On Wednesday in New York City, on the third anniversary of Oct. 7, two people spoke up for Palestinians. One of them was New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The other person actually said something helpful.

In a statement from the mayor’s office, Mamdani expressed sorrow at the loss of over 1,100 Israeli lives and Hamas’ “horrific war crimes,” then pivoted to condemn Israel for its war against Hamas in Gaza, accusing Israel of ongoing genocide, war crimes, apartheid and occupation.

Then came the Hallmark-ian ending, “To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”

It was four paragraphs of blame with a coda of pablum: no vision for a way forward and no idea of how to improve Palestinian lives, much less Israeli ones.

Vision and healing — that is, leadership — came not from the mayor, but from a Palestinian and an Israeli who spoke later that day at a forum uptown.

“It’s my choice to give the children the anger and the pain or to give them a chance” at a future, said Jaser AbuMoussa, a Gazan who suffered unfathomable loss during the recent conflict. “And I will choose the chance every day.”

“Our neighborhood, from Nir Oz to the sea, can be a paradise because of the human factor on both sides of the border, and not because we necessarily love each other,” said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, a member of the ravaged Kibbutz Nir Oz. “You don’t have to agree on everything to get there.”

AbuMoussa and Dekel-Chen appeared on stage together at the 92nd Street Y, speaking across chasms of grief. From the West Coast, I tuned into a livestream of the event, because if Israelis and Palestinians want a secure and just future, it starts not with pain-inducing pronouncements like Mamdani’s, but with painful conversations like this one.

On Oct. 15, 2023, an Israeli airstrike hit AbuMoussa’s home in Khan Younis in Gaza, killing his wife and two of his children, as well as a nephew, sister-in-law and a cousin. A second airstrike killed his mother, sister, uncle, aunt, a niece and a nephew. AbuMoussa, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute, managed to evacuate with his two surviving children to the United Arab Emirates, where they underwent lifesaving surgeries.

“She was an architect,” he said of his wife, Heba. “She was a novelist. She was a poet, and above all, she was a wife and a mother.”

Hamas terrorists took Dekel-Chen’s son Sagui into Gaza, where he was held for 498 days before his release. Terrorists killed 47 out of 420 kibbutz members and took 76 people hostage, including the Bibas family.

Hamas and Islamic Jihad gunmen “rampaged for nine hours through the kibbutz, destroying everything in their path,” said Dekel-Chen, a historian at Hebrew University and visiting professor at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, which co-sponsored the event. He said he is only alive because he and his wife were on a work trip to the United States at the time.

So many arguments over Oct. 7 turn into comparative victimhood — Mamdani’s statement was an example of that, making sure to emphasize Palestinian loss.

But the Palestinian at the 92nd Street Y didn’t do that.

“To me, suffering is like an absolute value, and we are not here for a competition,” AbuMoussa said.

While on the same day in the same city, the mayor’s statement used the words “genocide,” “apartheid” and “war crimes,” the Gazan father who lost his wife and two of his four children used none of those words.

Both men made it clear that the pain and anger of Oct. 7 and the years that followed are ever-present, a fact of life. But so is the choice of how to channel that anger.

“I will not point it at people,” said AbuMoussa. “I will not point it at Jonathan because he is an Israeli. But I will point it at policies, at leaders, at systems that were invented to kill people.”

While he held Israel responsible for helping to create the catastrophe in Gaza — he pointed out that Israeli attacks have killed 1,400 Palestinians since the ceasefire —  AbuMoussa — again, in contrast to Mamdani — excoriated Hamas. The group corrupted Gaza’s political, economic, social and above all religious life. It cast itself as the only legitimate interpretation of Islam, though AbuMoussa said Oct. 7 itself contravened Islamic law.

Hamas never treated protecting civilians as its job, AbuMoussa said, pointing out that Oct. 7 mastermind Yahya Sinwar’s family went into the tunnels while ordinary Gazans were left out, unprepared.

