‘A lot to fear,’ Jewish New Yorkers say about Mamdani primary win

New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani’s victory in Tuesday night’s Democratic primary is alarming many Jews in the city who say that his anti-Israel rhetoric legitimizes antisemitism and deepens divisions.

Daniel S. Mariaschin, CEO of B’nai B’rith International, told JNS that Mamdani’s dismissive “attitude to the concerns of New York’s Jewish community during the campaign, particularly its strong support for the State of Israel, is more than troubling.”

“New York is home to the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel,” Mariaschin said. “Over more than three centuries, Jewish New Yorkers have made countless contributions to making it one of the world’s greatest cities.”

Eric Fingerhut, president and CEO of the Jewish Federations of North America, and William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spoke to JNS about Mamdani on the sidelines of emergency meetings that their organizations convened in Washington on June 25-26.

“I’m certainly hoping that all right-thinking New Yorkers, and certainly our Jewish community, will organize themselves to make sure that there’s a serious opposition in the general election,” Fingerhut told JNS.

Daroff told JNS that he is “very concerned about the normalization of antisemitism in America.”

“Among the battle cries of those who seek to murder Jews is to ‘globalize the intifada,’ and as a purveyor of that attitude, as someone who rationalizes and minimizes and denies the dangers that accrue to the Jewish people and the importance of the State of Israel, it’s deeply concerning,” he said.

Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that Mamdani’s electoral success portends trouble for the Jewish community in New York City.

“As an American Jew and as a human, I am truly frightened that an antisemitic communist, Mamdani, has actually promoted murdering Jews by supporting and legitimizing the antisemitic rally cry ‘globalize the intifada,’ refuses to accept the Jewish State of Israel as a Jewish state and is friendly with Israel-bashing Jew-haters,” Klein said.

Mamdani “has been mainstreamed in the most important Jewish city in America,” Klein said. “It is time to make aliyah to Israel.”

Joel Petlin, superintendent of the public Kiryas Joel School District in Monroe, N.Y., told JNS that Mamdani’s primary win suggests that a majority of N.Y. Democratic voters do not care about rising Jew-hatred.

“I believe that Jewish New Yorkers have a lot to fear from a mayor who openly defends globalizing the intifada,” he said. “As Jews are the number one target for hate crimes in New York City, we should all be concerned that Democratic voters want a mayor who has repeatedly said that he wants to defund the police.”

‘More vulnerable than ever’

Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at The Lawfare Project, told JNS that Mamdani’s victory is more than just a political upset. It marks a dangerous turning point for the city, he said.

“Mamdani has made hostility toward Jews a political brand, proudly championing the BDS campaign, a movement that is nothing more than ethnic and national origin discrimination targeting Jews and Israelis,” he said.

“Even more alarming, Mamdani refused to distance himself from the slogan ‘globalize the intifada,’ a phrase tied to deadly anti-Jewish violence, effectively downplaying terror against Jews under the guise of ‘struggle,’” Filitti told JNS.

Mamdani’s primary success sends the message that espousing Jew-hatred can be politically rewarding, according to Filitti.

“New York’s Jews, already facing rising antisemitism and the failure by its elected officials to meaningfully combat it, now must contend with the prospect of a City Hall led by a man whose purported Jew-hatred has been on full display in his politics,” he said, “a reality that threatens to undermine the city’s legacy of tolerance and leave a proud community feeling more vulnerable than ever.”

Ezra Friedlander, who runs an eponymous public relations firm, told JNS that Jewish New Yorkers dismayed with the Democratic primary result should make sure to vote in the November general election.

“Mamdani is not the mayor-elect,” he said. “He is the Democratic nominee.

“If people are afraid, they have to come together and, in all likelihood, vote for Eric Adams,” he said. “You have to translate that fear to action.”

Freidlander told JNS he is an optimist who believes that if Mamdani is elected mayor, he may soften some of his most extremist views.

“If Mamdani does become mayor, because of what he’s being accused of, he would have to demonstrate that he is a mayor of all New Yorkers, including the Orthodox Jewish community, and be extra sensitive to it,” he said.

© JNS