Though he was elected to represent Astoria, Queens in New York’s State Assembly, Zohran Mamdani — who last week pulled off a stunning upset in New York City’s mayoral primary — has called the Palestinian cause “central to my identity,” both in and out of politics.
Mamdani consistently and proudly associates with the pro-Palestinian movement in high-profile settings across New York City. Take Saturday night, for instance, when he took the stage with Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by the Trump administration, at comedian Ramy Youssef’s show at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side.
So it’s no surprise that as Mamdani aims to become mayor of New York — the city with the largest Jewish population in the world — that Jewish New Yorkers are closely scrutinizing what he has said about Jews, Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.
Below is a round-up of what Mamdani has said on a range of Israel and Jewish-related topics in a variety of interviews that have made headlines.
Israel’s right to exist
During the long mayoral primary campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that Israel has a right to exist. But he usually qualifies that statement by adding that Israel is flaunting its responsibilities under international law, based on its treatment of Palestinians.
He has also been asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. As he stated at a town hall in May with the UJA-Federation of New York, co-moderated by the New York Jewish Week’s Lisa Keys: It should exist “with equal rights for all.”
He later said on a local Fox channel’s morning show: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel
As he said at the UJA-Federation town hall, he supports the BDS movement, which lobbies for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Pro-Israel groups have fought a decades-long battle to marginalize the movement, which its critics say seeks the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.
“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” he said.
Academic boycott of Israeli universities
While a student at Bowdoin College — where he co-founded the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter — Mamdani agreed with the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions in 2014.
“Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms,” Mamdani wrote in an op-ed in the school’s student newspaper, published in 2014, the year he graduated. “Israeli universities give priority admission to soldiers, discriminate against Palestinian students, and have developed remote-controlled bulldozers for the Israeli Army’s home demolitions.”
He added that the boycott “is decidedly not aimed at individual persons.”
“In other words, a professor from the University of Tel Aviv can still present research at an ASA conference, provided that he or she does so as an individual scholar and not expressly as a representative of Israeli academic institutions or of the Israeli government,” Mamdani wrote.
Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza
Mamdani’s first statement about the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which he issued the day after, expressed mourning for “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.”
He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “declaration of war” will “undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering…The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
Since then, Mamdani has consistently referred to Israel’s retaliatory actions in Gaza as a “genocide” — a word he had used to describe previous Israeli military conflicts, long before Oct. 7. (More on that below.) He has also said that the United States, through its support of Israel, is “subsidizing a genocide.” Israel denies it is carrying out a genocide.
At a rally in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, some local members of the Democratic Socialists of America — of which Mamdani is a member — celebrated Hamas, who killed close to 1,200 Israelis and abducted hundreds more on Oct. 7. Mamdani condemned the rally on Oct. 10, telling Politico: “My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life. I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally seeking to make light of such deaths.”
New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, now a NYC mayoral candidate, speaks during a news conference outside the White House to announce a hunger strike to demand that President Joe Biden “call for a permanent ceasefire and no military aid to Israel, on Nov. 27, 2023. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
Attacks on Jews in Washington, D.C. and Colorado
Mamdani also condemned the shooting outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in May that killed two staffers working at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.
“My thoughts are with the victims and their families—as well as all those who must contend with the appalling rise in antisemitic violence,” he wrote in a statement on X.
He also condemned the firebombing of an event in Boulder for Israeli hostages, and he again commented on it on Monday, after the death of a woman injured in the incident — including in his statement a phrase often used by Jews after the death of a loved one.
“I am heartbroken by the news from Colorado where Karen Diamond, a victim of the vicious attack earlier this month, has passed away,” he wrote on X. “May Karen’s memory be a blessing and a reminder that we must constantly work to eradicate hatred and violence.”
Tackling antisemitism
On the campaign trail, Mamdani has stated that he wants to work to combat hate crimes across New York City, including those on Jews.
Just before the primary, he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” alongside Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive who finished third in the ranked-choice primary; the two had cross-endorsed each other in the race. In the appearance, Mamdani claimed that the city is experiencing a “crisis of antisemitism” and said that he would like to create a Department of Community Safety that would focus on anti-hate programming.
“Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about — it’s something that we have to tackle,” he said on the show. “We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.”
In the UJA-Federation town hall, Mamdani also said that he would be “proud” to appoint a senior adviser to tackle antisemitism in New York.
