FOREST HILLS, Queens (WABC) — New Yorkers who support Zohran Mamdani were celebrating his victory as the city’s first Muslim mayor Wednesday night in Downtown Brooklyn, but less than a few hours later in that same borough, antisemitism was rearing its ugly head.
A yeshiva in Gravesend was marked with swastikas splattered in red paint. It’s now covered by Israeli flags.
A gate beside a nearby Jewish cemetery was vandalized as well.
“I take the issue of antisemitism incredibly seriously,” Mamdani said on Wednesday morning.
But the reality is, there are serious concerns about the track record of the mayor elect in the city’s Jewish communities, from Brooklyn to Queens, and to the high-profile synagogues of Manhattan.
“The only thing I care about is keeping Jewish New Yorkers safe. Anyone who gets in the way of that, we will come at them with everything we’ve got,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.
The Anti-Defamation League is pledging to monitor Mamdani’s every appointment and action, given what they call his failures to condemn antisemitic rhetoric, and questions over whether the state of Israel will be recognized at City Hall.
Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the renowned Park Avenue Synagogue shared those concerns last month in the weeks leading up to this point.
“To accept me as a Jew, but to ask me to check my concern for the people in the state of Israel at the door is a nonsensical proposition, and an offensive one,” Cosgrove said on October 19.
On Wednesday, there were concerns on the street in the Jewish community in Forest Hills from the more extreme.
“It’s a bad situation. I’m not happy that he won. He’s not a Democrat, he’s a socialist,” said Forest Hills voter Stan Kaplan.
There are also those hoping the young, optimist with a big job ahead can also evolve.
“He will have no choice but to a mayor for everyone, and sometimes when you get into your job you understand what it really is,” one woman said.
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