SPECIAL REPORT: What Mamdani has actually said about Jews and Israel
Everything you need to know about the incoming New York mayor's views on Israel, antisemitism and the Jews
He was elected to represent Astoria, Queens, in New York’s state Assembly and is soon to take the helm of New York City. But Zohran Mamdani has called the Palestinian cause “central to my identity,” both in and out of politics.
Mamdani consistently and proudly associates with the pro-Palestinian movement in high-profile settings across New York City. Shortly after delivering a stunning victory in the mayoral election, he again appeared with prominent pro-Palestinian activists during celebratory events across the city. In his victory speech in Brooklyn, Mamdani directly addressed Donald Trump, saying, “Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: turn the volume up,” and vowed that New York would stand “against oligarchy and authoritarianism.”
So it’s no surprise that as Mamdani prepares to become mayor of New York — the city with the largest Jewish population in the world — Jewish New Yorkers are closely scrutinising what he has said about Jews, Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.
Below is a round-up of what Mamdani has said on a range of Israel- and Jewish-related topics in a variety of interviews that have made headlines – updated following his election win.
Israel’s right to exist
During the long mayoral campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that Israel has a right to exist. But he usually qualifies that statement by adding that Israel is flouting its responsibilities under international law, based on its treatment of Palestinians.
He has also been asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. As he stated at a town hall with the UJA-Federation of New York: It should exist “with equal rights for all.”
He later said on a local Fox channel’s morning show: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”
The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel
As he said at the UJA-Federation town hall, he supports the BDS movement, which lobbies for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Pro-Israel groups have fought a decades-long battle to marginalize the movement, which its critics say seeks the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.
“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” he said.
Mamdani’s support for boycotting Israel stretches back for his entire adult life. While a student at Bowdoin College — where he co-founded the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter — Mamdani agreed with the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions in 2014.
“Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms,” Mamdani wrote in an op-ed in the school’s student newspaper, published in 2014, the year he graduated. “Israeli universities give priority admission to soldiers, discriminate against Palestinian students, and have developed remote-controlled bulldozers for the Israeli Army’s home demolitions.”
He added that the boycott “is decidedly not aimed at individual persons.”
7 October and the war in Gaza
Mamdani’s first statement about the attacks of 7 October, 2023, which he issued the day after, expressed mourning for “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.”
He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “declaration of war” will “undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering… The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
Since then, Mamdani has consistently referred to Israel’s actions in Gaza as a “genocide” and said the United States, through its support of Israel, is “subsidizing a genocide.” Israel denies it is carrying out a genocide, a charge also leveled by a United Nations Commission of Inquiry and a growing body of genocide scholars and rights groups.
At a rally in Times Square on 8 October, 2023, some local members of the Democratic Socialists of America — of which Mamdani is a member — celebrated Hamas’s actions. Mamdani condemned the rally on 10 October telling Politico: “My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life. I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally seeking to make light of such deaths.”
During the mayoral race, Mamdani repeatedly cited Noy Katsman, an Israeli whose brother was killed on 7 October Speaking at the Manhattan synagogue B’nai Jeshurun in June, he quoted Katsman as saying that “we must never give up on the conviction that all life, Israeli and Palestinian, Jewish and Arab, is equally precious.”
He attended, but did not speak at, an 7 October memorial organised by Israelis for Peace.
Tackling antisemitism and attacks on Jews
On the campaign trail, Mamdani said that he wants to work to combat hate crimes across New York City, including those on Jews.
On “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” Mamdani claimed that the city is experiencing a “crisis of antisemitism” and said he would like to create a Department of Community Safety that would focus on anti-hate programming.
“Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about — it’s something that we have to tackle,” he said. “We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.”
At the UJA-Federation town hall, Mamdani also said that he would be “proud” to appoint a senior adviser to tackle antisemitism in New York City.
He has condemned the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the firebombing of an event in Boulder for Israeli hostages, and an attack on a synagogue in England on Yom Kippur. “May Karen’s memory be a blessing,” he wrote after one of the firebombing victims died.
