Mayor Zohran Mamdani arrived at a New York City park on Wednesday night that was supposed to hold a vigil for Oct. 7 but was overrun by a hundreds of Pro-Palestinian protesters.
Israelis for Peace, a left-wing peace group, was scheduled to host the vigil in Union Square Park before the protesters swamped the area.
Upon learning Mamdani was present, protesters broke into a chant of “Traitor!” and “Zohran, what do you say? How many boots did you lick today?”
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.”
Amid the cacophony, Brad Lander, the Democratic nominee running to represent parts of Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn in Congress, took a microphone to recite the words of the mother of a 20-year-old man who was murdered at the Nova music festival three years ago.
Before he started speaking, protesters were seen grabbing electrically lit candles intended for the vigil and mockingly singing the ubiquitous 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.”
Amid crowds chanting, “Gaza will be liberated,” another protester 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 today.
Amid the rival gatherings, Ross Glick, a New York pro-Israel activist and former executive director of Betar US, a militant Zionist group, arrived with a group of counter-protesters holding Israeli flags. They were swiftly confronted by anti-Israel protesters.
The pro-Palestinian protesters had held a rally at City Hall 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.”
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.”
Earlier in the day, Jews in the city who marked Oct. 7 expressed fear about the environment following the attacks three years on.
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, 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 rally, 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 to criticize 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.”
This is a developing story.
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