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Cameron Kasky embodies rising Gen Z Jewish criticism of Israel. Can it get him to Congress?
(JTA) — He’s running for Congress on Manhattan’s West Side, but lately Cameron Kasky has been focused on the West Bank.
Kasky, a 25-year-old Jewish progressive, recently went on a solidarity mission to the West Bank. He has shared experiences from the trip on social media, including chats with Palestinians who face security checkpoints and incursions by Israeli settlers, as well as videos of Kasky playing sports with Palestinian children. He joined Mehdi Hasan, a vocal critic of Israel and founder of the progressive media outlet Zeteo, for a live Q&A Thursday afternoon about the trip.
Among the pool of nearly a dozen candidates running in New York’s 12th Congressional District, Kasky is steering left of the Democratic establishment. His platform includes calling for sanctions on Israel, whom he accuses of committing genocide.
It’s a stance that could alienate some voters in one of the country’s most Jewish districts. The district covers the Upper West and East Sides as well as Midtown Manhattan, and has long been represented by Jerry Nadler, Congress’ most senior Jewish member.
But Kasky, the Jewish Parkland school shooting survivor and gun control activist, said in an interview that his stance on Israel doesn’t make him an outlier.
“I am not some anomaly,” Kasky told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “The next generation of Jewish Americans is changing their tune on the State of Israel and how it operates.”
In a year when Israel is expected to play a central role in a number of midterm races, Kasky’s candidacy will be a test of how going all-in against Israel resonates with voters. But Israel isn’t his only Jewish issue: He also spoke about plans to improve Holocaust education and address rising antisemitism on the right.
He’s also not wrong about shifting sentiments among younger Jews. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that Americans ages 18-29 were the only age group more sympathetic to Palestinians than to Israelis. Half of Jewish Americans ages 18-34 believe Israel has committed genocide in Gaza; that percentage number is hovering in the 30s among older groups, according to a September 2025 poll by the Washington Post.
While this shift on Israel is occurring in the electorate, Kasky said he’s not aware of likeminded Jewish Gen Zers who are running for office — but he expects that to change.
“I imagine we’ll be seeing plenty more soon, especially given that far more Jewish Americans in our generation are aligned with the foreign policy positions on peace to which I’ve committed,” he said.
Gen Z has not quite reached the age of typical candidates in national elections. Young progressive Jews with staunch pro-Palestinian views are, however, starting to appear in politics, and win races.
Across the Hudson River from Kasky’s district, a Jewish democratic socialist named Jake Ephros was elected to Jersey City Council last month. Ephros has been a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate. In October 2023 he co-organized an open letter titled “Not in Our Name! Jewish Socialists Say No to Apartheid and Genocide,” which compared Israel to Nazi Germany.
And a 26-year-old Jewish political strategist, Morris Katz, has made a splash behind the scenes, helping run the victorious mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani in New York City. He is now advising the U.S. Senate campaign of another anti-Zionist progressive, Maine’s Graham Platner. Katz has said he was “radicalized” by AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby.
“This is something that we are seeing all over the place,” Kasky said, of his sentiments about Israel.
In the aftermath of Mamdani’s election success, progressive candidates are starting to emerge as primary challengers to more moderate Democrats in this year’s midterm elections, and the topic of Israel figures to play a role in those congressional races. That may prove especially true in the race for Nadler’s soon-to-be vacant seat, where Kasky’s many opponents include several other Jews.
The 12th district includes younger neighborhoods such as Chelsea that voted strongly in favor of Mamdani, where Kasky, a democratic socialist and Mamdani supporter, could be well aligned with voters’ politics. But even for those who feel represented by his policies, Kasky’s youth and inexperience may prove too large an obstacle for getting their vote.
“I look at his positions — if he was an experienced guy, I would be very enthusiastic,” said Arlene Geiger, coordinator of the Upper West Side Action Group.
Geiger, who is Jewish, said she is also in a Signal group chat with about 15 other progressives in the district, including Democratic Socialists of America members who are “really enthusiastic” about Kasky.
“But he’s still too young and untested, so I don’t know,” said Geiger.
Eric Alterman, a journalist and author of the 2022 book “We Are Not One,” which looks at American Jews’ growing divide over Israel, said he doubted that Kasky could win the race, even as people’s views on Israel are shifting.
In the general election, Alterman pointed out, Mamdani was able to win the Upper West Side with similar views to Kasky on Israel.
