Some top New York Jewish Democrats are defending New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called him an \u201cantisemite\u201d and said he is \u201cbuddies\u201d with Hamas.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s speech at the United Nations General Assembly on Thursday, and the outsized role Mamdani played in it, were the culmination of escalating criticism of Mamdani from Israeli officials in recent weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mamdani is an avowed anti-Zionist who during his campaign to be the mayor had pledged to arrest Netanyahu. Over the summer, he conceded he didn\u2019t have the power to do so, though he criticized the Israeli government over Gaza in the run-up to the prime minister\u2019s visit.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But while his full-throated criticism of Israel has alarmed some local Jewish officials, many felt that Netanyahu\u2019s attacks on Thursday from the U.N. plenum went too far.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s scurrilous to suggest that the mayor voices support for Hamas,\u201d Manhattan Borough President Brad Hoylman-Sigal, who is Jewish, said Friday in an interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.<\/p>\n
City Council Speaker Julie Menin, also a Jewish Democrat, has opposed Mamdani on some legislation related to protests outside houses of worship \u2014 a sensitive issue in the wake of protesters picketing outside synagogues that were holding Israeli real estate events. Menin said in a press conference on Thursday that Netanyahu\u2019s remarks were \u201cnot helpful at all\u201d because \u201cwe need to turn the temperature down.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThis idea of what the prime minister said can really incite violence. We cannot have this,\u201d Menin said.<\/p>\n
Mamdani, an outspoken pro-Palestinian advocate, has condemned Hamas as \u201ca terrorist organization\u201d and has denounced antisemitic hate crimes committed in New York.<\/p>\n
The mayor responded with a statement of his own, saying that Netanyahu \u201cused his speech to repeat baseless lies meant to sanitize his genocide of Palestinians.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYet no lie can change the fact that he remains the subject of an International Criminal Court arrest warrant alleging war crimes and crimes against humanity,\u201d Mamdani said. The United States is not a party to the ICC and has no obligation to carry out its warrants on U.S. soil.<\/p>\n
Netanyahu\u2019s remarks at the U.N. General Assembly came amid a reelection campaign in which Netanyahu\u2019s Likud Party has made Mamdani a villain<\/a>. Hoylman-Sigal called Thursday\u2019s speech a \u201cpolitical ploy\u201d and a \u201cdeflection by someone who has a lot of domestic turmoil, political and otherwise.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cClearly, Netanyahu is fighting for his political life,\u201d Hoylman-Sigal said.<\/p>\n Netanyahu\u2019s arrival in New York sparked a wave of demonstrations<\/a> in Manhattan on Thursday, including multiple organized by Israeli expatriate groups who emphasized the Oct. 27 Israeli election date. Rallygoers chanted \u201cVote him out!\u201d at a protest held by the Israeli anti-Netanyahu group UnXeptable.<\/p>\n Even before his visit, Gov. Kathy Hochul<\/a> pushed back on comments Netanyahu had made. Calling Mamdani a \u201csupporter of the Hamas monsters\u201d was false and \u201churt his own credibility,\u201d Hochul said in an interview with the radio station WNYC earlier this week.<\/p>\n Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, which is supportive of Netanyahu and has been harshly critical of Mamdani, called Netanyahu\u2019s remarks \u201cChurchillian\u201d and his \u201cgreatest speech.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cImportantly, he also called out Mamdani as a dangerous antisemite who has endangered Jews in New York City,\u201d Klein said in a statement.<\/p>\n The U.N. speech came as Israeli officials have escalated their rhetoric against Mamdani.<\/p>\n Last month, Ofir Akunis, the Israeli consul general in New York, compared Mamdani\u2019s support for the boycott Israel movement to Nazi Germany<\/a>. A Mamdani spokesperson told JTA the comparison was \u201coffensive, completely unhinged and detached from reality,\u201d and said Akunis \u201cshould be ashamed of himself.\u201d<\/p>\n The statement was Mamdani\u2019s first time weighing in on the Israeli consul general, who had accused Mamdani of being directly responsible for anti-Jewish hate crimes in the city.\u00a0<\/p>\n Republican City Council member Inna Vernikov, who is Jewish and a staunch Mamdani critic, took issue with the mayor\u2019s response.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen Mamdani cleans his own house, then he can criticize Jewish leaders,\u201d said Vernikov, pointing to Mamdani\u2019s wife\u2019s anti-Israel views and his vetoing of a bill on protests around schools.<\/p>\n Brad Lander, the Jewish progressive and Democratic nominee for New York\u2019s 10th congressional district, blasted both Akunis\u2019 and Netanyahu\u2019s attacks on Mamdani.<\/p>\n \u201cNetanyahu and Akunis are cynically weaponizing accusations of antisemitism for their own narrow, selfish political purposes,\u201d said Lander, one of Mamdani\u2019s most prominent Jewish allies, in a statement to JTA. \u201cThey are making Israelis, American Jews, Palestinians, and the whole world less safe.\u201d<\/p>\n Lander himself was the recipient of a Nazi Germany comparison when Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for New York governor, said that Lander \u201cwould be a camp guard<\/a> in the concentration camp if he could.\u201d<\/p>\n Hoylman-Sigal called the comparisons \u201coutrageous,\u201d and said that he is more worried about a rise in far-right parties, including Germany\u2019s AfD.<\/p>\n \u201cWe should be very careful, no matter what our background is, to draw such extreme comparisons,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Phylisa Wisdom, who heads Mamdani\u2019s office to combat antisemitism, told JTA that it is \u201cappalling that some leaders have resorted to comparing their political opponents to Nazis.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe can and should disagree \u2014 sometimes deeply \u2014 but we must be able to do so without debasing public discourse,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, a group that leads outreach to non-Jewish community organizations, told JTA in an email that comparisons to Nazis should be out of bounds.<\/p>\n It is \u201cparticularly concerning given that our own community frequently, and rightfully, calls out those using dehumanization and\/or making inappropriate Holocaust comparisons,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n