New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is desperately trying to prove that he's not antisemitic, yet his efforts to do so only keep proving that he is.
Last week, Mamdani rolled out his long-awaited strategy for fighting antisemitism, complete with a new Interagency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and a $30 million price tag. He needed it badly. The city's first Muslim mayor has spent months fending off charges that he has no use for the Jewish community, and Jewish New Yorkers keep getting attacked at a growing rate on his watch.
NYPD data released in August showed hate crimes climbing 9.4% citywide this year, and more than half of those incidents targeted Jews. That happened while all seven major crime categories dropped across all five boroughs, with murders and shootings hitting historic lows. Crime is falling everywhere in New York except where the victims are Jewish. The department's figures also showed antisemitic attacks up 8% through August, with anti-Jewish incidents accounting for an outsized majority of all reported hate crimes.
So what did he deliver? A plan to combat antisemitism that never defines antisemitism. Nothing in it explains what sets Jew-hatred apart from any other racial or religious bigotry. Mamdani also declined to formally recognize Israel's existence while unveiling it. The document never uses the word Zionism and gives Israel a single passing mention.
Think about that for a second. Mamdani produced an entire plan about hatred of Jews and scrubbed out the Jewish state, the one thing his political allies despise most.
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And the $30 million? It's proving itself to be a ruse. Most of the plan recycles measures former Mayor Eric Adams already put in place, so New Yorkers get little that's new. What is new is classic Mamdani, because the plan boosts funding for a group tied to anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour.
Here's what reporting on the plan's partners turned up:
One of the top advocacy groups involved in P.A.T.H. — which works to prevent hate crimes across the city through community programs and grants — is the anti-Israel Arab American Association of New York.
The Brooklyn-based group, which was run for over a decade by Mamdani’s mentor and pro-Palestinian firebrand Linda Sarsour, repeatedly cheered on the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University and other protests following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
The organization pocketed $3.3 million in city funding between 2017 and 2024, the Washington Examiner first reported, citing data analyzed by the transparency watchdog group OpenTheBooks.
P.A.T.H. partners also include the 67th Precinct Clergy Council, aka “the Godsquad,” the LGBT NYC Anti-Violence Project, the Asian American Federation and the Hispanic Federation.
Mamdani's answer to surging attacks on Jews is to hand more public money to an outfit that applauded the mobs at Columbia. He is asking the people who helped make Jewish students feel hunted on their own campus to protect Jewish New Yorkers. It's outrageous, and he expects the city to thank him for it.
None of this should surprise anyone who watched his rise. Mamdani supports the slogan "globalize the intifada." He campaigned alongside Sarsour on arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. His wife celebrated the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks. Anyone who knows Mamdani’s record knew his plan to combat antisemitism was going to be phony, and he happily obliged.
Jewish leaders certainly noticed. More than two dozen of them denounced the report and demanded that the Mamdani administration reissue it with a version that deals with Zionism. They understand what the mayor refuses to admit, which is that the hatred driving attacks on Jews in his city so often arrives dressed up as hatred of Israel.
We all know that Mamdani is an antisemite, and his efforts to pretend he isn't don't fool anyone.