“But Mamdani’s issue was not Israel, it was affordability,” said Alterman, who lives on the Upper West Side. “A lot of DSA types were there [supporting Mamdani] because of Israel, but most people were not there for Israel. They were there saying, ‘OK, I sort of agree with some of what he says, not all of it,’ or, ‘Who cares about the mayor’s foreign policy?’”
Brad Lander, another progressive Jewish congressional candidate and Mamdani ally, is challenging incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman on his support from AIPAC, and Israel figures to play a major role in their primary. But Alterman pointed to a key difference between Lander’s messaging on Israel and Kasky’s, which centers the charge of genocide.
“His position is, ‘I love Israel and I wish it would behave better,’” Alterman said of Lander.
In his race, Kasky has positioned himself as the democratic socialist candidate in a crowded — and decidedly Jewish — field that includes state Assembly members Micah Lasher, who is Jewish and considered Nadler’s preferred successor, and Alex Bores, whose wife is Jewish; John F. Kennedy’s grandson Jack Schlossberg, who has said he’s “at least 100% half Jewish”; civil rights lawyer Laura Dunn; LGBTQ rights activist Matthew Shurka, who is a Jewish Israeli-American; broadcast journalist Jami Floyd; ex-Republican lawyer and anti-Trumper George Conway; and Alan Pardee, who previously worked in finance.
Kasky said he wants to strike a dialogue with voters who may have liked much of Mamdani’s platform but were uncomfortable with the now-mayor’s harshly critical views on Israel.
“I intend to talk to them in their places of worship, I intend to talk to them in their community meetings, and just have a conversation about this,” Kasky said. He also said that, if people were against Mamdani solely because of Israel-Palestine, he found this “ridiculous” since the mayor does not have a say in foreign policy.
“Yes, he said he’ll arrest Netanyahu — Netanyahu can prevent that by going to the Hague himself and facing justice,” Kasky said, referring to the Israeli prime minister whom Mamdani has pledged to arrest if he enters New York.
Kasky, unlike Mamdani, would have a say in American foreign policy if elected to Congress. His platform on Israel includes opposing “sending money or weapons to the State of Israel, ‘defensive’ or otherwise,” and backing “meaningful sanctions against Israel and the UAE for their continued support of genocides in Gaza and Sudan.”
Kasky has drawn criticism from pro-Israel figures like Adam Louis-Klein, who recently launched the Movement Against Antizionism. Louis-Klein called Kasky a “young token” who “recently realized the political benefits of the anti-Jewish hate grift.”
On the other hand, Ro Khanna, the progressive California congressman, praised Kasky on X. “Thanks for the boldness you are showing @camkasky! You are inspiring a lot of folks,” he wrote.
After Kasky’s recent trip to the West Bank, he said in a video that he witnessed the “devastating human toll of the illegal actions that are encouraged right here” in the 12th district.
“This hell that our government and the State of Israel have created for the people living there — it is so much worse than you think,” Kasky said following his trip.
Kasky has said he will share more about the visit; he has so far shared videos of him playing sports with Palestinian children and photos from a Christmas peace march in Bethlehem. He has written that “we must end the settlements that violate international law and stop encouraging New Yorkers to move there. It is cruel.” He also recorded a video speaking to the camera, which he said he filmed at 5 a.m., during a night shift to look out for Israeli settlers.
His platform doesn’t only center on Israel: He also cites as priorities establishing Medicare for all, abolishing ICE, fighting artificial intelligence oligarchs and preventing gun violence.
Kasky said he gradually came to his current views on Israel after being raised with a rosy picture of the country.
“It was a slow drip over the years, following the news closely and seeing strikes in Gaza, where I learned that the reality of the situation was not the simple ‘milk and honey land’ narrative I was raised to believe,” he said.
He was raised in a Jewish area of South Florida, which he described as “basically just Long Island II.” He attended a Reform synagogue, Congregation B’nai Israel, and attended a heavily Jewish private school in Boca Raton before his family moved to Parkland.
He also attended Hebrew school, which Kasky said was a seminal experience — though he complained that he was cast as Haman what felt like “every single year in the Purim spiel,” and wished he could’ve played Vashti.
Kasky said the Hebrew school curriculum included things like learning about Jewish holidays and traditions. But it also meant learning about the Holocaust at a young age — an experience that he contrasted to the curriculum of his public school history classes in middle and high school.
“The Holocaust education in at least the Florida public school system is not very in-depth,” Kasky said, adding the caveat that he had dropped out of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School before he would have taken their dedicated class on the Holocaust. (Kasky had dropped out to focus on March for Our Lives with his classmates after the shooting.)
