NYC Jewish groups raise concern about Mamdani’s gatherings with pro-Palestinian activists

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🗣 Jewish groups condemn Mamdani’s gatherings with pro-Palestinian activists

• Major Jewish organizations have objected to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s recent socializing with activists who oppose Israel and have at times justified or cheered violence against it. Mamdani hosted leading pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil for an iftar dinner on Sunday and was recently introduced at an event by activist Abdullah Akl, who previously called for strikes on Tel Aviv.

• Akl, political director of the Muslim American Society of New York, introduced Mamdani last week at a Ramadan event in a Staten Island mosque. Asl is also a member of the hardline anti-Israel group Within Our Lifetime. He was captured on video leading the chant “Strike, strike Tel Aviv” in 2024, reported The Washington Free Beacon, a conservative outlet.

• Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was arrested by ICE at Columbia University and detained for months, has said “there’s nothing that can justify the killing of civilians” while also saying that Hamas committed the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel because “we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle.”

• UJA-Federation of New York said on Tuesday that Mamdani’s decision “to share a stage on Staten Island with an individual who publicly called to ‘strike, strike Tel Aviv,’ and then host an Iftar meal at Gracie Mansion with a man who justified the October 7 atrocities, raises deep concerns in our community.” The group called on Mamdani to “live up to his own rhetoric and reaffirm his commitment to confronting antisemitism and keeping every New Yorker safe.”

• Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, acknowledged Khalil’s right to due process but said that Mamdani owed the same representation to Jewish students whose rights were violated by hostility on campus.

• “If the mayor truly cares about ensuring democratic protections apply to all New Yorkers, then he should also give an audience at Gracie Mansion to the very Columbia University Jewish students whose Title VI civil rights violations were substantiated by federal investigators in President Biden’s administration,” said Treyger.

• The Anti-Defamation League also denounced Mamdani for hosting Khalil. “Welcoming someone known for justifying the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks as an honored guest at Gracie Mansion — while some in the Mayor’s inner circle have amplified antisemitic content and posts dismissing the atrocities of that day — sends a deeply troubling message,” a spokesperson told Jewish Insider.

• While the ADL indicated its concern about Mamdani’s leadership by launching a “Mamdani monitor” immediately after his election, UJA and the JCRC have been more restrained in the first months of his term.

🕍 Interfaith clergy urge support for Hochul’s buffer zone bill

• A coalition of nearly 150 interfaith clergy are urging state officials to support a bill that would create 25-foot buffer zones around houses of worship in a letter being released today, reported Politico.

• The measure was proposed by Gov. Kathy Hochul in response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations outside synagogues in New York City. A similar measure being considered at the city level prompted protests about free speech concerns outside City Hall last month.

• A recent UJA poll found that 83% of Jews in the state support Hochul’s buffer zone proposal, along with large majorities of Muslims and Christians.

🏥 Orthodox congregations sue state over Maimonides merger

• Orthodox Jewish congregations and a patient navigation nonprofit are suing the state over an impending merger between the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn and New York City Health + Hospitals, reported Crain’s New York Business. The lawsuit filed on Monday alleged that the Department of Health was unlawfully advancing the merger by skipping a review process.

• The merger, which is set for April 1, has sparked pushback from locals who say that turning Maimonides into a city-run hospital would erode its accommodations for Orthodox Jews in Borough Park. The deal already faces another legal challenge from members of the hospital’s board of trustees.

📊 Schlossberg leads in another poll

• The second poll in a week has handed Jack Schlossberg a lead in the race to replace Rep. Jerry Nadler in the 12th Congressional District.

• The poll from Leading the Future, a super PAC aiming to defeat candidate Alex Bores, showed Schlossberg winning 23% of likely Democratic primary voters, trailed by George Conway, Alex Bores and Micah Lasher, with 36% undecided. The results match up with a poll commissioned by Conway’s campaign last week.

• Mathew Shurka, a Jewish Israeli-American candidate and LGBTQ rights activist, will drop out of the race and endorse Bores, reported Politico.

🎶 Jewish composer’s opera makes Broadway debut, 80 years late

• An opera by Erich Wolfgang Korngold, the Jewish composer who left Vienna in the 1930s and became a Hollywood legend, will debut on Broadway on Friday.

• Korngold started working on “The Silent Serenade” in the 1940s, hoping for a Broadway premiere. But the show collapsed and never had a full staging in the United States or even in English. Now, Korngold will get his wish 80 years late.