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What to know about ‘Not On Our Dime,’ Zohran Mamdani’s bill targeting donations to Israeli settlements
In May 2023, a member of the New York State Assembly introduced a bill aimed at blocking nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank. It was swiftly rebuked by his colleagues and never came to a vote.
That bill was called “Not on our dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” and the assemblymember was democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani. Now, Mamdani is an emblem of shifting sentiments against Israel — among New Yorkers and Americans nationwide — as he verges on being elected the mayor of New York City.
While “Not On Our Dime” had a short run in Albany, its specter has loomed large over the mayor’s race, particularly for Jewish New Yorkers who are wary of Mamdani because of his attitudes about Israel. Over 1,150 rabbis nationwide, including hundreds in New York City, have signed a letter warning that Jews would be stripped of their “safety and dignity” if anti-Zionism is “normalized” in the city’s halls of power.
Mamdani told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in a questionnaire last week that he would prioritize his local affordability agenda as mayor. But he also did not reject the idea of enacting “Not On Our Dime”-style legislation in New York City.
“Charities and nonprofits that receive a taxpayer subsidy should not support the violation of international law, and that’s what the right-wing Israeli settlement project is doing,” said Mamdani. “An effort that goes against the stated foreign policy of our own government, going back several decades.”
Here is what “Not On Our Dime” actually said, what its supporters and critics argued, and what its implications could be for New York City under Mamdani.
What the legislation said
“Not On Our Dime” proposed amending the state’s nonprofit law to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.” Mamdani said it would stop the flow of about $60 million a year from New York-based charities to settlements deemed illegal under international law.
The bill defined “unauthorized support for Israeli settlement activity” as “aiding and abetting” any violation of the 1949 Geneva Conventions by Israel or its citizens. According to the bill, this included the illegal transfer of Israelis into “occupied territory” (defined as the West Bank and East Jerusalem), acts of violence against people living in occupied territory, forced eviction and the seizure or destruction of Palestinian land or property. Mamdani did not tell JTA whether he believed that “unauthorized support” should extend to humanitarian aid for Israelis in the relevant areas.
The bill said nonprofits that spent at least $1 million in violation could be sued, fined by the state attorney general and lose their tax-exempt status. Palestinians and others who said they were harmed by a violation would also be allowed to sue the nonprofits.
“Not On Our Dime” was co-sponsored by four other democratic socialists in the Assembly — Sarahana Shrestha, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Marcela Mitaynes and Emily Gallagher — along with the New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America. It emerged from a campaign from left-leaning nonprofits such as the Center for Constitutional Rights, the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the Adalah Justice Project and Jewish Voice for Peace.
The groups said on a website for the campaign that they believed nonprofits supporting Israeli settlements should be shut down. “This pioneering legislation makes explicit what is implicit–that a certain class of activities are fundamentally inconsistent with a charitable purpose, and should therefore subject an organization to dissolution,” the website said.
Mamdani told the Jewish Press, an Orthodox newspaper in New York, that he had met with those groups before proposing the legislation, which was accompanied by a state Senate version sponsored by DSA member Jabari Brisport. He also said he viewed the legislation as unlikely to prevail — but crucial to raising awareness about an important issue.
“I believe the attorney general has the jurisdiction now to pursue measures of accountability with regards to these organizations. The likelihood of that is minimal and I think that’s why there is the necessity for this legislation,” he told the newspaper at the time. “I’m under no illusion about the long journey that this legislation has to travel on. I do believe it is a critical first step to even inform New Yorkers.”
There was no precedent for a law that sought to block U.S. charities from funding Israeli settlements. Several states, including New York, have passed measures that took an opposite stance on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by punishing organizations that boycotted Israel.
Andrew Cuomo, Mamdani’s closest competitor in the mayoral race who is running as an independent, enacted one of these policies as the governor of New York. In 2016, he passed an executive order that banned state agencies from investing in companies and organizations that promoted or engaged in the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.
