What Zohran Mamdani has actually said about Jews, Israel and antisemitism

He was elected to represent Astoria, Queens, in New York’s state Assembly and is running to helm New York City. But Zohran Mamdani 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. Shortly after delivering a stunning upset in the mayoral primary, for instance, 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 — 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.

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.

Mamdani’s support for boycotting Israel stretches back for his entire adult life. 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.

In 2020, after winning election to the New York Assembly, he spoke on the podcast “Talking Palestine” and offered an example of how the boycott movement might be applied in New York City. “If you were to look at the lens of BDS and how it applies here in New York City, you would say that Cornell-Technion is something you would be talking about,” he said, referring to the university partnership on Roosevelt Island. In 2025, his campaign said he would, if elected, assess the partnership.

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 flouting 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: 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.” He echoed those comments many times subsequently on the campaign trail.

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 actions in Gaza as a “genocide” and said the United States, through its support of Israel, is “subsidizing a genocide.” Israel denies the charge of 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, which 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.”

During the mayoral race, Mamdani repeatedly cited Noy Katsman, an Israeli whose brother was killed on Oct. 7. Speaking at the Manhattan synagogue B’nai Jeshurun in June, he quoted Katsman as saying that “we must never give up on the conviction that all life, Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Arab, is equally precious.”

On the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 attack, he issued an extensive statement saying that he mourned those killed by Hamas, which he said had committed a “horrific war crime,” and condemned both the Israeli government and the U.S. government for being “complicit” with Israel’s response.

“The occupation and apartheid must end,” he wrote. “Peace must be pursued through diplomacy, not war crimes, and our government must act to end these atrocities.”

Mamdani also attended but did not speak at an Oct. 7 memorial gathering organized by Israelis for Peace.

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 many 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 in June, Mamdani said “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand strongly rebuked Mamdani on the topic.

After drawing sharp criticism, including from his opponents, Mamdani has since both privately and publicly said he would “discourage” the term. In a Spectrum News interview in July, he cited a conversation with a rabbi that he said shifted his perspective. While maintaining that some use the phrase to reference “civil disobedience and protests that call to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land,” he said this rabbi told him she interpreted it differently.

“It’s heard as a reference to bus bombings in Haifa, restaurant attacks in Jerusalem, and engenders a fear in her and in others of the possibility of those very attacks coming home here in New York City,” he said. “That distance between what some intend and what others hear is a bridge that is too far, and it is why I have not used the phrase, and it is why I discourage its use.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, has attacked Mamdani for not condemning the slogan. He wrote in a post on X, “Globalize the Intifada is an explicit call for violence. Globalize the Intifada celebrates and glorifies savagery and terror.”

Criticism of the IDF

At a 2023 Democratic Socialists of America panel, Mamdani appeared to attribute police brutality in the United States to the Israeli army.

“For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them hyper-local,” Mamdani said in the comments, which resurfaced in a clip during the campaign. “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”

The comment appeared to channel anti-Zionist activists’ longstanding criticism of delegations of U.S. police officers who train with Israeli police and military services. The critics — including Jewish Voice for Peace, which published a 2018 report calling the trips a “Deadly Exchange” — say the delegations serve to import brutal policing techniques. Defenders of the delegations say the idea that Israel is responsible for police brutality in the United States represents an antisemitic canard that overlooks a history long predating Israel.

Amid the controversy, Politico’s Jeff Coltin asked Mamdani if he would maintain the NYPD’s office in Israel. Mamdani replied, “My focus is here on the NYPD office in New York City. That’s what I’ve been thinking about.”

The clip joins another past comment in which Mamdani tied the IDF to local experiences in New York City. On a 2016 podcast, he recalled that an Israeli teacher he had in high school was “a graduate of the IDF” and thus “had tailed brown guys for a long time.”

Tackling antisemitism and attacks on Jews

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.

He has also responded to a high-profile string of attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets. Mamdani 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 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.”

He also issued a statement when a synagogue was attacked in England on Yom Kippur.

“On the holiest day in the Jewish year, an antisemitic attack at a synagogue in England has taken the lives of two and gravely injured others. My thoughts are with the victims and their families,” he wrote. “While this terrible violence occurred an ocean away, a very real fear casts a shadow here too. I appreciate Governor Hochul’s calls to increase state police presence at synagogues. As Mayor, I will do everything in my power to protect Jewish New Yorkers, as I will every faith community. The right to worship in peace is sacred.”

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

A video of Mamdani speaking in Queens in 2023 went viral in June, 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.

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 Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani — the candidate spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before migrating to the United States 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 that 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 United States 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.”

He later said the same thing at B’nai Jeshurun. “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.”

And he reiterated the same points in September when Netanyahu came to New York City for the United Nations General Assembly.

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

One of Mamdani’s signature pieces of legislation in Albany was “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 was to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”

The legislation, which did not advance, emerged from a campaign by progressive anti-Israel groups including Jewish Voice for Peace. Mamdani said at the time that he believed it was valuable to bring awareness to local funding of Israeli settlements even if the bill was unlikely to pass.

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.

In August, Mamdani was asked about the bill during an interview with WNYC’s Brian Lehrer. Lehrer referenced a caller who was concerned that Mamdani sought to “fine or sue his synagogue for supporting what he considers non-political humanitarian groups.”

Lehrer gave the examples of Hatzalah and ZAKA, two emergency response groups. Hatzalah is an ambulance service founded in Williamsburg with parallel organizations operating around the world, including in Israel and the West Bank. ZAKA is an Israeli organization focused on disaster response and body recovery that works closely with authorities in Israel but also has global branches.

Mamdani replied to Lehrer, “Of course, this legislation is not in any way pertaining to local synagogues and these kinds of fines.” He added that if the law had passed, the attorney general would ultimately make determinations about violations.