New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been trying to rehabilitate his image with the Jewish community of New York through a series of appearances and bribes. The reason for this is not because he has changed his views on the Jewish people at all, or because he is now appalled at attacks on Jews in a way he wasn’t before; it is purely political.
Mamdani is the least popular Democrat in the Jewish community in NYC history. He received around 33% of the Jewish vote in his election, compared to fellow socialist Bill de Blasio’s 51-53%, and a far cry from Ed Koch’s 75%. A year earlier, Kamala Harris took 55% of the NYC Jewish community, according to exit polling. Mamdani is severely underwater even with the secular Jewish community.
He is also a political ally of Governor Kathy Hochul, who is in a tough re-election battle against Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman. Polls show Blakeman within single digits of Hochul, between 4 and 9 points down, in a state that had Lee Zeldin outperforming his polling by 11 points. Anyone saying that Blakeman has no chance in such a blue state said the same about Trump’s chances against Hillary or the New York Giants’ chances against the New England Patriots. The Jewish vote could be the difference-maker in this election, and Hochul cannot afford to have a close ally like Mamdani be so unpopular with the Jewish community. So it was time for him to rehab his image.
As a gifted politician and an incredibly shameless liar, Mamdani was able to perform this task to great effect. The performance began in late September, in the middle of Sukkos. On September 29, he showed up at Kehilat Sephardim of Ahavat Achim in Kew Gardens Hills, stood next to Rabbi Shlomo Nisanov, and helped hand out food from a pantry. City Hall posted the video. The mayor thanked the rabbi for reminding him that community and service deepen our most joyful holidays.
Hours later, his administration dropped a 33-page “strategy” to combat antisemitism and called it the first municipal plan of its kind in the country. Then he went on tour. In Crown Heights, he visited two sukkahs, one of them belonging to Devorah Halberstam, whose son Ari was murdered by a terrorist on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994. Governor Hochul was there. So was the NYPD commissioner. So were residents who met the motorcade with a simpler message than the press release: “You’re an antisemite.” Williamsburg got a stop with Satmar leadership. A rabbi in Crown Heights hosted him in a personal capacity and offered a blessing that he become a uniter.
All in all, there were a lot of photo ops and a fancy new document. Many people may be comforted by such things. No one should be. As the saying goes, the devil is in the details.
The report does not define antisemitism. It says so out loud. “New York City can and will leverage all of the tools at its disposal to combat antisemitism effectively without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate.” This is a great way to keep attacking the Jewish people under the facade of “just criticizing Israel.” Every serious definition in use, including the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition that Eric Adams had put into city policy, treats certain forms of anti-Zionism as antisemitism: denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination, holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel, and applying standards to the Jewish state that are applied to no other country. Mamdani revoked that executive order on day one. A definition would have indicted his own politics, so the report reviews IHRA, the Nexus Document, and the Jerusalem Declaration, adopts none of them, and moves on.
What the report does include is a series of antisemitic attacks that its authors are comfortable naming. Charlottesville. The Tree of Life massacre in Pittsburgh. White nationalists. Far-right forums. Those attacks were real, they were evil, and they are completely unrelated to what has been happening to Jews in New York City, both before October 7 and since.
There is no mention of Joey Borgen, the 29-year-old beaten by six Muslims for wearing a yarmulka. There is no mention of the Cooper Union students who had to hide in the library because they were Jews. There is no mention of the dozens of attacks by black men on Chassidim for walking around Williamsburg or Boro Park. The report does not grapple with the attacks, the synagogue sieges, the campus encampments, the “globalize the intifada” chants, or the men shouting “Free Palestine” while they burn, stab, and kill. Jews are about 10 to 12 percent of the city and roughly half of confirmed hate-crime victims. NYPD figures through August 2026 showed antisemitic incidents up again year over year. If you cannot call out people because they’re “on your side,” then you’re doing nothing at all.
Then there is the money, which is the bribe. The administration touts hate-crime prevention funding rising from $3 million to $29 million. Of that, $6.4 million goes to “Partners Against Hate” grants for community organizations working on online speech, data collection, restorative justice, and survivor support. One million dollars is set aside for physical security at synagogues and other houses of worship, citywide. One million. Split across every synagogue, church, and mosque that might apply, in a city where Jews absorb half the hate crimes. That is 5,000 eligible recipients, with maybe 15-20% being Jewish, and even fewer than that being those who need it the most—the ones who support Israel.
United Jewish Teachers president Moshe Spern called it what it is: Quoting the Talmud while putting a million dollars toward security across every house of worship is not a strategy; it’s a disappointment. The larger pot will land where these pots always land, with the nonprofits and NGOs that already speak the administration’s language. This is not a security plan for Jews. It is another scheme to move taxpayer money into the hands of leftist causes, using the danger that Jews are facing as an excuse for doing so.
This is the same old Mamdani. He has said, more than once, what brought him into the movement. He co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin. He told a Young Democratic Socialists of America conference in 2021 that BDS activism was “the crux of the reason” he joined DSA, because there was “no exception for Palestine,” and because DSA endorsed the boycott. At the 2023 DSA convention, he said the core of his politics has always been Palestinian liberation, and that what won him over was an organization willing to endorse BDS when others would not. He did not arrive at socialism and later discover hatred of Israel. Hatred is why he showed up.
On October 8, 2023, with the bodies in the kibbutzim not yet counted, he posted that he mourned the dead “across Israel and Palestine” and then pivoted to Netanyahu’s declaration of war, the electricity cut, and “apartheid.” Hamas was not mentioned. On October 13, he wrote that “we are on the brink of a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza right now.” Within six days, he was already spreading lies. He has repeated the charge ever since, regardless of the facts.
Everyone knows of Mamdani’s promise to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. He said it to Mehdi Hasan. He said it in a Manhattan synagogue. He said it as mayor-elect. He said it over and over again. What is less known is that when he was asked about Hamas, he claimed he does not comment on international matters and wants to focus on New York City. It’s a joke, but no one is laughing.
Mamdani surrounds himself with terror supporters. Abdullah Akl, a Within Our Lifetime organizer and political director of the Muslim American Society of New York, stood at a rally and told the crowd they had not done enough, that next time they would come back stronger than on “the first October 7.” Yes, he wants another attack that kills thousands and kidnaps hundreds more. He has led chants to “strike, strike Tel Aviv” and to globalize the intifada. In March, Akl introduced Mamdani at a Ramadan event on Staten Island. The mayor called it a privilege and put Akl on the transition team.
The ADL found that roughly 20 percent of his 400-person transition team had documented ties to anti-Zionist groups or a record of anti-Israel statements, including people who posted, while the massacre was still underway, that resistance was justified. This is as “accidental” as UNRWA hiring actual terrorists.
So no, the Jewish community should not feel good about this latest tour that Mamdani is doing, or the money he’s trying to throw at us. It’s a facade. It’s fake. It’s a way to placate anyone willing to fall for it. It’s keeping the temperature rising incrementally until it boils us to death. We cannot fall for it. Tell Mamdani to keep his money and shut his mouth.
Moshe Hill is a political analyst and columnist. His work can be found at www.aHillwithaView.com and on X at @HillWithView.