An Open Letter to Mayor Zohran Mamdani

Despite promising protection to New York City’s Jewish community, there are clear indications that your stalwart anti-Zionist views and pro-Palestinian advocacy may provide your Jewish constituents with their greatest safety risk.

According to recent data released by the New York City Police Department, antisemitic hate crimes represent the majority of the 58 hate crimes since you took office in January, 2026. Thirty-one of those crimes—54% percent—were antisemitic, making Jews the most targeted group. The percentage is more staggering, given that Jews represent a mere 10% or so of the city’s population. Based on these figures, there is an average of one antisemitic incident in New York City each day.

Supporting these numbers are incidents that reinforce concern about Jewish safety in New York City. During your first month in office, two teenagers on two separate occasions scrawled cumulatively 73 swastikas, along with a reference to ‘Adolf Hitler’ on a playground frequented by Jewish children in the religious enclave of Borough Park, Brooklyn. In a separate incident, a driver rammed his vehicle several times into the entrance of Chabad Lubavitch headquarters in Crown Heights. Most recently, a 17-year-old male student attending Renaissance Charter school in Jackson Heights sent 300 fellow students an email, threatening to kill Jews.

Naturally, not all expressions of hatred are included in these crime statistics. Antisemitic targeting is also measured in words and actions designed to marginalize and isolate NYC Jews, and those on its outskirts who travel and work there. Many have personally observed, listened to, and read about protests and riots and chants in schools, in front of synagogues and on the streets. These hate-filled demonstrations target not only the existence of Israel, but visibly Jewish populations and those living in New York City’s observant neighborhood.

We’ve read reporting on the sophisticated propagandist and political machine financed by Iran, Qatar, and the nations who support them. According to Combat Antisemitism Movement’s (CAM) late 2025 report, since Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, the world has experienced the largest surge in antisemitism in modern history. The Anti-Defamation League found that 58% of the skyrocketing antisemitic incidents contained elements related to Israel or Zionism. Scholars emphasize an undeniable link between anti-Zionism and the growth of antisemitism. Some say both forms of hatred are interchangeable, even synonymous.

Legislating Protection for Jews

Association, of course, is not necessarily causation. This 182 percent jump in reported antisemitic hate crimes from last January and the continued display of hatred toward Jews in New York City may be rooted in the growing anti-Zionist and antisemitic attacks worldwide. But as the mayor of a city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel, your values, rhetoric and policies, at a minimum, set a tone for the city you lead.

The tone you have set has provided little comfort to your Jewish constituents and those Jews affiliated with New York City. With a broad smile, you have described your Palestinian advocacy as “central to your identity.” You have led chants to "Free Palestine" in front of a Jamaican, Queens mosque. You have told stories about the blossoming of your identity in college when you co-founded at Bowdoin College “Students for Justice, (SJP), an organization with ties to Islamic terrorist groups, and that actively promotes Boycott Divest Sanctions (BDS). BDS has remained “consistent with the core of your politics.” You have made no bones about your father’s views that have deeply impacted yours. Columbia professor Mahmood Mamdani teaches that Israel is a settler-colonial state that employs apartheid-like discriminatory practices and seeks to exclude its Palestinian population.

In line with your Palestinian advocacy, you have refused to recognize Israel as the ancestral, religious and historical homeland of the Jewish people, or at least the right of Jews to live in a country that welcomes them. According to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) broad working definition of antisemitism, denying the Jewish people’s right to self-determination—for example, by claiming that the existence of the State of Israel is a racist endeavor—may constitute antisemitism.

The IHRA definition includes another instance in which anti-Zionism and antisemitism may intersect: the “application of double standards not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.” On this account as well, your characterization of Israel as an apartheid, genocidal, occupying, and colonialist state could be understood as antisemitic—particularly if Israel is the only country you single out for this level of condemnation.

To my knowledge, you have not applied comparable language to other nations in the Middle East. The region includes more than 50 countries, many of which have complex colonial histories and ongoing records of repression, including the persecution of minority populations and political dissidents. If similar standards are not applied consistently, the criticism risks reflecting a double standard rather than a principled human rights position.

Mr. Mamdani, you’ve had many chances to alleviate these concerns and to let your constituents know you’re actively confronting one of the world’s oldest hatreds. By recognizing what constitutes antisemitism, you could have helped stop it in its tracks, assuaging your constituents’ concerns. On your first day of office, you rescinded the IHRA definition of antisemitism, along with two other pieces of legislation aimed at protecting Jewish businesses, Jewish culture, and Jewish safety in their synagogues. Your rationale? “The definition could limit the freedom to openly criticize Israel.”

Under the IHRA definition, it’s perfectly legitimate to criticize Israel’s democratic-elected officials and policies. Jews do it all the time. But there’s a clear difference between criticism of Israeli policies—which is also outside the jurisdiction of a city’s mayor—and the refusal to recognize Israel as a Jewish state. That refusal does fall under the growing umbrella of antisemitism. As does villainizing Israel for crimes that its Palestinian neighbors and other Arab countries have committed. By rescinding the IHRC definition the only speech you are protecting is that of those who refuse to recognize Israel as a legitimate Jewish state, and the antisemitism that position helps engender.

As of early 2026, 47 nations and 37 states have adopted or endorsed the IHRA definition. I hope you succeed in overriding your current objections and reinstate this well-recognized and respected definition.

Maintaining your predecessor’s office to Combat Antisemitism, as you have done, has the potential to diminish antisemitic vitriol and attacks.  But without recognition that the Jewish people and the land of Israel are inseparable, antisemitism will likely continue to snowball.

Allowing hatred toward one minority to fester spreads to other minorities. Speaking out unequivocally and forcefully against antisemitic and anti-Zionist vitriol and crimes, regardless of the target’s affiliation with Israel, will help all New Yorkers to breathe more easily.

Featured image, by Bingjiefu He, Wiki Commons