NYC Mayoral front-runner Mamdani dodges questions over NYPD-IDF comments

The frontrunner to become Mayor of New York City has sought to avoid answering questions about a 2023 video where he is seen saying that “when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”

In a video of an event in September 2023, a month before the 7 October mass-terror attacks by Hamas, Mamdani attempted to describe what he saw as the importance of making “struggles” – such as the issue of Israel, “hyper-local”.

“The importance for me of international solidarity is that it takes me out of the American political landscape and reminds me just how tame some of the things are that I’m actually calling for and that I support”, he said. “And it reminds me of the necessity of grounding ourselves in the struggles as opposed to the fights around the struggles.

“For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them hyper-local. We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF. We’re in a country where those connections abound, especially in New York City, you have so many opportunities to make clear the ways in which that struggle over there is tied to Capitalist interest over here.”

Mamdani’s comments appear to be connected to a conspiracy theory known as “deadly exchange”, which was popularised, among others, by the group calling itself “Jewish Voice for Peace” in 2018. Despite members of the New York City Police Department operating exchange programmes with a wide variety of different police departments in countries around the world, the “Deadly Exchange” conspiracy theory implied that all injustices carried out by law enforcement in the United States were ultimately the fault of Israeli training.

In the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in 2020, Jewish Voice for Peace released a lengthy statement which included the lines: “Suggesting that Israel is the start or source of American police violence shifts the blame for the United States to Israel…it also furthers an antisemitic ideology”. The JVP statement also acknowledged that, despite the 57 page report they had previously produced which blamed only Israel, “US police have long built partnerships and swapped ‘worst practices’ with militaries and police forces that abuse human rights all over the world. Police exchange programs solidify partnerships between the US and other governments, including Israel.”

On Tuesday evening, when asked by CBS News about his 2023 comments, Mamdani avoided a direct answer, saying only that “I’ve said time and again that with public safety, I’m looking forward to working with police officers here in New York City to deliver it, and I’m looking forward to ensuring that we actually tackle the retention crisis at hand.”

Rabbi Elliot Cosgrove of the Park Avenue Synagogue on the Upper East Side, told the New York Post that Mamdani’s rhetoric “deeply reckless.”

“To claim that the NYPD is ‘on your neck’ and that its ‘boot is laced by the IDF’ is the recycling of a dangerous conspiracy theory: that Jews and the Jewish state are the hidden hand behind oppression everywhere,” said Cosgrove, who has recently urged people to vote for Mamdani’s key opponent in the Mayoral campaign, Independent Andrew Cuomo.

Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa said Mamdani’s comments “just shows the hate that he has both for the IDF and the hate that he has for the NYPD.”

The New York Mayoral election is scheduled for Tuesday 4 November.