The Westerners who took to the streets and college campuses in support of resistance hurt Palestinians more than helped them, AbuMoussa said, because they blur Palestinians together with Hamas and the Iranian axis.

These were the very people Mamdani seemed to be pandering to in his statement — who turn Gaza, in AbuMoussa’s words, “into a flag or a pin.”

Dekel-Chen said his harshest critics are often Diaspora Jews who fail to separate what’s good for Israel from the government of Israel.

Because they spent no time trading accusations and blame, both men had plenty of time to discuss their vision for a better future.

Gazans aren’t leaving, despite the Israeli far right’s fantasies, and Israelis aren’t leaving, despite the Islamists’ fantasies, Dekel-Chen said.

It’s the simplest truth, but it carries extra weight when an Israeli Jew who lives a mile from Gaza says it: there are roughly seven million Jews and seven million Arabs between the river and the sea, and no one is going anywhere.

AbuMoussa said he is open to a confederation between Israelis and Palestinians, two states or “whatever.” But Oct. 7 proved the folly of believing the status quo, or just managing the conflict, will bring stability.

The way forward for now, both men said, is to push leaders to carry out the 20-point plan President Donald Trump put forward to help Gaza recover. They agreed that Washington still has the most leverage.

If Gazans had some sort of hope, AbuMoussa said, “I don’t think they will choose Hamas ever.”

Dekel-Chen said the insistence that Hamas fully disarm before any rebuilding “hurts us all.”

“Nothing positive will happen on our side of the border,” Dekel-Chen said, until most Gazans have hope in a post-Hamas future.

That is ultimately why both men decided to speak together — because they recognize what continuing the hatred costs.

“It’s the only way that I know how to honor those that I grieve, and the loss of life on both sides,” Dekel-Chen said.

It was a message, and a conversation that I wish Mamdani had heard in person. Instead, he spent the evening in Union Square, where anti-Israel protesters booed him for appearing with a group called Israelis for Peace.

To his credit, he showed up. But the same constituency the mayor seemed to court that morning turned on him that night, for standing beside actual Israelis calling for peace.

AbuMoussa and Dekel-Chen could have told him: You can stoke division or you can build a future. Choose the future.

 

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(JTA) — Democratic Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and GOP opponent Stacy Garrity faced off on Wednesday in a heated gubernatorial debate, clashing over most policy issues — with the notable exception of Israel.

“I want to recognize the anniversary of the Hamas attacks, where 1,200 innocent people were killed, including 49 Americans,” said Garrity, referring to the third anniversary of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

“I want to remember the lives that were stolen, the families that were changed forever, and the Americans that didn’t make it home,” she added.

While Garrity, Pennsylvania’s state treasurer, has the endorsement of President Donald Trump, Shapiro has a 25 percentage point lead in a poll released Wednesday. Both candidates won their primaries uncontested in May, and both have been outspoken against antisemitism.

Shapiro, who himself is Jewish, likewise recognized “the third anniversary of the October 7 massacre” at the debate. He recalled how “Hamas, a terrorist organization, broke into Israel and murdered 1,200 innocents, took over 250 hostage, including many Americans.”

“This is a moment where my heart stands with the people of Israel,” he said. “My heart stands with the Jewish community, who I know are grieving as a result of this.”

“This is a moment where we need to stand together against terrorism, against hate and against antisemitism,” the governor added.

Although the candidates shared similar perspectives on Israel during Wednesday’s debate, they clashed on numerous other topics, including the death penalty, voter identification, taxes and tariffs.

Asked by the debate moderator about the plunging support for Israel in the Democratic Party, Shapiro replied that he has “been very, very consistent” in both his “love of Israel” and his disagreements with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Shapiro then noted that Israelis will head to the polls in just a few weeks to choose their next leader. He expressed hope that they would not elect Netanyahu, whom he said “has led Israel down a very dangerous and isolated path.”