The phrase “Globalize the intifada”
Mamdani has in multiple interviews declined to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” a phrase used by many in the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses and beyond. The word “intifada” directly translates to “shaking off,” but most Jews associate it with two violent Palestinian uprisings, which led to several terrorist attacks across Israel from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.
When asked about the phrase earlier this month, Mamdani said “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand strongly rebuked Mamdani on the topic. (Notably, Jewish pro-Israel politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Jerry Nadler have both praised Mamdani since his primary win.)
On Sunday, he clarified that the term is “not language that I use,” but still declined to disavow it.
“The language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights,” Mamdani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
Mamdani used similar language in an interview with The Bulwark posted on June 17. That led Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, to write in a post on X, “Globalize the Intifada is an explicit call for violence. Globalize the Intifada celebrates and glorifies savagery and terror.”
The Holocaust
While Mamdani has commemorated the Holocaust on social media, he took heat for declining to sign onto a resolution memorializing the genocide in the state assembly in May.
“He absolutely supports the Holocaust Memorial Day resolution,” campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein said at the time. “He had to narrow down the capacity” during a busy campaign season, Epstein added.
Mamdani said in the UJA-Federation town hall that would like to see more Holocaust education in New York City schools.
Hasan Piker interview
In April, Mamdani sat for a three-hour interview with popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has repeatedly called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” compared Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan, and defended Hamas’ attack on the Nova music festival, in which the Palestinian militants killed hundreds of Israelis and committed widespread sexual assault. On one of his shows, Piker told off a listener who condemned the massacre, saying “Bloodthirsty violent pig dog, suck my d***.”
A number of progressive politicians, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California, have also appeared with Piker. When asked about Piker, Mamdani said, “I am willing to speak to each and every person about this campaign.”
Uncivilized.media interview
This week, a video of Mamdani speaking in Queens in 2023 went viral, thanks in part to Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who criticized Mamdani for eating food with his hands in the video. “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World,” Gill wrote on X on Sunday.
Similar videos attacking Mamdani led one Jewish group, the Nexus Project, to object that many of Mamdani’s critics are “trafficking in Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia, and distorting our broader political discourse.”
In the video, Mamdani sheds more light on his views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The son of two India-born parents — filmmaker Mira Nair and and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani — the candidate spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 7.
“Specifically growing up in South Africa post-apartheid, it felt as if one of the most natural things to wear around my body was a keffiyeh,” he says, referencing the scarf that Palestinians have long worn and which has since become a symbol of resistance to Israel.
In the interview, Mamdani calls discussing Palestinian issues “entirely taboo” in U.S. politics and criticizes PEPs — politicians who he says are “progressive except for Palestine.”
He also says that he believes the U.S. has put Palestinian lives “in jeopardy” for “decades.”
Arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani said to former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in December. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law.”
Earlier this month, he said the same thing at B’nai Jeshurun, a large synagogue in Manhattan.
“My answer is the same whether we are speaking about Vladimir Putin or Netanyahu,” he said. “I think that this should be a city that is in compliance with international law.”
The International Criminal Court, headquartered in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu — along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif — in November, accusing him of war crimes. Given that the United States is not a party to the ICC, it would be highly unlikely that the mayor of New York would be able to arrest Netanyahu.
The Holy Land Five
Before his political career, Mamdani released rap songs under the monikers Young Cardamom and, later, Mr. Cardamom.
In one 2017 song, “Salam,” he praised the “Holy Land Five” — the heads of a former Islamic charity organization founded in the U.S. who were convicted of aiding Hamas. In 2001, the U.S. government designated the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development a terrorist organization and seized its assets; some have argued that the trial was based on “hearsay” evidence.
“My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up,” Mamdani raps in the track.
The “Not On Our Dime!” act
The Holy Land Five story concerned foreign funding of players in the Middle East conflict. Mamdani may have drawn a lesson from the case: He is the lead sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” which he proposed in the New York State Assembly in May 2023. Its stated goal is to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”
Sixty-six lawmakers, a majority of the Democratic state caucus, signed onto a letter condemning the proposal. “Its purpose is to attack Jewish organizations that have wide ranging missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans,” the letter read.
As Politico reported, Mamdani highlighted the act in campaign pamphlets during the primary campaign.
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