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Rabbi arrested, banned from Cleveland universities over his anti-Palestinian activism
(JTA) – For days, students and police at Cleveland State University had been trying to figure out who stole a banner belonging to a campus Palestinian rights group.
The banner, which belonged to the student group Palestinian Human Rights Organization, read “CSU Solidarity for Palestinian Rights” and was illustrated with an outline of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip collectively emblazoned in the Palestinian flag. A dove holding an olive branch appeared on top of the image.
Then, on Jan. 19, police charged their top suspect: a local Orthodox rabbi, whose presence on campus had become all too familiar. A few days later the man confessed to the theft on Instagram, announcing that he had stolen the banner from the school’s student center “as an act of civil disobedience.”
“This incitement to annihilation of Israel should have never been permitted at CSU,” Rabbi Alexander Popivker, a 46-year-old Cleveland Heights resident whose neighborhood is six miles from the school, wrote on social media accompanied by a picture of the flag he stole.
It was far from Popivker’s only recent run-in with local university students.
A former Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Naples, Italy, who now works in the Cleveland area as a handyman and part-time rabbi for a Russian-speaking Jewish community, Popivker has become known around town as a vigilant and omnipresent pro-Israel advocate. He can often be spotted counter-protesting at local pro-Palestinian demonstrations, or putting on displays of his own, with his wife Sarah on hand filming every contentious encounter.
One major theme of his protests, and his worldview, as he explained to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency: “Palestinians and Nazis are the same thing.”
For the last year, Popivker had been making weekly trips to Cleveland State, occasionally accompanied by other students or community members, to give public demonstrations that elaborate on that idea — sometimes with the aid of swastika-emblazoned props. In the early going, the university provided him with police protection and said his visits to campus were protected by free speech laws.
But he also sought out students online and in-person whom he deemed to be “brainwashed” by anti-Zionist messaging. One such online campaign against a law student prompted the student to file an order of protection against Popivker last fall, an order supported by a prominent Jewish dean at the university. Popivker promptly violated the order by returning to campus.
Cleveland State University main campus, Cleveland, Ohio. (Getty Images)
In late January, university authorities had enough. They arrested Popivker and, following a hearing, declared him persona non grata on campus, banning him from the university grounds for at least two years. Popivker has also been banned from nearby Case Western Reserve University, where he had advocated before focusing on Cleveland State.
In the midst of a nationwide university climate in which pro-Israel advocates claim Jewish students face regular antisemitic harassment for their real or perceived Zionist beliefs, here was a documented case of the opposite: a Jew and outspoken Zionist, who has no affiliation with the schools at which he advocates, accused of harassing anyone he perceived as a threat to Israel, including students who had never sought him out directly.
The Ohio chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations has spoken out numerous times against Popivker and praised university police for arresting him; a petition the group backed, labeled “Stop harassment on campus” and mentioning Popivker by name, has garnered close to 700 signatures.
Jewish groups, including civil rights groups, have been less forthcoming about situation. Hillel International declined to comment for this story, and the directors of Cleveland’s regional American Jewish Committee and Jewish Community Relations Council offices did not return requests for comment. Jewish on Campus, a nationwide university antisemitism watchdog group that tracks what it defines as anti-Zionist social media harassment of Jewish students, also did not return a request for comment.
Jared Isaacson, the executive director of Cleveland Hillel, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the center was “not very familiar with this story.” Cleveland Hillel coordinates Jewish student life at a consortium of Jewish universities including Cleveland State and Case Western, where its student center is located, as well as at least one other school where Popivker has made his presence on campus known in some form.
But, Isaacson said, “Cleveland Hillel is deeply committed to countering antisemitism and hate in all forms, and we believe that no student — Jewish or otherwise — should ever feel threatened or intimidated because of their identity.”
Popivker says he has support from the New York-based Lawfare Project, which bills itself as an “international pro-Israel litigation fund.” He told JTA that the organization “is watching over my cases and providing guidance.”
In a statement, the Lawfare Project called Popivker “a Jewish civil rights activist” but did not confirm that it is backing him, saying only that the group is “currently reviewing the matter.”
