New York City Mayor Eric Adams attends an “October 7: One Year Later” commemoration to mark the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack in Israel at the Summer Stage in Central Park on October 7, 2024, in New York City. Photo: Ron Adar/ SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

New York City Mayor Eric Adams gave a virtual address from City Hall on Thursday in which he condemned an anti-Israel art installation on Governors Island last Sunday.

The installation featured a “Hamas Lover” poster, a fake street sign for “F–k Israel Ln” and artwork that said it is “beyond the pale” for Israel to exist, as seen in images shared online by the initiative EndJewHatred. Another painting featured the colors and emblem of the Hezbollah flag along with a message that said “Liberate! The Resistance is Justified.” Hamas and Hezbollah are both US-designated terrorist organizations.

A separate painting said “F–k Israel” while another featured an image of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a message that equated Zionism with Nazism and Fascism. A Star of David was also depicted on a Ku Klux Klan hood.

The “hate-filled art” displayed in the “vile, antisemitic exhibit” was “unsanctioned by Governor’s Island” and removed within a few hours after it was installed, Adams said on Thursday.

“This incident disturbs me, and it should disturb anyone with a conscience,” Adams said. “I’ve talked a lot about how we’ve seen these incidents erode the fabric of cities across the globe, but in New York City, we must never tolerate this type of prejudice. We cannot pretend this exhibit is a normal expression of artistic freedom, because art is not an excuse for hate. Activism is not an excuse for antisemitism or hate.”

“I want to be clear that disagreeing with the policies of Israel’s government does not make someone antisemitic, but to openly praise Hamas at an exhibit in a government facility sends a message of institutionalizing hatred,” he added. “History shows us how hatred begins on the fringes. It starts small, with a few artists trying to make a statement, with a few exhibits that go unnoticed by our leaders and institutions, with a few institutions that accept the hate and embed it into our culture.”

The art installation was housed in Building 11, a space owned by the Trust for Governors Island that is occupied by Swale, a food-forest nonprofit, according to the New York Post. Swale is part of the Trust of Governor Island’s in-residence program, which invites artists to feature their art on the grounds. The Post revealed that the artist behind the anti-Israel installation is Rebecca Goyette.

The Trust for Governors Island called the installation “completely unacceptable.” In a post on Instagram, Swale said it was “devastated that someone would use a restorative project for their own personal platform for sowing discord.” Swale claimed Goyette was “not part of our programming and not an artist-in-residence.”

“The unapproved artist was invited into an empty back studio by a current artist-in-residence during seasonal wind-down without authorization to display work. We view this as a deliberate and malicious act by the artist,” said the nonprofit. “Like many visitors, members of our team also encountered this display and were personally affected by its content and conduct. We share the community’s distress and stand with those who were harmed.”

Goyette and the artist-in-residence who invited her have been banned from the space and “neither will be invited back,” Swale said. Sarah Olson, who was the artist-in-residence, told the Post she was duped by Goyette and unaware that the artist would display such offensive material.

Adams dropped out of the New York City mayoral race late last month and recently endorsed pro-Israel former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo ahead of Tuesday’s election. Adams has often spoken out against antisemitism and taken a number of steps to combat Jew-hatred in the city, including signing an executive order to adopt the widely accepted IHRA definition of antisemitism and creating the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

During Thursday’s address, he denounced how antisemitism has become “mainstream” and institutionalized in New York City, and said it is spreading “like a cancer across our city and our country.”

“Before we know it, hate moves to the mainstream, and once it is in the mainstream, it becomes much harder to mobilize against,” he said. “We saw that with Apartheid. We saw that with the Holocaust. And I would be lying if I said I didn’t see seeds of it planted within our own city government.” He also seemingly took a dig at State Assemblyman and mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee who has a history of anti-Israel rhetoric.

“We will never surrender our city to hate, or to those who want to say they want to ‘globalize the intifada,’ or to choose and believe and not refuse to condemn it, because it is literally a phrase that means death to Jews all over the world,” Adams said.

Mamdani has refused to explicitly denounce the “globalize the intifada” slogan and instead said he will “discourage” its use. The phrase has been used to call for violence against Jewish and Israeli civilians.

New York City has experienced a surge in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza. Adams said that Jews are targeted in 57 percent of all hate crimes in the city.

Displaced Sudanese gather and sit in makeshift tents after fleeing Al-Fashir city in Darfur, in Tawila, Sudan, Oct. 29, 2025, in this still image taken from a Reuters’ video. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Jamal

Fighters riding camels rounded up a couple of hundred men near the Sudanese city of al-Fashir at the weekend and brought them to a reservoir, shouting racial slurs before starting to shoot, according to a man who said he was among them.

One of the captors recognized him from his school days and let him flee, the man, Alkheir Ismail, said in a video interview conducted by a local journalist known to Reuters in the nearby town of Tawila in the country’s western Darfur region.

“He told them, ‘Don’t kill him,’” Ismail said. “Even after they killed everyone else – my friends and everyone else.”

He said he had been bringing food to relatives still in the city when it was captured by the Rapid Support Forces on Sunday – and, like the other detainees, was unarmed. Reuters could not immediately verify his account due to the conflict but has verified earlier material obtained from the journalist.

Ismail was one of four such witnesses and six aid workers interviewed by Reuters who also said people fleeing al-Fashir had been gathered in nearby villages and men separated from women and removed. In an earlier account, one of the witnesses said gunshots then rang out.

Activists and analysts have long warned of revenge killings based on ethnicity by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) if they seized al-Fashir – the last stronghold of the Sudanese military in Darfur.

The UN human rights office shared other accounts on Friday, estimating hundreds of civilians and unarmed fighters may have been executed. Such killings are considered war crimes.