Kasky, who co-founded the gun-control activist group Never Again MSD after surviving the shooting, said he did not learn “that America was turning away Jews” until he was “much older.” He said his classes were fairly black-and-white, and did not include anything about Nazi collaborators in the U.S. government, which he said he had come to believe was important after reading a book on the topic.
Florida has required some form of Holocaust education in public schools since the 1990s, and was one of the first states in the union to adopt such requirements. Today 30 states mandate Holocaust education. The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School gunman had fired into the school’s Holocaust class, killing two students and wounding four, as part of his killing spree; he had also scrawled a swastika onto one of his ammunition magazines.
Now, Kasky wants to expand Holocaust education, and said he is meeting with education policy experts and Jewish community leaders about the issue.
In an email, he wrote that his positions include expanding funding for the Never Again Education Act of 2020; working to “develop and advocate for K-12 teacher training on combating antisemitism and preventing Holocaust denialism from reaching our children, who are already being exposed to skyrocketing Jew hate around the world, especially on social media”; and expanding “federal grants for states who are leading the way in the development of Holocaust/genocide education standards.”
He also expressed concern about far-right figures like Nick Fuentes, who themselves speak to Gen Z audiences highly critical of Israel, but blend such criticism with sympathy for Hitler and Nazi Germany. Kasky said “dangerous antisemitic actors” like Fuentes “exploit the suffering of the Palestinian people as a way to spread Jew hatred, while having no real sympathy for Palestinians.”
Still, Kasky cautioned against Sen. Chuck Schumer’s resolution to officially condemn Fuentes in Congress, saying it would bear “unintended harmful consequences.”
“Fuentes’ base thrives on the idea that they are being attacked because they are right, and because the establishment and the Jews and the Zionists hate seeing how right they are,” Kasky said. “The idea that Fuentes’ name will even be uttered in the halls of Congress, I think only reinforces Fuentes’ message to his followers.”
Kasky said he and his family had been the subject of antisemitic conspiracy theories online in his time as a gun control activist. He has criticized pro-Israel organizations like the Anti-Defamation League for doing “everything they can to avoid indicting the Right and MAGA.”
Kasky has also blasted moderate Democrats including Goldman and New York Rep. Ritchie Torres, who’ve both received funding from AIPAC (and are both facing primary challengers calling out that support). Kasky, meanwhile, has been endorsed by Track AIPAC, the X account that posts candidates’ AIPAC donation numbers in order “to end AIPAC and the Israel lobby’s stranglehold on American Democracy,” according to its website.
Alterman noted that, since Oct. 7, American politics around Israel have changed in a way that he “could not have imagined” while he was writing his book, particularly among Jews. Before Hamas’ attack on Israel and the war in Gaza, the election of Mamdani as an anti-Zionist mayor of New York would have been “inconceivable,” he said.
“So things are moving so rapidly that I’m not here to predict the future,” Alterman said, of Kasky’s fate in this primary. “But there’s definitely a base there to begin a political career.”
The post Cameron Kasky embodies rising Gen Z Jewish criticism of Israel. Can it get him to Congress? appeared first on The Forward.
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Gen Z New Hampshire Congressional Candidate Refuses to Acknowledge Israel’s ‘Right to Exist’
New Hampshire state Rep. Heath Howard, a Democrat who is running for US Congress in the 2026 election, speaks during televised interview. Photo: Screenshot
A Democratic state lawmaker in New Hampshire now running for US Congress is facing mounting criticism after comments in which he refused to affirm the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state, reigniting a broader political debate over antisemitism and the boundaries of criticism of Israel.
During a new interview on WMUR’s “Close-Up,” congressional candidate Heath Howard rejected the idea that Israel possesses a unique “right to exist” as a Jewish nation. Howard also drew an equivalence between Israel, the closest US ally in the Middle East, and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, a US-designated terrorist organization.
“While there are a number of condemnable actions that they’ve taken, like any sort of government, I don’t think that Hamas has a right to exist. I don’t think Israel has a right to exist. I think that people have a right to exist,” Howard said.
Howard then appeared to defend the prospect of Hamas’s continued rule over Gaza as a form of Palestinian autonomy, saying, “We need to respect the will of the Palestinian people, and we need to make sure that they have access to democracy. We need to make sure that we allow the people to have self-determination.”