The group, which frequently files lawsuits on behalf of students who allege antisemitism on their campuses, said in a statement to JTA that the order of protection was a “double standard” that “should be alarming to anyone who cares about the fight against Jew-hatred.”
Lawfar recently settled a multi-year lawsuit with San Francisco State University over student reports of antisemitic harassment on campus stemming from anti-Zionist activists disrupting an event featuring the mayor of Jerusalem. The settlement compelled the university to hire a coordinator of Jewish student life.
Popivker will have his work cut out for him if he fights the charges. He had exhibited “behavior detrimental to the university community” by stealing the Palestinian banner and separately affixing an Israeli flag to university property, Matthew Kibbon, Cleveland State’s associate vice president of facility services, wrote in the university’s decision declaring him persona non grata.
The rabbi “was not banned for the content of his speech, but how he chose to exercise it,” a Cleveland State spokesperson told JTA in a statement. The university also provided JTA a list of recent campus police interactions with him, including the initial Jan. 11 report of the banner’s theft; Popivker’s visit to campus on Jan. 18, during which police advised him that the student’s order of protection did not permit him to be there; and his return visit on Jan. 25, during which he was arrested.
From Popivker’s perspective, he is simply speaking out on Israel’s behalf for a campus that has a large pro-Palestinian activist presence but few Jewish students. (There are fewer than 200 Jewish undergraduates on Cleveland State’s campus out of 11,784 students, according to Hillel International.) His goal is to educate, he says, informed by his status as a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union. And he believes he is being targeted by local pro-Palestinian activists, who, he said, have gone after his kippah and Israeli flags.
“I never attacked anyone. I never raised my hand up to anyone,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, saying that he was motivated by civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis. “I’m going to a public university. I’m staying in the free speech zone. And I raise awareness about what’s going on. There’s a bunch of students that have become my friends that come to study with me regularly.”
One of those students, senior Tyler Jarosz, told JTA he became friends with Popivker after seeing him visiting campus to advocate for Israel. Not knowing much about Jews or Israel himself — “I thought Israel was a very peaceful state,” Jarosz said — the student was taken with Popivker’s demonstrations and said he learned a great deal from them.
“He didn’t just lecture me like a teacher would,” Jarosz said. “He was actually very engaging. He asked questions.”
Jarosz said he never witnessed the rabbi harassing anyone on campus, and said he always tried to engage people in peaceful dialogue, despite what he described as harassment directed at him by some Muslim students. He recalled one Popivker visit to campus for Israel’s independence day, when the rabbi was offering falafel to students, and said he witnessed one student throw the falafel back at him and threaten to “rape” him.
Other students tell a different story. One campus paper, the Cauldron, reported that the rabbi has targeted visibly Muslim and Arab students on campus, demanding to know their views on Israel. Popivker “makes me wary of coming into campus,” a student member of the Palestinian Human Rights Organization group told the Cauldron. “I’m forced to be on constant edge and take the longer way to class in order to avoid him.” Another student told a different campus newspaper, “It’s almost as though he deliberately looks for Palestinian individuals just to target them.”
The chair of the law school’s National Lawyers Guild student chapter told the Cleveland Jewish News that their group’s efforts to engage Popivker in reasonable dialogue failed when he began using “racial slurs and insulting language.”
A swastika Alexander Popivker drew on a Palestinian scarf (alleged by some students to be a keffiyeh, or ritual Muslim prayer scarf) while mounting a pro-Israel demonstration on the campus of Cleveland State University. Popivker then shared the image to his Instagram, Feb. 3, 2023. (Screenshot)
In images from one Popivker demonstration, the rabbi can be seen drawing a swastika with a Sharpie marker on what the Cauldron reported was a keffiyeh, a scarf worn by Arabic men, but which Popivker told JTA was a Palestinian scarf with no spiritual significance. He has also yelled phrases including “Palestinians are Nazis” and “Palestinians are the KKK,” and constructed a stage with images further linking Palestinians to Naziism, according to reports. Popivker’s own Instagram videos show him approaching groups of students to argue about Israel as he films them, calling some of them “terrorists” when they go after his flags. One of his video captions mentions “a Middle Eastern looking student.”