The RSF, whose victory in al-Fashir marks a milestone in Sudan’s two-and-a-half-year civil war, has denied such abuses – saying the accounts have been manufactured by its enemies and making counter-accusations against them.

RSF SAYS MEN REMOVED FOR INTERROGATION

Reuters has verified at least three videos posted on social media showing men in RSF uniforms shooting unarmed captives and a dozen more showing clusters of bodies after apparent shootings.

A high-level RSF commander called the accounts “media exaggeration” by the army and its allied fighters “to cover up for their defeat and loss of al-Fashir.”

The RSF’s leadership had ordered investigations into any violations by RSF individuals and several had been arrested, he said, adding that the RSF had helped people leave the city and called on aid organizations to assist those who remained.

He said soldiers and fighters pretending to be civilians had been taken away for interrogation. “There were no killings as has been claimed,” the commander told Reuters in response to a request for comment.

The RSF’s capture of al-Fashir entrenches the geographical division of a country already reduced by the independence of South Sudan in 2011 after decades of civil war.

In a speech on Wednesday night, RSF head Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo called on his fighters to protect civilians and said violations will be prosecuted. He appeared to acknowledge reports of detentions by ordering the release of detainees.

Most of the fighters holding back the RSF advance in al-Fashir came from the Zaghawa ethnic group whose enmity with the largely Arab RSF fighters dates from the early 2000s, when, as the Janjaweed militias, they were accused of atrocities in Darfur.

Alex de Waal, a genocide expert and specialist on Darfur, said the reported RSF acts in al-Fashir looked “very similar to what they did in Geneina and elsewhere,” referring to another Darfur city the RSF took during the latest war’s early stages as well as the early 2000s conflict.

The US said the RSF had committed genocide in Geneina and the attack is under investigation by the International Criminal Court. The Sudanese army and others accuse the United Arab Emirates of supporting the RSF, charges the Gulf state denies.

‘WE CAN’T SAY THEY ARE ALIVE’

Mary Brace, a protection adviser at Nonviolent Peaceforce, an NGO working in Tawila, said those arriving “are women, children, and older men generally,” adding that trucks organized by the RSF have taken some people from Garney to Tawila while others have been taken elsewhere.

The RSF on Thursday posted a video it said showed the provision of food and medical aid to people displaced in Garney. Aid workers said the force may also be trying to keep people in towns it controls to attract foreign aid.

Some 260,000 people were still in al-Fashir around the time of the attack, but only 62,000 have been counted elsewhere, and only several thousand of them in Tawila, which is controlled by a neutral force.

In another of the testimonies obtained and verified by Reuters, Tahani Hassan, a former hospital cleaner, said she fled to Tawila early on Sunday after her brother-in-law and uncle were killed by stray bullets.

On the way, she and her family were apprehended by three men in RSF uniforms who searched them, beat them and insulted them, she said.

“They hit us hard. They threw our clothes on the ground. Even I, as a woman, was searched,” she said, adding that their food and water was also spilled on the ground.

They eventually made it to Garney where the fighters separated women and children from the men, most of whom they did not see again, including her brother and a second brother-in-law.

“We can’t say they are alive, because of how they treated us,” Hassan said. “If they don’t kill you, the hunger will kill you, the thirst will kill you.”

A man walks outside the United Nations compound following reports of UN staffers being detained by the Houthis, in Sanaa, Yemen, Oct. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah

Detained local United Nations staff will face trial on suspicion of links to an Israeli airstrike that assassinated top Houthi leaders in Yemen in August, the acting foreign minister of the terrorist-led Houthi government told Reuters.

The prime minister of Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi-run government and several other ministers were killed in an Israeli strike on the capital Sanaa in August, the first such attack to kill senior officials.

A total of 36 United Nations employees were arrested after that attack, the UN said on Friday. It is not clear how many of those would stand trial.

The UN has repeatedly rejected Houthi accusations that UN staff or UN operations in Yemen were involved.

The Houthis — an internationally designated terrorist group whose slogan is “death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, and victory to Islam” — have controlled large swathes of Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, since seizing power in 2014 and early 2015 in the midst of the country’s civil war.

‘PROCESS MOVING TOWARD ITS CONCLUSION’

“The steps taken by the security agencies were carried out under full judicial supervision. The public prosecution was kept informed step by step with every action taken,” acting foreign minister Abdulwahid Abu Ras said in an interview with Reuters.

“Therefore, as long as the prosecution is informed, it is certain that this process is moving toward its conclusion, leading to trials and the issuance of judicial rulings,” he said.

Abu Ras said that a cell within the World Food Program was clearly involved in directly targeting the government.

There was no immediate comment from a World Food Program spokesperson, but the United Nations has repeatedly rejected accusations staff were involved in spying.

At least 59 UN personnel are being held by Houthis, according to the United Nations, which has condemned what it calls arbitrary detentions and called for the immediate release of its personnel and other detainees.

The defendants are Yemenis and according to Yemeni law could face the death penalty.

‘INCREASINGLY DIFFICULT’ FOR UN TO PROVIDE AID

The UN has accused Houthis of taking steps that have made it increasingly difficult for the agency to provide assistance to those in need in Yemen. Houthi security forces entered several United Nations offices in Sanaa on Sunday.

Hundreds of UN personnel remain in parts of Houthi-controlled Yemen, including a small number of international staff, said Farhan Haq, deputy spokesperson for the UN secretary general.

Acting foreign minister Abu Ras said the government is supporting other humanitarian organizations.

“We have clarified in a clear and explicit statement from the Foreign Ministry that we will support and assist organizations committed to the principles of humanitarian work, facilitating their activities and work,” he said.

After the war between Israel and Hamas erupted on Oct. 7, 2023, the Houthis attacked global shipping lanes to show their solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group. The group frequently fired missiles towards Israel, most of which were intercepted.