Zohran Mamdani: A Danger to NYC

Introduction

New York City’s mayoral race is currently a two-person showdown, pitting New York State Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani—a far-left, virulently anti-Israel activist and socialist—against former New York governor Andrew Cuomo in the June 24, 2025 Democratic primary.

Since the city leans heavily Democratic, the winner is overwhelmingly expected to become NYC’s next mayor.

Cuomo is maintaining a slim lead with Mamdani posing a serious challenge. In a highly crowded field, Mamdani is the only candidate except Cuomo polling in the double digits – and his support is growing daily.

While municipal politics rarely delve into foreign policy, the issue of Israel has been central in the race. The contrast between the two front runners couldn’t be greater.

Cuomo calls himself a “hyper-aggressive supporter of Israel and proud of it.” Speaking to the extreme uptick of Jew-hatred in NYC since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas, Cuomo has declared antisemitism “the most serious and important issue” facing the city.

Mamdani is part of that problem. He is a full participant in the protests staged by antisemitic, anti-American, pro-violence groups, including Within Our Lifetime and Jewish Voice for Peace, that have turned NYC into a battleground since October 7, 2023.

The son of anti-Israel ideologues, he has spent his burgeoning career taking their extremist ideology to the streets.

Under his leadership, all law-abiding New Yorkers, not just Jewish residents, will face escalating danger. What follows is a detailed account of who Zohran Mamdani really is, where he comes from, and the network of extremists he empowers.

Anti-Israel Activism

Mamdani has been a regular and prominent figure in NYC’s disruptive anti-Israel protest scene that has predominantly been engineered by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), an extremist and violent anti-Israel and anti-American group whose activists have been behind multiple attacks on Jews.

Mamdani has also been a regular activist at protests organized by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an antisemitic, anti-Zionist group known for inventing and promoting conspiracy theories about Israel.

After the October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,200 Israelis and the kidnapping of 250 more by Hamas, Mamdani went into action:

• On Oct. 8, 2023, just one day after the attack, Mamdani released a statement that slammed “Netanyahu’s declaration of war” and called for “ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”
• On October 13, 2023, less than a week after the massacre and before any substantial response from Israel, Mamdani joined a Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) protest outside the Brooklyn home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. The protest deceptively called for a ceasefire (i.e. Hamas victory) to “Stop the Genocide of Palestinians,” which was non-existent. Protesters, including Mamdani, were arrested for blocking traffic and charged with disorderly conduct.
• Fresh out of jail, on October 14, 2023, Mamdani proudly tweeted he was at yet another protest with JVP blocking the entrance to the New York Stock Exchange.
• On October 27, 2023, just three weeks after the attack, Mamdani was front and center at a menacing anti-Israel protest at Grand Central Station, which was designed to shut down NYC’s giant transportation hub. At the protest, Mamdani again called for Israel to stop a so-called “genocide.”

“I saw him at protest after protest, on picket line after picket line, rain or shine,” writes Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian-American writer and prominent BDS activist who met Mamdani in 2020.

Less than a month after the October 7 massacre, Awad received a call from Mamdani, who said, “We need to do more for Gaza. We need to organize a hunger strike for ceasefire, to pressure Biden to stop arming this genocide.”

After that conversation, Mamdani staged a five-day hunger strike in front of the White House in late November, shoring up his creds among anti-Israel activists and unions.

His anti-Israel activism continued unabated. As noted by Politico, “Mamdani … spent the year leading up to his campaign sharpening his pro-Palestinian bonafides,” which started in college when he founded a Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter (see below).

Commenting on SJP’s pro-Hamas encampment movement, Mamdani said, “I’ve been proud to be the first, and to my knowledge, the only mayoral candidate to have said that I would not have sent the police onto Columbia and CUNY’s campus.”

On March 13, 2024, long after the cooperation between the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNWRA) and Hamas was proven, Mamdani feigned ignorance about UNRWA’s ties to Hamas, posting, “Israel has yet to provide any proof of these claims.”

Mamdani further lamented, “but the allegations alone have led to UNRWA having $450M in donor funding suspended thus far.”

“Zohran Mamdani is running the most deceptive, divisive, and antisemitic campaign in the history of New York City,” said NY Assemblymember Sam Berger.

Mamdani’s Anti-Israel Legislation

As part of his platform, Mamdani has pledged to cut off private charitable funding and halt arms shipments to Israel, continuing the anti-Israel agenda he pursued as a state assemblymember.

As a NY assemblymember, Mamdani has a proven record of taking action against Israel. In May 2023, he introduced into the assembly the “Not on Our Dime” Act, a bill that would essentially make it impossible for non-profit charities to send money to Israel.

The details of the bill are alarming. The bill, which comes with penalties starting at $1 million, includes:

• Giving the New York State Attorney General the power to fine charities found in violation of the law
• Allowing individuals to bring lawsuits against these charities
• Canceling the tax-exempt status of any organization found in violation

In May 2024, Mamdani reintroduced an expanded version of the bill. The new version explicitly prohibits organizations from funding Israeli military actions in Gaza and the West Bank. To date, the bill remains under consideration and has not been brought to the floor for a vote.

When Mamdani introduced the bill, 66 centrist and progressive Democratic assembly members – a majority of Democrats in the assembly – signed a letter of condemnation against it. The legislators argued it unfairly targeted Jewish charities and raised concerns about religious discrimination. Some called it antisemitic.

Supporters heralded the bill as the first of its kind in the nation and a model-setting precedent for other states. The bill’s institutional backers include the Democratic Socialists of America (an organization of which Mamdani is a member), the NYC chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).

Other organizations in support of the bill include the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the Westpac Foundation.

Mamdani spoke about the bill in an extensive interview in The Nation with virulent anti-Israel activist Mohammed El-Kurd (who famously said at a London rally after October 7, “We must root (Zionism) out of the world! … We must normalize massacres as a status quo!”). In the interview, Mandani characterized the legislation as a “very modest” legal ask.

El-Kurd later joined Mamdani for a town hall promoting the bill.

Spouting classic antisemitism, Mamdani said to El-Kurd, “The idea of it as ‘radical legislation’ is only because of who it applies to. Because for so long, in New York politics and American politics, the idea of applying reasonable or modest ideas to the State of Israel, or anything connected to the State of Israel, is seen as simply beyond belief.”