Cleveland State increased its safety protocols as a result of Popivker’s activities, locking some additional entrances around campus. But much of his activities have been online, too.
Last fall Popivker trained his attention on a law student who was involved with campus Palestinian rights groups and had made some anti-Israel posts online, including sharing an image of a child whom pro-Palestinian groups claimed had been a victim of an Israeli bombing, and sharing a socialist group’s post quoting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”
Documents show that Popivker emailed and called the student’s employer and law school seeking to have her disciplined for her beliefs, writing among other things that she was a “mouthpiece of terrorism and racism against Jews.” He also made Instagram posts targeting her. In response, the student filed for and received the order of protection against him, which Popivker later claimed was unwarranted because he had never met the student in person.
In its statement to JTA, the Lawfare Project homed in on this sequence of events, saying that Popivker’s decision to email the student’s school and employer about what he believed to be antisemitic social media posts was “a tool routinely used by civil rights activists to fight discrimination.”
Popivker asked Jarosz to send a letter attesting to his character for the order of protection hearing, which he did. “Alex understands and respects everyone of every background that he comes across,” the student wrote in his letter. “I have personally witnessed the demonization they have done of him.” Speaking to JTA weeks later, Jarosz said the court case was “bogus,” but said he was unaware of the emails, social media records and phone transcripts reviewed by JTA showing that Popivker had contacted the student’s employer and school.
At the order of protection hearing, a transcript of which Popivker sent to JTA, a key witness who advocated for the restriction was law school dean Lee Fisher, a former attorney general and lieutenant governor of Ohio. Fisher is Jewish.
“We share a hatred of antisemitism,” Fisher told Popivker during the hearing, according to the transcript. The dean also identified himself as “pro-Israel, very much so.” But Fisher made clear he was critical of Popivker’s activities on campus. Asked by Popivker about a specific social media post the student had made, Fisher responded, “Even if she made a mistake by posting it, it did not warrant the kind of reaction I believe that you had.”
Fisher had also met with Popivker previously, in a session mediated by a local rabbi who was a friend of Popivker. “I told him that I was concerned for the health and safety of our students,” the dean said during the hearing. He had implored Popivker to stop his campus activities, but the rabbi refused.
It’s the initial order of protection, which Popivker said had already effectively banned him from campus, that the rabbi says he truly opposes. He saw it as evidence that “they were basically working together with Palestinians” to “cover up the fact that they have an antisemitic group that openly propagates a destruction of Israel.” Popivker visited campus several times after receiving the order of protection but was permitted to stay with only a warning from campus police, Jarosz recalled.
This state of affairs lasted until the rabbi stole the Palestinian student group banner to, he said, “shine a light on this antisemitism.” Popivker described to JTA how he entered the student building, walked up to the third floor where he knew the banner was, and used scissors to remove it and take it with him: “Clip, clip, clip.” He was subsequently thrown in jail — his second such stint in Cleveland for pro-Israel activities, he said, criticizing local law enforcement for not providing him with kosher food while he was behind bars.
Outside of campus, Popivker is active in other areas. Last year, he organized a GoFundMe to support the family of a former classmate of his who was killed by an Islamic State supporter in a terrorist attack in Beersheba, Israel. He also applied to fill a January vacancy on the Cleveland Heights city council, but later withdrew his application.
After being barred from Cleveland State University, Rabbi Alex Popivker took to holding his anti-Palestinian protests on a street outside a local casino. (Courtesy Popivker)
While Popivker may preach nonviolence, his social media activity points to more radical ideologies, as well. On Instagram, he has shared an image of the flag of the Jewish Defense League, an extremist Jewish group that advocates violence against enemies of Jews, founded by convicted terrorist Rabbi Meir Kahane, as well as an image with a logo of Im Tirtzu, a right-wing Israeli group that has in the past been accused of inciting violence against Israeli human rights groups. Popivker told JTA he is not a member of either group, but that “if I think it’s aligned with what I believe in, I’ll share it.”
