Stock Portfolio of Mamdani Aide Includes IDF Contractor

Politico Playbook reports that Ramzi Kassem, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s chief counsel, owns stock in RTX (formerly Raytheon Technologies), a multinational military contractor that has a long relationship with the Israeli military, in such deals as a $1.25 billion deal this past November for surface-to-air missiles for Israel’s Iron Dome system.

Mr. Kassem, a law professor and former White House advisor during the Biden Administration, is has been very outspoken in his anti-Israel opinions. In 2002, he wrote a column in the Columbia Daily Spectator decrying Israel’s “ineffable barbarism” in its response to the Second Intifada, when Palestinians militants carried out over a hundred suicide bombings and over a thousand Israelis and three thousand Palestinians died.

Israel "only wields military might in civilian areas, uses civilians as human shields, routinely destroys homes, and is so consumed by its zeal to disrupt Palestinian life as to uproot olive groves,” he wrote in the column.

Dora Pekec, a mayoral spokesperson, told Politico Playbook that Mr. Kessem had been unaware of the decisions made by his financial advisor and would be divesting of the stock. Mr. Kessem did not respond to their request for comment.

Politico Playbook received Mr. Kessem’s annual financial statements from the city’Conflict of Interest Board. In addition to RTX stock, the filings revealed stocks in companies that have business with the city, presenting a potential conflict of interest. If any case came up with these companies, including Verizon and Microsoft, he would have to recuse himself. Many elected officials and politicians put their stocks in a blind trust just to avoid such problems. Mr. Kessem has not.

His stock include more companies that don't fit in with a democratic socialist administration: Fossil fuel corporations Exxon-Mobil and Chevron, and British American Tobacco and Philip Morris.