Mamdani has long supported that movement, which calls for government measures to pressure Israel into withdrawing from the West Bank and granting full equality to Palestinians.
What happened when it was introduced
The legislation sparked a surge of energy among pro-Palestinian activists, with over 500 people marching in support in New York City. In Albany, Mamdani announced the bill together with pro-Palestinian activists including Rosalind Petchesky, a retired political scientist who would later feature prominently in his mayoral campaign.
Petchesky, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, told the press that “Jews are not a monolith.” She added, “We do not all support the state of Israel, we are not all Zionists, many take the position of supporting Palestinians and Palestinian human rights.”
But in the state government, backlash was quick. Democratic Assemblymembers Nily Rozic and Daniel Rosenthal — who are both Jewish, with Rosenthal since leaving for a position at UJA-Federation of New York — denounced “Not On Our Dime” in an open letter signed by 25 lawmakers. They said the bill was “a ploy to demonize Jewish charities with connections to Israel” that would “further sow divisions within the Democratic Party.”
Their letter did not mention Israeli settlements, but said that “Not On Our Dime” sought to attack Jewish groups with “missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans.”
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie told the Forward the bill was a “non-starter,” and it did not advance. (Two years later, Heastie endorsed Mamdani for mayor in September.)
Meanwhile, all 48 Assembly Republicans denounced the bill as “utterly vicious” in their own joint letter. “This bill seeks to penalize non-profit entities that have any affiliation with the state of Israel and is effectively an attack on Jews and Israel,” they wrote. “As Americans, we find this bill to be not only discriminatory but also deeply anti-Semitic.”
What the bill’s advocates said
Supporters of the legislation said it would cut off a major source of funding for organizations that push Palestinians out of their homes and support violent extremists. Between 2009 and 2013, private donors sent over $220 million to West Bank settlements through about 50 tax-exempt nonprofits, according to a 2015 investigation by Haaretz.
“Aiding and abetting war crimes is not charitable, period,” said Vince Warren, director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which backed the bill, in 2023. “This bill goes a long way toward ensuring that New York is not inadvertently subsidizing war crimes, but rather creating paths for accountability.”
Mamdani and other advocates rejected the idea that the bill would constrain appropriate charitable work. “Organizations, including Jewish organizations that feed the poor, provide emergency medical care and clothe orphans take up noble causes for which New York state should provide the benefits of charitable status,” he told the Jewish Press at the time. “This is why the bill does not apply to such groups. The rhetorical tactics employed by this letter to suggest otherwise is an attempt to avoid the issue at hand: settlements.”
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Mamdani and his co-sponsors relaunched “Not On Our Dime” in May 2024 as Israel and Hamas battled in Gaza, saying they would revise the bill to prohibit “aiding and abetting” Israeli resettlement of Gaza and “unauthorized support” for Israeli military actions that broke international law. Mamdani said he believed the bill had a better chance then, as it reflected “newfound consciousness in our country with regards to the urgency of Palestinian human rights.”
In fact, “Not On Our Dime” had no better prospects in Albany — but it gained traction on the national stage. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the progressive star who represents the Bronx and Queens but rarely steps into state politics, gave the bill her endorsement.
“It is more important now than ever to hold the Netanyahu government accountable for endorsing and, in fact, supporting some of this settler violence that prevents a lasting peace,” said Ocasio-Cortez at the time. Her backing, a year before she would endorse Mamdani for mayor, signaled the rising crescendo of a left wing animated by criticism of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.
What the bill’s critics said
Critics said the bill would punish Jewish organizations that provide a range of humanitarian services internationally, including to people living in East Jerusalem and the West Bank.
Sara Forman, who leads the pro-Israel group New York Solidarity Network, called it “antisemitic and unconstitutional state-level nonsensical legislation.”
“This bogus bill, which is extremely vague, would force Jewish charities to quadruple check every penny and every cause related to Israel, tie up their time, cast suspicion on all their work, and stifle critical dollars dedicated to meaningful causes in Israel and the United States, from education to anti-poverty efforts,” Forman said in 2024.