In his victory speech, Mamdani pledged that his administration would “protect every community of faith in this city,” adding that “hate has no place in New York — not against Jews, not against Muslims, not against anyone.”
The phrase “Globalise the intifada”
Mamdani has in multiple interviews declined to condemn the term “globalise the intifada,” a phrase used by many in the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses and beyond. The word “intifada” directly translates to “shaking off,” but many Jews associate it with two violent Palestinian uprisings, which led to several terrorist attacks across Israel from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.
When asked about the phrase in June, Mamdani said “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” After drawing sharp criticism, including from his opponents, Mamdani said he discourages the term. In a Spectrum News interview, he cited a conversation with a rabbi who said she interprets it as a reference to past terror attacks inside Israel.
“That distance between what some intend and what others hear is a bridge that is too far,” he said. “It is why I have not used the phrase, and it is why I discourage its use.”
The Holocaust
Mamdani has commemorated the Holocaust on social media and said he would like to see more Holocaust education in New York City schools.
He declined to sign onto a Holocaust Memorial Day resolution in the state Assembly in May. His campaign attributed the decision to the intense schedule of the mayoral primary.
Hasan Piker interview
In April, Mamdani sat for a three-hour interview with popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has repeatedly called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” compared Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan, and defended Hamas’ attack on the Nova music festival. When asked about Piker, Mamdani said, “I am willing to speak to each and every person about this campaign.”
Arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani said to former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in December. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law.”
He later said the same thing at B’nai Jeshurun. “My answer is the same whether we are speaking about Vladimir Putin or Netanyahu,” he said.
Given that the United States is not a party to the International Criminal Court, it would be highly unlikely that the mayor of New York would be able to arrest Netanyahu.
Uncivilised.media interview
A video of Mamdani speaking in Queens in 2023 went viral in June, thanks in part to Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who criticized Mamdani for eating food with his hands in the video. “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World,” Gill wrote on X.
Similar videos attacking Mamdani led one Jewish group, the Nexus Project, to object that many of Mamdani’s critics are “trafficking in Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia, and distorting our broader political discourse.”
In the video, Mamdani sheds more light on his views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The son of two India-born parents — filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani — the candidate spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before migrating to the United States at the age of 7.
“Specifically growing up in South Africa post-apartheid, it felt as if one of the most natural things to wear around my body was a keffiyeh,” he says, referencing the scarf that Palestinians have long worn and that has since become a symbol of resistance to Israel.
In the interview, Mamdani calls discussing Palestinian issues “entirely taboo” in U.S. politics and criticises PEPs — politicians who he says are “progressive except for Palestine.”
He also says that he believes the U.S. has put Palestinian lives “in jeopardy” for “decades.”
The Holy Land Five
Before his political career, Mamdani released rap songs under the monikers Young Cardamom and, later, Mr. Cardamom.
In one 2017 song, “Salam,” he praised the “Holy Land Five” — the heads of a former Islamic charity organisation founded in the U.S. who were convicted of aiding Hamas. In 2001, the U.S. government designated the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development a terrorist organisation and seized its assets; some have argued that the trial was based on “hearsay” evidence.
“My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up,” Mamdani raps in the track.
The “Not On Our Dime!” act
Mamdani was the lead sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” which he proposed in the New York State Assembly in May 2023. Its stated goal was to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorised support of Israeli settlement activity.”
Sixty-six lawmakers, a majority of the Democratic state caucus, signed onto a letter condemning the proposal. “Its purpose is to attack Jewish organisations that have wide-ranging missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans,” the letter read.
Mamdani said synagogues would not be affected and that enforcement decisions would rest with the attorney general.
Mamdani will take office in January 2026. His positions on Israel and Palestine show no significant shift following his victory — and Jewish New Yorkers will be watching closely to see how his pledges on tackling antisemitism translate into governing.
Supporters say his election shows broad enthusiasm for progressive policies, while critics remain cautious about his positions on Israel and BDS.
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