Popivker says that, for now, he’s done with his brand of “civil disobedience” and won’t be making his weekly visits to Cleveland State’s campus. “I do have five wonderful boys and a loving wife, and as much as Cuyahoga [County’s] jail is an educational experience in life in many ways, I do not want to go there every week,” he said.
Instead, days after his arrest and campus ban, Popivker posted a photo of himself with an Israeli flag to social media — this time outside a casino a mile away from campus.
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The post Rabbi arrested, banned from Cleveland universities over his anti-Palestinian activism appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Palestinian-French lawmaker arrested after praising 1972 bomber of Ben Gurion Airport
(JTA) — French police detained Rima Hassan, a member of the European Parliament from France, on suspicion of “advocating for terrorism” after she quoted one of the perpetrators of a 1972 terror attack on an Israeli airport in a social media post.
Hassan, 33, was detained for several hours on Thursday by French authorities over a March 26 post in which she quoted an individual convicted of participating in the 1972 terror attack on Ben Gurion airport in Tel Aviv, which killed 26 people.
The post, which Hassan later deleted, included Japanese and Palestinian flags as well as a quote from Kozo Okamoto, a member of the terror group, which read, “I dedicated my youth to the Palestinian cause. As long as there is oppression, resistance will not only be a right, but a duty.”
The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had released Hassan and given her a court date of July 7 “to be tried on charges of advocating terrorism committed online.” If convicted, Hassan could face up to a seven-year jail term and a fine of up to 100,000 euros, or $115,290.
Hassan, who was elected to the European Parliament in 2024 for the French far-left party France Unbowed, has previously said that “Hamas’s actions are legitimate from an international perspective” and argued that Franco-Palestinians “must be able to join the Palestinian armed resistance.” She also participated in the Gaza-bound flotilla protesting Israel’s blockade of the enclave last June, and, last month, was denied entry into Canada ahead of a scheduled conference appearance.
The arrest came after two France-based antisemitism watchdogs, the International League Against Racism and Antisemitism and the European Jewish Organization, lodged complaints over Hassan’s post.
“Statements presenting the acts committed by terrorists in a favorable light constitute an apology for terrorism,” the European Jewish Organization wrote in a post on X on Thursday. “It is on this basis that the OJE has filed a complaint against RH for the statements made on X and for which she appears to have been placed in police custody today.”
The prosecutor’s office said that Hassan is under investigation in six additional cases, and that 16 other cases involving alleged online hate speech have been closed. Police are also separately investigating “substances resembling CBD and 3-MMC,” illegal drugs, that were found among her belongings.
In a post on X Friday, Hassan, who was born in Syria in a Palestinian refugee camp and has made pro-Palestinian advocacy and fierce criticism of Israel a hallmark of her political career, said that she was the “target of political, judicial, and media harassment.”
“This custody hearing was followed by a fifth summons this Friday, well illustrating the politico-judicial harassment that the Palestinian cause is enduring after more than 2 years of genocide and inaction on the part of our government,” wrote Hassan in a subsequent post.
French Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez dismissed claims that the case against Hassan was politically motivated, saying in a television appearance, “No one is above the law, especially on subjects as serious as the glorification of terrorism.”
The post Palestinian-French lawmaker arrested after praising 1972 bomber of Ben Gurion Airport appeared first on The Forward.
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Michigan Democrats, Jewish leaders uneasy over Senate candidate’s alliance with Hasan Piker
(JTA) — Just weeks after an attack on a Michigan synagogue, a U.S. Senate candidate’s decision to campaign in the state with Hasan Piker — a streamer accused of antisemitic rhetoric — is prompting unease among Jewish leaders and fellow Democrats.
Abdul El-Sayed, a physician and former county health executive, is set to appear with Piker at two different Michigan universities on Tuesday.
The Hillel at Michigan State University said it was “deeply troubled” by Piker’s planned visit to campus, calling him a “known antisemite,” while at least one planned speaker, a state representative, backed out of the rallies citing the concerns of her Jewish constituents.