“I want America to have a strong relationship with Israel and with the Israeli government,” Shapiro added. “That’s not possible right now with the Netanyahu government in charge.”

Shapiro, one of the most prominent Jewish Democrats nationwide, was among the final candidates considered by Kamala Harris in her vice-presidential search in the 2024 election. He is also seen as a possible 2028 presidential hopeful.

But Shapiro has also faced the challenges posed by increasing antisemitism in America. During Harris’s search, for example, a website and social media feed labeled him “No Genocide Josh” over his support for Israel.

In April 2025, an arsonist set fire to Shapiro’s house just hours after his family had conducted a Passover seder. In 2018, while Shapiro was serving as Pennsylvania’s attorney general, a terrorist killed 11 people and injured six others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh..

Garrity, meanwhile, has more than tripled Pennsylvania’s investment in Israel bonds in her current role. She invested $20 million after the Oct. 7 attack and another $35 million in July 2025.

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(New York Jewish Week) — Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters on Wednesday night overran a vigil marking Oct. 7 attended by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.

The demonstrators swamped the area of Union Square Park that was supposed to host the event held by Israelis for Peace, a left-wing peace group. The organizers moved the vigil to a nearby spot in the park surrounded by police barricades as speakers struggled to be heard above the protesters. Attendees held electrically lit candles and signs reading, “Not one more life.”

Upon learning Mamdani was present, the pro-Palestinian protesters booed and broke into a chant of “Traitor!” and “Zohran, what do you say? How many boots did you lick today?”

The mayor stood solemnly throughout the event and did not speak at the vigil or address the protesters.

One protester yelled at Israelis for Peace organizers: “We don’t want peace with Israelis, bro! We sent your people to hell on October 7.” Other protesters wielded megaphones and drums while chanting anti-Israel slogans, including “Gaza will be liberated!” and “Israel is a terrorist state!”

Earlier in the evening, protesters were seen grabbing the electric candles intended for the vigil and mockingly singing the Jewish folk song “Hava Nagila.”

Another protester in the vigil area shouted out his disapproval of Mamdani: “He’s 100% Muslim but as of now, he stands as an ambassador of Zionism and U.S. imperialism.”

And someone else carried a poster depicting Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who helped mastermind the attacks on southern Israel that killed 1,200 people three years ago Wednesday.

Amid the cacophony, Brad Lander, the Jewish Democratic nominee running to represent parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn in Congress, took the microphone during the vigil to recite the words of the mother of a 20-year-old man who was murdered at the Nova music festival three years ago. He looked visibly shaken as the evening progressed, watching the protesters while speakers shared testimonies of people killed on Oct. 7.

Speakers also shared testimonies of Palestinians killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and the event included the group being led in a Muslim prayer. Many speakers referred to Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “genocide.”

The vigil ended with the participants raising their candles and reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish, the traditional Jewish prayer honoring the dead. As they filed out of the event, the protesters shouted “Death to the IDF!”

Lander told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that throughout the ceremony he felt “a deep and profound sadness for the testimony” of those lost, recalling that he’s met family members of some of the victims, both Jewish and Palestinian, whose stories were read.

“That level of heartbreak is a lot more than the level of having some people shouting,” he said. “The flattening of empathy is another sadness. And the fact that this is one of the few places where people even try to say Kaddish together and to mourn both Israeli lives lost on Oct. 7 and 75,000 Palestinian lives lost in Israel’s war since, is also sad. And that’s why it was important to do.”

Amichai Lau-Lavie, who leads New York’s Lab Shul and led the Mourner’s Kaddish, told JTA that “In the heat of these protest battles, there’s no room for nuance. It’s the slurs and the slogans. And what we saw here tonight was hatred that is coming from a good place of justice and freedom, but is not attuned to what we’re doing here.” He described that goal as one that acknowledges that both peoples’ futures are intertwined.

Lau-Lavie also praised the mayor for coming. “I can say I’m glad about the fact that the mayor was here and witnessed this animosity, and stood with us,” he noted. “For all his flaws, and there are many, I hope he got something.”