Heath has criticized the US relationship with Israel, saying that it has “furthered a lot of conflict in the Middle East,” and called for imposing enhanced restrictions on military assistance to Jerusalem.
He has also hand-waved suggestions that Hamas could be a danger to Jewish people and called for the transformation of Israel into a “secular state.”
Skeptics claim the comments crossed a line from criticism of Israeli government policy into opposition to Israel’s existence as a homeland for the Jewish people, a distinction many Jewish organizations say is central in determining when anti-Israel rhetoric becomes antisemitic.
Benjamin Sharoni, consul general of Israel to New England, rebuked Howard’s commentary.
“To suggest that Israel has no right to exist is not a nuanced policy position. It is a denial of history, reality, international law, and the very principle that grants legitimacy to every nation on earth,” Sharoni told NHJournal.com.
“Israel is a sovereign state, a member of the United Nations, and the national home of the Jewish people,” he continued. “Invoking universal rights while calling for the dismantling of a recognized state is not humanitarianism. Those who are genuinely committed to the rights of people must begin by acknowledging the right of nations to exist and defend their citizens.”
Howard’s policy platform contains a number of unorthodox suggestions, such as implementing a complete arms, trade, and intelligence embargo on Israel, forging closer ties with China, and the removal of the US blockade on Cuba.
“It is essential that we immediately cease our involvement in these endless imperial wars and adopt non-interventionism as a general policy. Moreover, we must immediately end all military aid and weapons sales to both Israel and Saudi Arabia and impose a complete arms, technological, and cultural embargo on Israel,” Howard’s campaign website reads.
“We must also work to restore and improve our relationship with China and work with them, not against them, to make technological, political, and societal progress — and above all, we must honor our commitments to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Charter of the United Nations,” his website continues.
The controversy comes at a particularly sensitive moment in American politics, as tensions surrounding Israel and the war in Gaza continue to divide parts of the Democratic Party following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. The massacre, which killed roughly 1,200 people and saw hundreds taken hostage, prompted widespread expressions of solidarity with Israel across much of the US political establishment. Since then, however, divisions have emerged between mainstream Democrats and a growing activist wing increasingly critical of Zionism and American support for Israel.
Supporters of Israel argue that denying Jews the right to self-determination to maintain a nation-state is discriminatory, especially given the existence of dozens of countries organized around national, ethnic, or religious identities. They also note that Israel serves as a refuge for Jews facing centuries of persecution.
Critics argue that Howard’s comments may fuel concerns among some Democratic strategists that rhetoric perceived as hostile to Israel could alienate moderate voters and Jewish Americans, particularly in swing districts. Several prominent Democrats nationally have faced similar scrutiny in recent months over statements questioning Israel’s legitimacy or character as a Jewish state.
The dispute reflects a broader ideological battle playing out inside the Democratic Party, where debates over Zionism, antisemitism, and Middle East policy have increasingly become litmus tests in some progressive circles.
Howard, a 25-year-old left-wing candidate, may be reflective of a newer generation of Americans which are broadly skeptical of the US-Israel relationship. Recent polling suggests that overwhelming majorities of younger Americans disapprove of the Jewish state.
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Mamdani supersizes NYC hate crimes office, as tensions simmer over synagogue protests
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced a nearly ninefold increase in New York City’s budget for preventing hate crimes as part of his budget proposal announced Tuesday, fulfilling a campaign promise that was central to his outreach to Jewish voters amid concerns about his stance against Israel.
The Jewish community overwhelmingly did not support his election, and his proposal comes amid rising tensions stoked by anti-Israel protests — most recently on Monday night, when dozens descended on a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood where a synagogue hosted a real estate sale that included West Bank properties.
Mamdani’s $26 million for the Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes would significantly expand an agency created in 2019 to combat rising antisemitism and other forms of hate, which currently has a $3 million annual budget
The office is tasked with addressing all hate crimes, and Mamdani did not specify how much of the $26 million would be directed specifically toward combating antisemitism, since the office is. According to the New York City Police Department, antisemitic incidents accounted for 57% of all reported hate crimes in 2025. The Anti-Defamation League’s 2025 annual audit found that while antisemitic incidents in New York declined by 19%, last year was still the third-highest year on record.
“Too often, the only response offered to a hate crime is exactly that, it’s a response,” Mamdani said. “Today we want to also do the work of preventing those hate crimes.” The mayor said most of the funding would go toward expanding existing city programs that have proven effective, alongside the rollout of the city’s first comprehensive municipal strategy to combat antisemitism, which is expected this fall.