National Jewish leaders also criticized the planned events, with some comparing Piker to Nick Fuentes, the openly antisemitic livestreamer who has divided Republicans and others drawing a connection to the attack last month on Temple Israel.
“Abdul El-Sayed’s decision to host campaign rallies with Piker is not just alarming; it’s absolutely shocking. It reflects a broader trend: the dangerous normalization of antisemitism in our politics,” tweeted Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League. “That this is happening in Michigan, where Temple Israel was targeted in a violent antisemitic attack … makes it even more egregious.”
El-Sayed has defended his decision to campaign with Piker, including to Greenblatt, saying that he agrees with Piker on some issues but not others. Their points of agreement, he said, include “the way that AIPAC has decimated our politics and made us think that the most important goal of our foreign policy is to backstop Israel.”
He recently told a pro-Palestinian podcast that Piker’s past comments have been “taken out of context,” adding that Piker represents “where the disaffected people are” and that the streamer “has taken great pains to condemn any attempt to tie the government of Israel to the Jewish people.”
The campaign stops come as both Piker and El-Sayed — both Muslim progressives — face scrutiny over their comments about Jews and Israel.
Piker has increasingly divided Democrats, with a Jewish congressman from Illinois recently calling him “an unapologetic antisemite” even as some of his colleagues have continued to appear with him on his streaming show and in real life.
El-Sayed, meanwhile, grew up in a heavily Jewish suburb of Detroit and has the endorsement of some progressive Jews including former U.S. Rep. Andy Levin. He raised eyebrows with his response to the Temple Israel attack last month — he condemned the attack but also criticized Israel’s offensive in Lebanon, where the attacker’s brother was killed — as well as his reluctance to comment on the death of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
A former security official with El-Sayed’s campaign recently told a local blog that he had witnessed comments from the candidate that the staffer thought would “give credibility to the claims of [El-Sayed’s] antisemitism and pro-Islamist regimes/factions” before resigning. The blog did not report any specifics.
“Personally, I regret and feel shame for excusing antisemitism and for not leaving sooner,” the former staffer said.
El-Sayed and Piker are set to appear with Rep. Summer Lee of Pennsylvania as well as candidates for local office, at both MSU and the University of Michigan.
In the leadup to the rallies, one of El-Sayed’s primary opponents, state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, as well as the head of the AJC compared Piker to white nationalist Nick Fuentes, who has celebrated Hitler and attacked “organized Jewry.”
Piker’s most vociferous critics have pointed to a history of his comments in which, among other things, he has denied or downplayed that rape took place during the Oct. 7 attacks and compared Houthi rebels to Anne Frank.
Piker rejects allegations of antisemitism. But in a recent interview he expressed regret over some of his more extreme rhetoric, including referring to Haredi Orthodox Jews as “inbred,” and offered additional context for some of his other remarks spotlighted by Greenblatt and other critics including the centrist Democratic group Third Way.
He has also said it is “Islamophobic to say: ‘Oh, this Muslim critic of Israel who has the majority opinion on Israel should not be going to a campaign rally.’”
El-Sayed has suggested that Piker’s critics are more broadly conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.
“I love and revere the Jewish people because I love ALL people. And I criticize Israel’s genocide because I love ALL people. I pray someday you understand,” El-Sayed tweeted in response to Greenblatt’s criticism of his association with Piker.
In a subsequent video, the candidate pointed out that former Vice President Kamala Harris invited Piker to stream at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, during her bid for president. He said he would not apologize “for every single video that people put up there that Hasan said this or Hasan said that” — and that he thought the progressive cause was larger than those critiques.
“Any Democrat who tells you that you cannot speak with some group of people because of one offensive thing that they might have said is missing the point of what it means to actually bring people into a legitimate mainstream policy where we can actually fight for the things we need and deserve,” El-Sayed said.
Third Way has called on El-Sayed to outline specifically where his views and Piker’s differ.