Despite the war of words, both gatherings disbanded peacefully. No arrests were made.

Amid the rival gatherings, Ross Glick, a New York pro-Israel activist and former executive director of Betar US, a far-right staunchly Zionist group, arrived with a group of counter-protesters holding Israeli flags. They were swiftly confronted by anti-Israel protesters, and the two sides got into a shouting match as they stood separated by a barrier.

The pro-Palestinian protesters had held a rally at City Hall, organized by Pal-Awda and various student groups, before heading to the location of the vigil. They condemned Israel and the United States for the war in Gaza, but also criticized Mamdani for capitulating “to Zionist pressure.” Some carried anti-Mamdani signs, including one that depicted Mamdani rolling out a red carpet for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The throng of protesters outside City Hall chanted “Free Palestine,” “Globalize the intifada,” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” and “Israel is a terrorist state.”

One protester held a sign reading “Operation Epstein Fury,” a play on Operation Epic Fury. Another held a sign that read “Liberation in action Oct. 7.” Nearby, an Israeli flag was held up with the text “Death cult” and an inverted red triangle — a Hamas symbol — atop the Star of David.

Earlier in the day, Jews in the city who marked Oct. 7 expressed fear about the political environment three years on from the attacks.

Toni Rabin, an 83-year-old Upper West Sider who lived in Israel in the 1970s, told JTA that she calls herself a progressive and has attended protests against President Donald Trump. But like many New York Jews, she gets unnerved by Mamdani.

“I’m burying my head in the sand a bit, because it’s a little too much for me to handle,” she admitted. She timed her arrival for her swim at the Marlene Meyerson JCC Manhattan to coincide with the commemoration of the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas in southern Israel.

“We should never forget,” she said. “We already have forgotten so much about the Holocaust, and there are very few people left who can speak about it anymore. They’re dying out. … So, we have to remember the horrific event that took place, the shock.”

She spoke over the sound of a cellist who performed for a small crowd in a lobby that was otherwise packed with small children having lunch with grownups. There was art on display by the Israeli artist Zeev Engelmayer from his “Strokes of Hope” exhibition.

Throughout the city on Wednesday, New Yorkers found themselves coping with the intense memories of learning about the 1,200 people, mostly Israelis but also foreign nationals, slain in Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the majority of them civilians. Meanwhile, Palestinian residents and their supporters mourned the more than 74,000 Palestinians killed in the ensuing Gaza war, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Health. The ministry doesn’t distinguish between civilian and combatant deaths.

Hours before arriving at the vigil, Mamdani posted a statement on X in which he paid tribute both to Israelis killed by Hamas attackers in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and to Palestinians killed in the Gaza war that followed.

His statement infuriated leaders in the mainstream Jewish community, who read his post as yet another vehicle for accusing the Israeli government of genocide and apartheid.

Wednesday “marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others,” the mayor said in his X post. “We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.”

He went on, however, to say that the Israeli government led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presided over an “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” saying that Israel “has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children.”

Mamdani continued, “Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.”

The city’s Jewish Community Relations Council was scathing in its response, saying that Mamdani “continues to fall short” of bringing New Yorkers together.

“It does not honor the dead to pit them against each other,” it said in its statement. “It is shameful. Today, Jewish New Yorkers across the five boroughs walked through metal detectors to drop off our children at preschool, thanked the police officers posted outside our synagogues for keeping us safe, tucked in our Jewish stars on the subway, and felt the gut punch of grief remembering the 1,200 innocent people who were slaughtered in their homes, in front of their families, and dancing at a music festival just because they were Jewish.”

Lander, favored to win his race for Congress next month, said on X ahead of the vigil that there was room to mourn the dead on all sides. “On this third anniversary of October 7th, a good start is to try to resist the flattening of empathy, to let ourselves weep for all the lives lost, the children killed, the families torn apart, the homes destroyed.”

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