Shockwaves from the Tisha B\u2019Av stabbings on the Upper West Side reverberated through New York\u2019s Jewish and Democratic party elected leadership on Friday, as some blamed New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani\u2019s invective against Israel, while others called more broadly to turn down the temperature on the rhetoric in the city.<\/p>\n
Thursday afternoon, a man allegedly shouting \u201cAllahu Akbar\u201d stabbed first an Asian American and then a Jewish man<\/a> near Central Park, a short walk from the second victim\u2019s synagogue. Police quickly captured a suspect, and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch<\/a> reported that her department was investigating the attack as a potential hate crime, though she noted that \u201cmental health may have been a factor.\u201d Both victims are in stable condition.<\/p>\n Several politicians, including New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin and New York state Attorney General Letitia James offered sympathy to the Jewish community\u2019s fears of a heightened threat environment but took time at a press conference outside the Modern Orthodox Jewish Center \u2014 which the second victim had just left \u2014 to emphasize the police chief\u2019s statement that a probe into the attacker\u2019s motives remains ongoing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Others, meanwhile, took square aim at inflammatory \u201crhetoric,\u201d though did not say whose rhetoric they meant. The Upper West Side stabbings followed a wave of warnings<\/a> from Jewish groups that the mayor\u2019s intense, relentless focus on verbally assailing Israel might provoke violence on the streets of New York.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no New York without us. We feel disregarded and disrespected and targeted through hateful rhetoric directed at us, and are undeniably being disproportionately targeted again and again and again,\u201d said New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, drawing a parallel between the holiday\u2019s commemoration of the destruction of the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem and the spike in antisemitic hate crimes in the Big Apple since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe are demanding that the targeting of the Jewish community, that the singling out of the Jewish community, that the endless demonization of this community stop.\u201d<\/p>\n New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams highlighted that the potential mental illness of the alleged perpetrator, Raul Morales, did not preclude his having acted out of hate, or having been influenced by the language of elected leaders. But he, too, declined to mention the mayor by name.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen people watch the news, when people listen, they hear what we\u2019re saying. And even if you are unfortunately dealing with mental health issues, you too hear what people are saying,\u201d said Williams, the first in the line of succession to Mamdani. \u201cAnd so I\u2019m just asking all of us, me included, we all have to take stock of what we\u2019re saying and how we\u2019re saying it so we don\u2019t feed what is already in the atmosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the officials who participated in the Jewish Center press conference, only Assemblymember Micah Lasher \u2014 who won a primary<\/a> last month to succeed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-NY) as congressional representative for the Upper West Side \u2014 openly called out Mamdani.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen a place, and by extension the people who are inextricably linked with that place, are singled out, compared to the worst evildoers in human history, blamed for problems half a world away, the space between rhetoric and violence can vanish,\u201d warned Lasher, who endorsed Mamdani in last year\u2019s general election and worked with<\/a> one of his closest political aides.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI beseech all those in a position of power, including our mayor, to hear our cry from the heart, to please help take the temperature down and provide leadership that makes every New Yorker feel safe in this glorious city.\u201d<\/p>\n Jewish religious and community leaders took a much stronger line, openly pointing to the widely viewed video Mamdani released earlier this week<\/a> attacking Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as the \u201carchitect of a horrific genocide,\u201d and a mass killer and maimer of children.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I was growing up, the only time we saw security outside of my synagogue or outside of my Jewish day school was when the mayor came to speak,\u201d said The Jewish Center\u2019s Rabbi Yosie Levine. \u201cToday, every time the mayor speaks, we need the police to protect us.\u201d<\/p>\n Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, also recalled how Mamdani named AIPAC \u2014 and AIPAC alone \u2014 when telling supporters<\/a> they must battle \u201cmonsters.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen the mayor of New York repeatedly uses his platform to relentlessly single out and demonize Israel, the world\u2019s only Jewish state, and calls those who support it monsters, he contributes to a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers are increasingly targeted and unsafe,\u201d said Goldstein, himself an Upper West Side resident. \u201cMayor Mandani, stop fanning the flames of hatred and division. The consequences are not abstract. They\u2019re playing out on our streets.\u201d<\/p>\n Other Democrats, including Rep. Ritchie Torres<\/a> (D-NY) and outgoing Rep. Dan Goldman<\/a> (D-NY), openly linked the attack to diatribes against Israel, though without specifically calling out Mamdani. Assemblymember Nily Rozic alluded to Mamdani\u2019s refusal<\/a> to fully distance himself from and denounce the slogan \u201cglobalize the intifada,\u201d which many recognize as a call to reignite the campaigns of Palestinian terrorism carried out under the same name.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you can\u2019t fully condemn calls to \u2018globalize the intifada,\u2019 you should be prepared to confront the normalizing of that rhetoric. Words inflame, embolden, and lead to violence against Jewish communities,\u201d the Jewish Queens politician wrote on X<\/a>. \u201cLeaders must reject hate \u2014 clearly, consistently, & without qualification.\u201d<\/p>\n However, state Sen. Sam Sutton, a longtime leader in Brooklyn\u2019s Syrian Jewish community, openly pointed blame at Mamdani for having \u201cnormalized\u201d violence against Jews.<\/p>\n