“If you insist on campaigning with an extremist like Piker just weeks after an attack on Jews at Temple Israel in Michigan, voters in your state deserve to know what you truly believe and how closely you align with his most abhorrent views,” wrote the group’s president, Jonathan Cowan. He asked six questions including, “Do you also dismiss the mass rape of Jewish and Israeli women by Hamas?” and “Do you believe as he does that ‘Hamas is a thousand times better’ than the Israeli state?”
At least one planned participant, Ann Arbor-based state Rep. Carrie Rheingans, has backed out of the rallies. She told local media that she still endorses El-Sayed and has “heard him denounce antisemitism vehemently multiple times,” but added, “I don’t appreciate many of Piker’s antisemitic comments… Maybe Hasan Piker has some room to learn how his comments affect other people, but I have to say, Jews, Muslims, and Arabs in Michigan are hurting for a lot of really good reasons right now.”
MSU Hillel, meanwhile, did not mention El-Sayed by name in its statement.
“At a time when Jewish students are experiencing heightened fear and vulnerability — especially in the wake of the recent attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield — this choice is especially concerning,” the Hillel chapter wrote on Instagram. “Hosting individuals like Hasan Piker who consistently use harmful, inflammatory and antisemitic rhetoric creates a hostile environment for Jewish students, threatening their security and belonging.”
The comparisons between Piker and Fuentes have opened a new flashpoint in debates over the role that streaming personalities are playing in American politics.
“In Piker’s case, his record speaks for itself, the same with Nick Fuentes. I don’t need to go into details about who they are or what they represent,” Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, told Jewish Insider while urging Democrats not to associate with Piker. “Neither one of them belongs in the middle of the political process as a result of candidates choosing to put them there.”
In a statement, AJC Detroit, the region’s Jewish community relations arm, cautioned associating with both Piker and Fuentes but also did not name any candidates.
“AJC has reached out to leaders of both parties to warn about the dangers of platforming extremists like Hasan Piker and Nick Fuentes and helping them spread their virulent antisemitism,” spokesperson Amy Sapeika wrote. “With increasing polarization and the rise of extremism from the far left and far right, both parties need to make clear that antisemites like them have no place on their stages.”
The comparison is also shaping the Senate race directly. Piker “is somebody who says extremely offensive things in order to generate clicks and views and followers, which is not entirely different from somebody like Nick Fuentes,” McMorrow told Jewish Insider.
The other Democratic candidate in the Senate primary, Rep. Haley Stevens, said El-Sayed was “choosing to campaign with someone who has a history of antisemitic rhetoric” but did not make a Fuentes comparison. (Elissa Slotkin, the state’s centrist Jewish senator who is not up for reelection this year, said she wasn’t familiar with Piker’s rhetoric but that it “sounds deeply antisemitic.”)
Stevens, who is not Jewish, is generally seen as a centrist candidate preferred by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby that has emerged as a bogeyman in Democratic politics. McMorrow, who has a Jewish husband and Jewish child, is battling El-Sayed for the progressive mantle: She has the endorsement of liberal Zionist group J Street and has said Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
The post Michigan Democrats, Jewish leaders uneasy over Senate candidate’s alliance with Hasan Piker appeared first on The Forward.
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Over Half of All New York City Hate Crimes Have Targeted Jews Since Mamdani Took Office, Police Says
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the New York City Office of Emergency Management, as a major winter storm spreads across a large swath of the United States, in Brooklyn, New York City, US, Jan. 25, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Bing Guan
The majority of all hate crimes in New York City over the first three months of this year have targeted Jews, according to new data released by the New York Police Department (NYPD).
The striking figures, announced last week by NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, will likely fuel criticism of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office on Jan. 1 and has been accused of promoting antisemitism and not doing enough to denounce violence against Jews.
“Confirmed hate crimes increased nearly 12 percent this quarter citywide. We continue to see that the vast majority of our hate crimes are antisemitic in nature,” Tisch said on Thursday in an appearance at 1 Police Plaza with Mamdani to discuss the overall crime data for the year.
