New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani Hijacks Oct 7 to Attack Israel

On Wednesday, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sparked outrage with a statement that opened with a brief nod to those killed in the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack but devoted most of its length to accusing Israel of genocide.

The statement began, “This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others.” Then he turned to Israel-bashing: “The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children.” Mamdani accused Israel of bombing ambulances and targeting journalists with drone strikes and blocking food aid, charged that American tax dollars were financing Israeli “war crimes,” and closed by demanding an end to “occupation and apartheid.”

Mamdani never called the Hamas attack terrorism. As Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt pointed out, he never once used the word “Jews.” He understated the Israeli death toll—roughly 1,200, not “more than 1,100”—while presenting dubious casualty figures from the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry as settled fact. And he framed the anniversary of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust as the opening chapter of an Israeli crime.

Israeli and American officials sharply condemned these smears. Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, said Mamdani was trying to “hijack” the day and compared the statement to “turning September 11 into a day of mourning for al-Qaeda terrorists.” U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it an “outrageous & disgusting rant” on a day that “ought to honor the over 1,200 civilians butchered by Hamas,” and wrote that New York had elected a “jihadist sympathizer.” Israel’s ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter—speaking from the hospital bedside of a son critically injured in a Palestinian car-ramming—said it was “hard to find a sentence in Mamdani’s post that isn’t a lie” and called him “a defender of Palestinian terrorism.” New York’s Israeli consul general, Ofir Akunis, called the message a “disgrace, shame, and insult to the memory of those who were murdered.”