Does it really matter that New York’s Mayor-elect Mamdani loathes and demonizes Israel?

This Editor’s Note was sent out earlier Wednesday in ToI’s weekly update email to members of the Times of Israel Community. To receive these Editor’s Notes as they’re released, join the ToI Community here.

There’s an argument to be made that Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the New York mayoral elections is all about local issues, and that his hostility to Israel is largely irrelevant.

New York is spectacularly expensive, its residents are deeply dissatisfied with city services, and they’ve elected him to tackle housing, transportation, child care — not to march headlong into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

It’s an argument that many New York Jewish voters plainly bought, since many voted for him.

Some doubtless chose Mamdani in part because they endorse his strategic delegitimization of an Israel to which they were never connected or from which they are increasingly alienated. But others, who are troubled by his stance on Israel, backed him nonetheless because they are more preoccupied with the day-to-day problems of the city they live in, and believe he will do a better job of alleviating them than Andrew Cuomo would.

Yet Mamdani has left no doubt that his support of the Palestinians and refusal to accept Israel’s legitimacy as a Jewish state are central to his identity and purpose.

His first statement after the Hamas massacre in southern Israel, issued on October 8, 2023, mourned “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours,” condemned Israel for going to war, and called for dismantling Israeli “apartheid.” Campaigning for mayor, he repeatedly accused Israel of genocide in Gaza, made clear he supports the boycotting of Israel (an effort ultimately intended to deny Israel the capacity to defend itself against enemies openly committed to its destruction), equivocated on whether Hamas should lay down its arms, and refused to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada” (though he later said he would discourage use of the phrase).

And on Tuesday night, in his victory speech, he indicated that his ambitions extend far beyond local mayoral obligations.

“In this moment of political darkness, New York will be the light,” he vowed in an address that encompassed municipal and national aspirations. “Together, we will usher in a generation of change,” he promised his supporters. “And if we embrace this brave new course, rather than fleeing from it, we can respond to oligarchy and authoritarianism with the strength it fears, not the appeasement it craves. After all, if anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him.”

Mamdani, in his speech, also vowed to “build a City Hall that stands steadfast alongside Jewish New Yorkers and does not waver in the fight against the scourge of antisemitism.”

But it is antisemites who will be encouraged by his victory.

It is the dark practice of antisemites to depict Jews — and, in the decades since the revival of our ancient homeland was legitimized, to depict the Jewish state — as the source of all problems, global and, crucially, local.

And so we see Mamdani, speaking at the 2023 national convention for the far-left Democratic Socialists of America to which he belongs — two months before Hamas invaded Israel, massacring 1,200 people, abducting 251, triggering the war in Gaza, and sparking a drastic rise in anti-Israel and antisemitic rhetoric and violence that today sees Jews in New York targeted in hate crimes far more than any other group.

Addressing a panel entitled “Socialist Internationalism: The Solution to the Crisis of Capitalism,” Mamdani blamed Israel for police violence in New York, and explained why he was taking pains to do so. “For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them hyper-local,” he said. “We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”

In a statement issued after his victory on Tuesday night, the UJA-Federation of New York, the city with the world’s largest Jewish population, carefully acknowledged the challenge and potential threat to the community posed by the incoming mayor: “We recognize that voters are animated by a range of issues, but we cannot ignore that the mayor-elect holds core beliefs fundamentally at odds with our community’s deepest convictions and most cherished values,” it said. “We will hold all elected officials, including Mayor-elect Mamdani, fully accountable for ensuring that New York remains a place where Jewish life and support for Israel are protected and can thrive.”

But Jews and non-Jews who voted against him told our reporter in the city on Tuesday night why they fear that this will not be the case, predicting a Mamdani effect that will empower and embolden Israel-haters and Jew-haters.

“I’m worried about the indoctrination of kids hating Israel, thinking that Israel is a pariah, thinking that Israel commits genocide, something that Zohran has gone around saying for two years,” said one.

“I am frantic about being here in New York City with him as my mayor,” said another. “I’m frightened about antisemitism on my street corner. I’m frightened there’s going to be some march or something, and they’re going to strike us.”

There’s an argument to be made that Zohran Mamdani’s decisive victory in the New York mayoral elections is all about local issues, and that his hostility to Israel is largely irrelevant. It doesn’t hold water.