“In fact, in the first quarter of 2026, more than half of all confirmed hate crimes, or 55 percent, were antisemitic, despite Jews only making up approximately 10 percent of the population of New York City,” the police commissioner added.
Explaining that the NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force “determines whether an incident meets the legal standard for hate crime under New York state law,” Tisch announced that “as of today, and for the first time, our monthly hate crime data will include two clear, accurate sets of numbers. Reported hate crimes, those flagged for investigation by the task force and confirmed hate crimes as determined by the task force.”
Tisch called this approach “the gold standard for reporting on hate crimes, and that is what we are going to do going forward. This will ensure that the public has an accurate and timely and more robust view than ever of hate crime activity in New York City.”
Tisch’s comments came amid an ongoing surge in antisemitic hate crimes across New York City. In January, for example, such crimes skyrocketed by 182 percent during Mamdani’s first month in office compared to the same period last year.
Jews were also targeted in the majority (54 percent) of all hate crimes perpetrated in New York City in 2024, according to data issued by the NYPD. A recent report released in December by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism noted that figure rose to a staggering 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025.
Under Mamdani, however, Jewish New Yorkers have expressed particular alarm about their safety.
A far-left democratic socialist and anti-Zionist, Mamdani has refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; supported boycotts of all Israeli-tied entities; and failed to explicitly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis around the world.
Last week, the mayor said that New York was welcoming to people of all backgrounds.
“This is a city where everyone who lives here should know that they belong across these five boroughs. There is no person of any faith that should ever be made to feel as if this is not their home, that this is not a place where they can be safe,” he said. “And frankly, we are looking to build a city where the threshold is not simply safety. We want this to be a city where New Yorkers are cherished, where they are celebrated. And we know that that is the case for many. And still, there is so much more work to be done to ensure that is the case for all.”
Hours after taking office, Mamdani revoked multiple executive orders enacted by his predecessor to combat antisemitism.
Among the most controversial actions was Mamdani’s decision to undo New York City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism, a framework widely used by governments and law enforcement around the world to identify contemporary antisemitic behavior. The definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations.
In February, a group of New York City politicians and civic leaders sued Mamdani, charging that members of his administration had stonewalled Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests related to his choice to cancel the executive order embracing the IHRA definition of antisemitism, a move supported by the mayor’s inner core of radical, anti-Zionist activists.
A reporter at 1 Police Plaza asked about the nature of New York City’s hate crimes and if they had grown more violent. Mamdani’s response notably avoided mentioning the Jewish community by name, despite the NYPD’s focus specifically on antisemitic attacks.
“So, the hate crimes that we are seeing are really, like, very across the board. It could be something — an act of violence. It could be drawing a symbol on a wall, like, for example, a swastika,” Tisch added. “So, I don’t want to characterize them in that way. What I can tell you is that the NYPD has released this month, the gold standard for data about hate crimes. We’ve done this in consultation with experts in the field. And that is data about reported crimes and data about confirmed crimes.”
Concluding the questions, Tisch said, “And so now everyone has access to both pieces of information, and that will continue into the future. I want to make sure that we are incredibly transparent about data because data is power, and I also don’t want to continue or perpetuate the practice of releasing bad data that doesn’t help draw meaningful conclusions.”
Despite Tisch’s comments, not everyone supports the city’s so-called “gold standard” change to hate crime data reporting, which some critics argue is conveniently timed to sanitize the administration’s record on rising antisemitism.
“We’re all watching the manufacturing of propaganda in real time,” Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun on the Upper East Side, told the New York Post. “They’ll change the method of counting antisemitic crimes and literally six months later the mayor’s office will claim that antisemitism has dropped.”
Elisha Wiesel, son of the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, shared Steinmetz’s suspicions, telling the Post that “I think there should be a loud outcry telling them to change it back.”
Former NYPD Detective Michael Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, called the much-lauded data style an example of “textbook fudging the numbers,” adding, “It’s going to look like they’re combating hate crimes, but they’re not being transparent.”
Alcazar said that if the NYPD really sought transparency, “then they should show the number of complaints they actually receive and what the investigations yielded.”