Even some people who partly share Mamdani’s critique of the settlement movement and the Israeli government said the bill went too far.
Rabbi Jill Jacobs, head of the rabbinic human rights organization T’ruah, has herself attempted to block U.S. funding to the most violent Israeli settler groups. Since 2016, T’ruah has filed complaints with the IRS about nonprofits like the Central Fund of Israel, which funnels millions in tax-exempt donations to Israeli groups that fund militant Jewish supremacists. T’ruah’s reasoning was that leaders of these extremist organizations have been indicted or convicted of terrorism in Israel, and U.S. law prohibits sending tax-exempt donations to terrorist groups.
Mamdani specifically mentioned the Manhattan-based Central Fund of Israel during his 2023 press circuit for “Not On Our Dime.” But Jacobs opposed the bill, even as her own efforts failed to stop the flow of money to extremist groups. She said it was too broad, allowing for the possibility of targeting nonprofits beyond terrorists and groups directly involved in building settlements.
“Because of the vagueness of the language, it could potentially be construed to relate to any nonprofit that is putting the baseline of $1 million into settlements,” Jacobs said in an interview. “It could include a group that’s doing support for victims of terror, and a large percentage of them might be living over the Green Line. It could be construed to include American Friends of Hebrew University, because that’s in East Jerusalem.”
In criticizing the legislation, Jacobs referenced the Talmudic idiom “tafasta meruba lo tafasta” — or, “if you grasped too much, you did not grasp anything.”
What “Not On Our Dime” means for a Mayor Mamdani
New York City mayors have long endeavored to show support for Israel, dating back even before it became a state in 1948. In 1923, Mayor John Hylan called on New Yorkers to contribute “generous support” to a fund for building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Then as now, the city had the largest Jewish population in the world.
But this year, the mayor’s race overlapped with a war that sent opinions of Israel in the United States plunging to new lows, with images of dying Palestinian children and destruction spreading across social media and protesters, including many American Jews and New Yorkers, rallying against Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
Mamdani surged in that context, winning the Democratic mayoral nomination and rocketing to fame at the same time as Israel drew its sharpest and most widespread criticism. The timing was right for Mamdani, who is 34 and formed his political identity as a young man around a cause that had never before found a champion in Gracie Mansion: Palestinian rights and independence.
He has pledged to take some actions locally to advance those views, including arresting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if the Israeli leader sets foot in New York City, not investing the city’s pension funds in Israel bonds and dismantling a New York-Israel economic cooperation initiative.
Mamdani has not said he would propose legislation comparable to “Not On Our Dime” as mayor. Still, some New Yorkers concerned about his stances on Israel are asking if he would attempt a city-level version of the bill — and how that would affect their lives.
In August, a caller to WNYC’s “Brian Lehrer Show” asked whether such legislation would penalize their synagogue for donating to Jewish emergency response groups that operate globally, including in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. In an on-air interview, Lehrer relayed this question to Mamdani, who brushed off the concern.
Jacobs said that outcome would be unlikely under the legislation as it was written, given its $1 million threshold.
“I guess if there were a synagogue that was raising $1 million for a settlement, then if this bill had passed, maybe it would say that synagogue couldn’t do that. But I don’t know if that is a situation that actually exists,” she said.
Jeremy Cohan, a leader in the New York City chapter of Democratic Socialists of America, is part of the Jewish left that has strengthened Mamdani’s rise. In his own interview with Lehrer in October, Cohan articulated his understanding of “Not On Our Dime” and why he believed it would resonate with New York City voters.
“The ‘Not On Our Dime’ bill was designed to say, ‘Hey, if you’re committing violations of international law, if you’re funneling money to organizations that are committing violations of international law, that are aiming to dispossess people of their land illegally, that are complicit in war crimes, we are going to not subsidize that as New York State. New York State stands for something. We don’t stand for war crimes,’” he said.
