Mazi Pilip is running for the Congressional seat recently held by, and disgraced by, George Santos. Her handlers (who used to be his handlers) have fed us some glamour: her big smile; her big family. Forget that her curriculum vitae is empty, as his was. Forget that she is a creation of the same group who gave us Santos.

“Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” the saying goes.

Her managers want us to vote for Pilip to represent us in the United States Congress, and they are making sure we do not have the opportunity to gauge her lack of knowledge. She refuses to participate in open forums where we could measure her worth against that of her opponent, Tom Suozzi, for the special election on Feb. 13.

As voters, we have become aware of Pilip one glimpse at a time. For example, recently in a headline-grabbing statement she called for the resignation of the president of Hofstra University, a private institution. It was an unprovoked verbal attack. It revealed that Pilip is oblivious to boundaries, or, as a friend of mine put it, she is ignorant about the most basic aspects of living in America. Here in America, a leader in education is not to be treated as a soft target by a politician looking to score points.

Pilip’s behavior may look merely feckless, but she was actually following the lead of the Nassau County Supervisor Bruce Blakeman, who initiated the ambush on the president of Hofstra.

Make no mistake: Ms. Pilip does not have a mind of her own. Were she to take a seat in Congress she would join the hardline dozen in the House of Representatives who are refusing to fund the federal government, who brought the House to a standstill in 2023.

Another Pilip indiscretion has come to light: She herself has prospered by the historic goodwill of our country toward immigrants, yet after living here a short time she now opposes immigration for others, in particular on our southern border. She characterizes people from south of the border as criminals, but she says nothing about our northern border. There is a racial component to her selectivity.

If you phone Ms. Pilip’s county office as I did twice, you leave a message but you never hear back. I was phoning about a problem on a county road. A year later it is still a problem.

Pilip has based her campaign for Congress on three things: being a “MOM,” being against paying taxes, and having served in the IDF.

Setting aside her non-specific tax-cutting and her motherhood, Pilip is left to rely on her time in the Israel Defense Forces, Israel’s military.

Israel is a country on a sliver of land surrounded for much of a century by neighbors who are big and belligerent, neighbors who vowed to push the state of Israel into the sea, to obliterate it. Those neighbor-states now mostly want peace, but stateless Hamas has kept the hate alive. As the world saw this past October, Israel can never let down her guard.

Pilip is campaigning for public office here in New York based primarily on her military service in another country whose military is legend. She parades her connection to the IDF but she omits the details. She did not join the IDF as Americans today volunteer to serve in the United States armed services. She was conscripted by law, as most Israeli females are, to serve for about 20 months.

In other words, Pilip is claiming a brief stint in the Israeli military has prepared her for a position here in our federal government writing laws for civilians.

I myself do not want us to send Pilip to Congress so she can join the reckless fringe shouting from their Congressional seats and booing the President of the United States. I would prefer to have a rational, well-informed voice represent my family, my faith, and my democracy.

There is another touchstone issue that takes Pilip out of the running. She says she is pro-life, but isn’t everyone? We know the term “pro-life” has been appropriated by people who mean something else, people who are adamantly anti-abortion. This means she agrees with the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the protection of women’s health.

Meanwhile, a friend tells me Pilip seems to be everywhere at social events. She has found her métier as a campaigner, but she does not trouble voters with words such as infrastructure. She offers no ideas for good government.

Mazi Pilip for Congress? Shame on you.

 

Rebecca Rosenblatt Gilliar

Great Neck