Ohana's inspiring diplomatic proposal for finally resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? "If you want a Palestinian state, build it in London or Paris" — a plan he devised after learning that the U.K. and France intended to recognize Palestinian statehood.

Kallner's peace-building résumé includes advocating for a second Nakba in Gaza to "overshadow the Nakba of '48" immediately following the October 7 attacks.

Ministers Yitzhak Wasserlauf and Amichai Eliyahu of Itamar Ben-Gvir's far-right Otzma Yehudit party also attended. In a motivational speech via telephone to Israeli soldiers in Gaza, Wasserlauf, when prompted to give "30 seconds of Zionism," encouraged the soldiers to strike their enemies, seize their babies, and dash them against the rocks, quoting Psalms.

Eliyahu has called the Green Line separating Israel and the West Bank "fictitious" and said, "The government is rushing to erase Gaza, and thank God we are erasing this evil. All of Gaza will be Jewish," adding, "We don't need to be concerned about hunger in the Strip. We have completely lost our minds." According to Eliyahu, anyone who waves a Palestinian flag "shouldn't continue living on the face of the earth," suggesting one option at Israel's disposal during the war in Gaza could be to drop a nuclear bomb on the Strip.

As for Religious Zionism's Bezalel Smotrich, the Finance Minister's appalling views vis-à-vis the war in Gaza and the Palestinians are well documented.

He has fantasized out loud about reoccupying the Strip and forcibly expelling the Palestinian population; he called the starvation of the entire population of Gaza "justified and moral." The effective governor of the West Bank, he has relentlessly pursued an annexationist vision to systematically erase Palestinian statehood.

Recently, the ICC reportedly drew up an arrest warrant against him. Responding with the sort of statesmanship and tact that he's known for, Smotrich threatened to order the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar, a Bedouin village in the West Bank.

These are the politicians who are being applauded to the gleeful chants of "Am Yisrael Chai."

Senator Schumer, in fact, proclaimed this into a microphone, wearing a ribbon denoting him as an 'honored guest.' This is what is outrageous.

Today, the most prominent senator in the Democratic Party — the same party in which 62 percent of its voters believe that Israel's actions in Gaza were unjustified, and 48 percent believe that the party has been too supportive of Israel — participated in a celebratory event where those aforementioned ultranationalist extremists and criminals were, like him, treated as distinguished guests.

And yet, the reality of what happened at this event has been so thoroughly distorted that those who purportedly represent American Jewry, like Greenblatt, can not only make the farcical claim that this parade is apolitical, but also put on a display of astonishment if anyone has the audacity not to play along.

Some politicians have attempted to distance themselves from Smotrich specifically; Hochul, for instance, issued a statement condemning his participation and his "hateful and divisive rhetoric."

If these statements are intended to demonstrate care or understanding, they are wholly inadequate. They ignore the larger problems at stake: Smotrich's criminal, discriminatory policies (not only his hateful rhetoric), the many other Knesset members marching in the delegation who share Smotrich's visions but lack his notoriety, and the fact that the country which they represent is responsible for the systematic destruction of healthcare, infrastructure, education, and habitability in Gaza and has implemented a legal régime in which Palestinians face structural, ongoing subjugation.

For politicians to choose to still march in this parade, given all of this, means that such condemnations ultimately ring hollow. For their part, some observers and attendees have resorted to denialism to detach themselves and the parade from the unsavory members of the Israeli government who were present, claiming that Smotrich and others "crashed" the parade and were not invited.

In reality, it seems that they were brought to the parade with a group from Israel's consulate, where, in order to enter, they would have had to go through security points, undergoing screenings. If these members of Knesset were truly unwanted intruders, one has to wonder why the dozens of NYPD officers, community security guards or parade organizers marshaling the "safest ever" Israel Day lacked either the sufficient ability or willpower to successfully remove them from the premises.

Such delusions are not entirely new territory. For years, otherwise liberal American Jews have sustained the cognitive dissonance of supporting the State of Israel by inventing a mythological 'Neverland' Israel, where all citizens are treated equally, there is a robust democratic system of checks, balances, and accountability to punish the rare few bad apples, and Jewish safety is guaranteed in perpetuity.

Those of us who see Israel's régime as inherently unjust have generally assumed that if and when these liberal American Jews do take a clear-eyed look at Israel and see the neo-Kahanism that continually runs rampant, they will turn their backs in disgust. For some, that process is already happening. For others, this transformation may remain possible. And of course, some cannot and will never let go of 'Neverland' Israel, no matter the evidence that is presented. But at the parade, I observed something more disturbing.

As I held my "This Israeli government belongs in the Hague, not NYC" sign, some passersby stared in perplexity. Many booed, took photos. A dad, as part of the delegation for a Jewish day school, gave us the finger, next to his children. An influencer recorded us as we left the protest and called us "Hamas."

One woman informed us that we were Kapos. Another woman next to us chanted "mamzerim," Hebrew for "bastards," and demanded (unsuccessfully) that the police get rid of us. And the attendees to the left and right of us, chanted, in protest of our protest: "Send them home."

Floats were celebrating illegal settlements and flags celebrating the army brigade responsible for the extrajudicial execution of 15 Palestinian Red Crescent emergency responders, clearly marked as unarmed medical personnel, in Gaza. Thousands of people chose to attend this parade and saw the Israeli government as it exists — proudly represented by MKs Ohana, Kallner, Wasserlauf, Eliyahu and Smotrich.

The participants have decided they like what they see.