“I do think that so much of the choice, or a decent part of the choice, facing New Yorkers is, do New Yorkers want a mayor who takes war crimes seriously, or do they want a mayor like Andrew Cuomo who defends war crimes and genocide,” Cohan continued. “I think they want a mayor who opposes war crimes and prioritizes their interests, which Zohran Mamdani will do.”
“Not On Our Dime” shows Mamdani is a politician with a track record of taking action on his beliefs, whether or not he believes he will quickly effect change. And in his victory speech after the Democratic primary, he identified himself as one of “millions of New Yorkers who have strong feelings about what happens overseas.”
He acknowledged that many in the city disagreed with his ideas and said he would seek to understand their perspectives. But in a sign of how he would hold to his views of Israel and Palestine as the mayor of New York City, he said, “I will not abandon my beliefs or my commitments grounded in a demand for equality, for humanity, for all those who walk this earth.”
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The post What to know about ‘Not On Our Dime,’ Zohran Mamdani’s bill targeting donations to Israeli settlements appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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In the depths of Tel Aviv’s bus station, a fragile refuge for those with nowhere else to go during war
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — Two floors underground, past dumpsters and oil-laden puddles, through a reinforced Cold War-era door, a bomb shelter is buried underneath Tel Aviv’s Central Bus Station.
Built in 1993 to accommodate more than 16,000 Israelis, the shelter found a new life during the Israel-Iran war as a public refuge for residents of Neve Shaanan, among Tel Aviv’s most diverse neighborhoods and one of its poorest, home mainly to asylum seekers and foreign workers.
With few other options for public shelters in south Tel Aviv, residents pitched tents in the squalor of a space that had fallen into disrepair — with pipes dripping and rats scurrying — for more than 38 days as Israel and Iran exchanged missile fire until a ceasefire that began on April 8 halted the fighting.
“It’s very difficult. Not just because of the war, but because of the conditions we’re living in,” Gloria Arca, who took refuge inside the shelter with her son, Noam, said in Spanish during an interview in April. “We’re protected from the missiles, but inside we’re not safe.”
For many Israelis, the bus station occupies a space that balances between nostalgia and revulsion. Until 2018, the station was a main node for travel into and out of Tel Aviv. Since then, ridership has dropped, and now the hulking structure is seen as little more than an eyesore. During Israel’s 12-day war with Iran last year, a short video by Israeli comedians went viral for sharing the station’s GPS coordinates in a video that jokingly urged Iran, “Please don’t bomb this bus station.”
Yet the station also offers a concrete window into Israel’s widening reliance on foreign workers, which has surged in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.
When there is no war on, the shelter functions as a community center, complete with a Filipino church, a refugee health clinic, and retailers catering to customers in more than a dozen languages.
During wartime, the station takes on a new and vitally important role as a shelter for those who have none in their homes or neighborhoods, no family in the country whose homes they can flee to and little ability to pay for temporary accommodations somewhere safer.
Arca, who came to Israel more than two decades ago from Colombia and is in the country legally, knew that it would take her and Noam more than 10 minutes to get to a shelter from their home — longer than Israel’s advanced missile warning system allows. So they decided to move into the bus station, pitching a tent alongside some of their neighbors.
Depending on the day, more than 200 residents spent their nights in the shelter during the war, according to Sigal Rozen, public policy coordinator at the Hotline for Refugees and Migrants.
“It’s not easy, especially with young children and families with special needs,” she said. “You can’t get up in the middle of the night and just run.”
The Hotline, with funding from the Tel Aviv Municipality, worked to improve conditions in the shelter, but the starting point was dire. During a visit in April, rats could be seen scurrying across newly installed artificial turf meant to brighten the space, and mosquitoes landed on visitors’ ankles before being chased off.
More than anything, Arca worries about safety in the shelter — but not from the war. “We’re protected from the missiles, but inside, we’re not safe,” she said. “Security is there, but they don’t do their job. Drug users come in and use the bathrooms. There are many children here, and we’re afraid.”
The challenging conditions were nothing new to many of the people who moved in, who represent an often unseen but growing sector of workers in Israel.