Most of the office’s current funding goes towards a program called the Partners Against the Hate FORWARD initiative — in partnership with the NYC Commission on Human Rights — that offers grants up to $10,000 for community-based initiatives.
The proposal resembles a plan authored by Jews For Racial & Economic Justice, a progressive organization that supported Mamdani during the election. The JFREJ proposal called for between $26 million and $30 million in hate violence prevention initiatives, including expanded reporting systems, proactive relationship-building and anti-bias education.
In a statement Tuesday, the group hailed the investment as a “huge win” for advocates of a broader approach. “The Mamdani administration has significantly raised the bar for what it looks like to seriously address antisemitism and hate violence,” said Audrey Sasson, JFREJ’s executive director.
The hate crimes office expansion drew swift praise from Jewish elected officials, including some who have distanced themselves from Mamdani in their support for Israel. “Promises made, promises kept,” Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal posted on X. Rep. Dan Goldman — whose primary challenger, Brad Lander, is backed by Mamdani — said the funding is a worthy tool to combat hate: “It is vital that we all work together to ensure we do everything possible to keep New Yorkers safe.”
Hasidic leaders of both Satmar sects also applauded the mayor, with one organization calling the investment a “massive increase of resources to stop the rising tide of antisemitism in NYC.”
Still, Mamdani’s prevention strategy does not include measures in response to protests outside synagogues, which have included antisemitic displays and slogans.
On Monday night, pro-Palestinian protesters marched through the heavily Orthodox neighborhood of Midwood in Brooklyn, chanting slogans including calls for “intifada revolution” during a demonstration outside a synagogue hosting an event marketing real estate in Israel and West Bank settlements. The protest also drew a crowd of pro-Israel counterprotesters, many of them teenage boys, as police intervened to keep the groups apart. The NYPD reported four arrests, including two Jewish teens.
Under a new law recently passed in the City Council by a veto-proof majority, the NYPD is currently devising a synagogue protection plan that it must make public. But meanwhile, police officers accompanied the protesters as they circled residential blocks chanting anti-Israel slogans.
Many Jewish residents have said such protests leave them feeling intimidated or unsafe. The administration has yet to outline a more robust enforcement or public safety approach to demonstrations, and Mamdani — who has not commented on the Brooklyn confrontations — recently defended a similar protest of a real estate sale held on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
In a statement shared with the Forward, Mamdani condemned the violence at the protest and counter-protests on Monday night “alongside antisemitic, anti-Muslim and racist rhetoric, as well as racial slurs, displays of support for terrorist organizations, and calls for the death of others” as “despicable.”
“New Yorkers have the constitutional right to protest and to counter-protest, but no one should face violence, intimidation, or hatred because of who they are or what they believe,” the mayor added. “We can simultaneously protect both public safety and civil liberties, and our city remains committed to doing exactly that by upholding the right to peaceful protest while keeping every New Yorker safe.”
The post Mamdani supersizes NYC hate crimes office, as tensions simmer over synagogue protests appeared first on The Forward.
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‘No Peace’: Anti-Israel Mob Storms Jewish Neighborhood in New York City
Anti-Israel protesters march through a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York City, May 11, 2026. Photo: Screenshot
New York City saw another bombardment of a Jewish house of worship on Monday, compounding an antisemitism crisis that has plunged the municipality into episodes of anti-Jewish mob violence, swastika graffiti, and discrimination.
As seen in several viral videos posted to social media, masses of anti-Zionists descended on the Flatbush section of Brooklyn to march through the streets of the heavily Jewish quarter and walk up to Young Israel of Midwood synagogue to protest its involvement in selling land they say is “stolen” for being located in West Bank.
Orthodox Jewish family in Brooklyn looks on as mob of anti-Israel protesters march down their block pic.twitter.com/gWwJ9Z0aRN
— Elaad Eliahu (@elaadeliahu) May 12, 2026
The group behind the demonstration, the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation in Al-Awda (PAL-Awda NY/NJ), led the protesters to the institution while shouting jihadists slogans whose orators could not be identified behind the keffiyeh scarves repurposed as masks to hide their faces.
“Zionism will fall,” the activists chanted while others wielded signs proclaiming “Abolish Israel” and “no peace on stolen land,” according to local reports. Words failed to make the point for some, however, as one female activist ambushed a Jewish girl attempting to outpace the protesters to get home. Wearing a surgical mask and red keffiyeh scarf not around her face but her shoulders, she charged the Jewish girl from behind, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and jerked backwards, video of the incident showed. When a group of teenagers near the incident decried the assault, a swarm of hooded protesters confronted them, pushing and squaring shoulders in an apparent effort to dare a response and threaten more force.
