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In appearance with Elisha Wiesel, Cuomo escalates ‘antisemitism’ attack on Mamdani
This piece first ran as part of The Countdown, our daily newsletter rounding up all the developments in the New York City mayor’s race. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. There are 14 days — two weeks — to the election.
Cuomo on the attack
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Andrew Cuomo sharpened his personal attacks on Zohran Mamdani at an event on the Upper West Side on Monday. He called the frontrunner “a candidate who runs based on his antisemitic stance,” according to Politico.
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Cuomo has accused Mamdani of “fueling antisemitism” throughout the race, but previously stopped short of saying Mamdani himself was antisemitic. He usually says that accusation requires “the ability to look into someone’s soul.” Asked during last week’s mayoral debate, he said, “I don’t make those judgments about people.”
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That changed at the Monday event hosted by Elisha Wiesel, the son of Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel. Elisha Wiesel followed the event with an essay in the Wall Street Journal today.
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Cuomo referenced Elie Wiesel’s quote that the opposite of love is indifference, saying that “indifference is the enemy today.” He suggested the city was dangerously indifferent to Mamdani, saying, “I am more distressed at the complacency than his arrogance and his antisemitism.”
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In response, Mamdani’s campaign spokesperson Dora Pekec said, “Zohran will be a mayor who stands with Jewish New Yorkers, not one who tries to weaponize their pain for craven political gain.”
Jewish classmate remembers Mamdani
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Daniel Kisslinger, a Jewish friend of Mamdani’s from Bronx Science, recalled Mamdani’s energy around extracurriculars — including his operation to create their high school’s first cricket team — in an interview with The New York Times.
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“He was the person who had the interest and the curiosity to try to understand outside of his bubble,” Kisslinger said. He previously interviewed Mamdani in a 2016 podcast about Bronx Science.
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Kisslinger, now a Chicago-based podcast host and producer, described his relationship with Jewishness on the podcast “One Million Experiments” in 2022.
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“The working definitions [of being a Jew] are shaped by and supportive of white supremacy in ways that one, are violent to others, but also we’re destroying the Jewish community from the inside out,” Kisslinger said in the podcast.
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Kisslinger also interviewed Rabbi Brant Rosen, founder of the anti-Zionist synagogue Tzedek Chicago, in 2024. Kisslinger is a member of the congregation.
Numbers to know
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A new poll from AARP and Gotham Polling & Analytics found Mamdani leading the race with 43.2% support, followed by Cuomo with 28.9% and Curtis Sliwa with 19.4%.
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But in a two-way race between Mamdani and Cuomo, Mamdani’s lead shrank to 44.6% against Cuomo’s 40.7%, according to the survey. That 3.9% lead falls within the poll’s margin of error.
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The poll was conducted between Oct. 14-15 among 1,040 likely voters. Voters who identified as Jewish made up 11% of the poll sample.
Sliwa’s boss urges him to drop out
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The latest voice calling for Sliwa to quit the race hit close to home. It came from John Catsimatidis, a Republican billionaire, supermarket magnate and Sliwa’s longtime friend and boss at the WABC radio station.
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Catsimatidis said that Sliwa should drop out to stop Mamdani from becoming mayor.
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“I love Curtis, we’ve worked together a lot,” he said on WABC, where Sliwa hosts a show. He added, “Curtis has to realize that he should love New York more than anything else, and it certainly looks like Curtis should pull out right now.”
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Sliwa has rebuffed mounting pressure from Cuomo and New York’s wealthy elite. His rebuke of billionaires like Bill Ackman, who also called on him to quit, temporarily made Sliwa strange bedfellows with Mamdani.
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Mamdani praised a video of Sliwa’s response to Ackman in a post on X. “It’s genuinely positive for our democracy that there’s another candidate in this race who believes NYC voters should pick their next mayor, not billionaires who mostly live somewhere else,” said Mamdani.
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The post In appearance with Elisha Wiesel, Cuomo escalates ‘antisemitism’ attack on Mamdani appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.