The category of “foreign worker,” a term used in Israel to describe non-citizen laborers, most of them from countries such as the Philippines, India, and Thailand, who enter the country on temporary work visas tied to a specific employer, has long been a fraught designation.
Dominant in some industries, such as home health care, where there are so many foreign workers that the role is known as “filipina” in Hebrew, foreign workers have taken on greater shares of other sectors in recent years, particularly after Israel banned Palestinian workers from Gaza and the West Bank after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack. With Israelis increasingly reluctant to take low-paying manual labor jobs, the Israeli government has moved to fill the gap by permitting employers to hire more foreign workers.
Israel’s foreign worker population rose by 41% in 2024 alone to more than 156,000. By 2025, the total had reached 227,044. It is expected to grow even more in the coming years, as the government has set a ceiling of 300,000 workers.
For many Israelis, footage that circulated after the ceasefire showing long lines of foreign workers arriving at newly reopened government offices to renew their visas offered a stark illustration of the growing sector.
It is not uncommon around the world for people from impoverished countries to migrate to countries with more work and higher pay. For the workers, occupying a tenuous legal status can be worth it to be able to support their families, send their children to stronger schools and earn wages on a different scale than in their home countries.
Evelyn, a Filipina caregiver sheltering with her three children beneath the Central Bus Station, declined to give her last name out of fear of deportation. “In Israel, I can earn 10 times what I do in the Philippines. So I have money to send back to my family — not just taking care of my kids here, but my parents in Manila.”
But advocates for the workers say foreign worker status, and Israel’s increasing reliance on foreign workers, creates conditions that are ripe for abuse. Ohad Amar, executive director of Kav LaOved, a nonprofit that works to uphold equal labor rights for all workers in Israel, said the workers are “enduring conditions akin to modern slavery.”
Many foreign worker visas in Israel are tied to a specific employer and are non-transferable. Kav LaOved has documented numerous cases of delayed or unpaid wages, as well as workers who feel pressured to remain silent about abuse from their employers lest they lose their immigration status.
“Israel had not relied on migrant workers in the same way before. This is the first time at this scale,” Amar said. “Every day we are getting reports of workers’ rights violations, and we are completely overwhelmed.”
During wartime, foreign workers are frequently exposed to Israel’s unique dangers in extreme ways. On Oct. 7, as sirens blared, foreign workers were slaughtered in the fields of kibbutzes near Gaza. During the most recent war, videos circulated online of construction workers from China who filmed themselves stranded high in the air during missile barrages, afraid and without protection.
The first death in the latest round of fighting with Iran was Mary Anne Velasquez de Vera, a foreign worker in Israel from the Philippines. At the end of March, two other foreign workers were killed by a Hezbollah rocket while working in a field in northern Israel after they were unable to reach shelter.
Feeling physically vulnerable is an experience many foreign workers in Israel know well. Evelyn, a migrant from the Philippines who slept in the bus station with her children during the war, described how, in an industry as intimate as caregiving, working with elderly people who struggle to make it to a shelter, workers can feel pressured to stay in the building during an attack.
“They can’t exactly tell their employer they left grandma in the building during a missile attack, because they’ll get fired and lose their visa,” Amar said.
Some of the risks are much less visible. Evelyn was out of work as a housekeeper for the duration of the war, when her employer, an elderly woman, left the country. She lived on donations from community members and civil society organizations.
“Here is still better than back home,” she said. “But we are all struggling, and not just because of the shelter. If I can’t start working soon, I really don’t know what I will do.”
Workers like Evelyn who lack work visas must rely on informal employment, making them ineligible for compensation from Bituach Leumi, Israel’s national workers’ insurance, when they go unpaid. But having a visa did not solve the challenges of war, Rozen said.
The threat of losing their visa if they lose their employment hangs over the heads of the workers, forcing them into difficult decisions, like whether to leave their children with volunteers at the shelter or alone at home.
“Even those who still have work face a problem. If a single mother has children and there’s no school, where does she leave them? She can’t bring them along when there’s an alarm,” Rozen said. “So even when work exists, many can’t do it.”