Brooklyn, New York, May 11, 2026: Days after another anti-Israel protest targeted a Manhattan synagogue, protesters attacked a young Jewish girl outside Young Israel of Midwood, waved a Hezbollah flag, displayed a Hamas-linked red triangle, and chanted “Zionism will fall.” pic.twitter.com/rEIimwGgsZ
— Combat Antisemitism Movement (@CombatASemitism) May 12, 2026
New York City Police Department (NYPD) officers attempted to hold the line between demonstrators and the synagogue’s entrance. According to reports, at least three demonstrators were arrested after attacking counterprotesters, and some of the anti-Israel activists could be seen holding flags and banners expressing support for Hamas and Hezbollah, both US-designated foreign terrorist organizations.
A Hezbollah flag waves at the forefront of the anti Israel protest across the street from a Flatbush synagogue.
The red inverted Hamas triangle can also be seen on a banner. pic.twitter.com/1B98Yof3I6
— Michael Starr (@StarrJpost) May 12, 2026
This is not the first time PAL-Awda has targeted a Jewish neighborhood or institution over the issue of Israeli real estate.
Last week, protesters gathered outside Park East Synagogue in Manhattan during a showcase called “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event 2026,” which included the marketing of properties in Israel proper as well as West Bank settlements. At the demonstration, activists held signs and chanted slogans that went beyond criticism of Israel, seemingly calling for the death and expulsion of Jews and, in some cases, support for US-designated terrorist groups.
“Death, death to the IDF [Israel Defense Forces],” “Rapists,” and “Settlers, settlers go back home, Palestine is ours alone” were among the insults screamed by the protesters, some of whom also waved flags belonging to Hezbollah.
The demonstration prompted a significant police response and raised concerns about rising antisemitic rhetoric in the city home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel.
The scene marked a return to the same synagogue that was the site of a contentious protest in November, where demonstrators chanted “We don’t want no Zionists here” and “Resistance, you make us proud, take another settler out,” among others. One speaker claimed, “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events! We need to make them scared.”
Both protests were organized by Pal-Awda.
In each case, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who took office on Jan. 1 but was mayor-elect at the time of the November incident, condemned the Israeli real estate event.
“There is no tolerance for hatred of Jewish New Yorkers,” he said last week. “I’ve also been clear to New Yorkers, my honest opinions about the fact that when we have a real estate expo that is promoting the sale of land, which includes the sale of land in occupied West Bank in settlements that are a violation of international law, that that is something that I firmly disagree with.”
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, antisemitic hate crimes in New York City have been surging since Mamdani’s election. According to police data, Jews this year have been targeted in the majority of all hate crimes committed in the city, continuing a troubling trend of rising antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
Jews were targeted in 60 percent of all confirmed hate crimes in April despite composing just 10 percent of the city’s population, the NYPD revealed in its latest figures.
The change in New York City’s climate since Mamdani’s election is palpable, Jewish advocacy groups have said. On his first day in office in January, Mamdani voided the city government’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, lifted the ban on contracts with companies boycotting Israel, and modified key provisions of an executive order directing law enforcement to monitor anti-Israel protests held near synagogues.
“Mayor Mamdani is deeply opposed to the real estate expo this evening that includes the promotion of the sale of land in settlements in the Occupied West Bank,” Mamdani said in a statement issued before last week’s synagogue protest, failing to deliver the conciliating message his critics said was needed to hold together a fraying community. “These settlements are illegal under international law and deeply tied to the ongoing displacement of Palestinians.”
Rabbi Mark Wildes, director and founder of the Manhattan Jewish Experience organization, told The Algemeiner that the Mamdani administration is fueling antisemitism.
“From swastikas appearing on homes and in parks, to increased anti-Israeli demonstrations, Mayor Mamdani has created a climate in which bigotry is allowed to flourish,” Wiles charged. “His irresponsible rhetoric calling Israel an ‘apartheid’ state committing ‘genocide only emboldens antisemites to target Jews across the city.”
On Tuesday, as Jewish community advocates called for the arrest of the protester filmed assaulting a Jewish girl, the Trump administration confirmed that the US Justice Department is investigating the incident.
“We are aware of this situation last night and are working with our colleagues in NYC to collect evidence and analyze potential charges,” said Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.