She said the war had offered a glimpse into the as-yet-unaddressed challenges that come along with Israel’s increasing reliance on importing labor from abroad. The country’s labor market didn’t come to a standstill, as was the case in other countries in the region such as the United Arab Emirates where the vast majority of workers are migrants who tried to leave, but for Rozen, something new and troubling was laid bare.
“If you don’t want foreigners here, then don’t recruit them,” Rozen said. “But you can’t recruit them, triple their numbers, and then expect them to disappear when there’s a war.”
The post In the depths of Tel Aviv’s bus station, a fragile refuge for those with nowhere else to go during war appeared first on The Forward.
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Nearly half of young Americans view US relationship with Israel as a burden, survey finds
(JTA) — Nearly half of young Americans, 46%, believe that the United States’ relationship with Israel is mostly a burden to the United States, according to a new survey from the Institute of Politics at the Harvard Kennedy School.
The Harvard Youth Poll, which polled 2,018 Americans aged 18 to 29, found that just 16% of those surveyed described the U.S. relationship with Israel as mostly a benefit.
Respondents were asked about their view of other U.S. alliances, including Canada, which 53% saw as beneficial, and Ukraine, which 21% saw as beneficial. Israel received the lowest perceived benefit of any country tested.
The survey also found that 55% of young Americans believe the U.S. military action in Iran is not in the best interest of the American people.
It comes as attitudes about Israel among young Americans in recent years have grown sharply negative. Earlier this month, a Pew Research Center survey found that 70% of Americans aged 18 to 49 held a somewhat or very negative opinion of Israel. That view was split among partisan lines, with 84% of Democrats in that demographic holding a negative view of Israel, compared to 57% of Republicans.
The Harvard survey was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs between March 26 and April 3 and had a margin of error of 2.74 percentage points.
The post Nearly half of young Americans view US relationship with Israel as a burden, survey finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Long Island father and teen son arrested after investigation into swastika drawn in school bathroom
(JTA) — A father and his teenage son were arrested Wednesday after an investigation into swastika graffiti at the teen’s school led police to search their home, where authorities said they found chemicals used to make explosives.
The arrests stemmed from an investigation into swastika graffiti found in a boys’ bathroom at Syosset High School on Long Island. After police determined that a 15-year-old student had drawn the swastika, the Nassau County Police Department sent officers to his home.
There, the teen told the officers about the explosive materials, according to prosecutors. He said his father had purchased the chemicals for him to build rockets.
During the subsequent search of the home, police found “highly unstable” materials that had been combined to make explosives, including nitroglycerin, multiple acids, oxidizers and fuels. They began to evacuate people in adjacent homes, fearing an explosion.
The teen was not identified by police due to his age. Francisco Sanles, 48, who was arrested at the scene, has pleaded not guilty to seven criminal counts, including criminal possession of a weapon and endangering the welfare of a child. His son was charged with five counts, including criminal possession of a weapon, criminal mischief, aggravated harassment and making graffiti.
Swastika graffiti is relatively commonplace in schools, with the Anti-Defamation League reporting over 400 incidents in 2024: Syosset High School itself was hit by a spate of antisemitic graffiti, including swastikas, in 2017. But it is relatively rare that incidents result in arrests.
In an email to the school district Wednesday night, the Syosset School District — which enrolls a large number of Jewish students — said its investigation had identified the student for the police, and he would face “serious consequences pursuant to the District’s Code of Conduct.”
“Antisemitism and hate speech have no place in our communities or in our schools,” the district said. “Syosset has long been proud of being a welcoming, empathetic, and inclusive community and those values remain firm. We protect those values and this community by confronting and holding accountable those who traffic in any form of hate.”
In January, New York City Police arrested and charged two 15-year-old boys suspected of spraying dozens of swastikas on a playground in a heavily Jewish Brooklyn neighborhood with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as a hate crime.
The post Long Island father and teen son arrested after investigation into swastika drawn in school bathroom appeared first on The Forward.