Incoming New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani tried on Thursday to distance himself from a raucous and disruptive protest that unfolded Wednesday night right outside Park East Synagogue, a major Manhattan synagogue on the Upper East Side. Anti-Israel aggressors at the rally were recorded shouting phrases such as “Death to the IDF” and “Globalize the intifada,” among other threatening chants. At the same time, Mamdani suggested that the synagogue was “in violation of international law” and that the Nefesh B’Nefesh event inside was a misuse of sacred space.
“The mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so,” Mamdani’s spokesperson, Dora Pekec, said Thursday in a statement. “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
When asked by Jewish Insider to clarify the final portion of Pekec’s statement, Mamdani’s office explained that it “was specifically in reference to the organization’s promotion of settlement activity beyond the Green Line,” which they asserted “violates international law.”
Pekec did not clarify how the event violated international law, or why international law should be a focus for the mayor-elect of New York City.
Notably, Mamdani did not make any public comment directly himself, and his spokesperson’s statement did not address allegations of antisemitism.
According to material passed around in advance and based on chants by those in attendance, the demonstration, led by an anti-Zionist organization, was set up to intimidate those inside the synagogue attending a Nefesh B’Nefesh program.
One of the demonstrators repeatedly shouted about the synagogue attendees, “We need to make them scared,” according to video from the scene. Others called those attending “Jewish pricks.”
Police separated the protesters and a group of counter-protesters but did not try to stop the demonstration.
“Nefesh B’Nefesh is an affiliate of the Israeli government and the Jewish Agency for Israel, mainly responsible for the recruitment of settlers to Palestine from North America. Since 2003, they have recruited over 80,000 settlers of which over 13,000 served in the [IDF],” the protest organizers Palestinian Assembly for Liberation said in an Instagram post, referring to every last oleh via Nefesh B’Nefesh as a “settler” regardless of where in Israel they moved to.
Mamdani’s victory has unsettled segments of New York City’s Jewish community, who already feel heightened anxiety amid the spiking antisemitic incidents in the city and across the country and who feel uncertain as to how he will address such concerns from City Hall. He has said he would expand municipal support for combating hate crimes and enhance police protection at Jewish sites, insisting he is committed to safeguarding Jewish residents.
Still, although Mamdani, under pressure, eventually said he would discourage the chant “globalize the intifada” – a phrase widely viewed as advocating aggressive hostility and violence toward Jews – he has refused to condemn it, despite being given multiple opportunities to do so.
Mamdani has also been widely criticized for a variety of his statements and positions on Israel and Zionist Jews over the years. The pattern dates back to his days as a student at Bowdoin College, where he founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter.
While a state assemblyman, Mamdani sponsored a bill that aimed to amend the not-for-profit corporation law by adding a section that would prohibit synagogues and other not-for-profits from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity, which it clarified as, among other things, “aiding and abetting activity by the Israeli armed forces, the government of Israel, or citizen thereof” and the “destruction, damage, or vandalism of Palestinian property” and “the appropriation, expropriation, seizure, destruction, demolition, dismantlement, or confiscation, in whole or in part, of private Palestinian land.”
Park East Synagogue, and indeed a majority of synagogues in the New York City, routinely engage in activity that would be swept up by any such law.
Thursday’s statement marked the first opportunity Mamdani has had to comment on turmoil linked to an anti-Israel demonstration. (Mamdani himself had taken part in several such protests before launching his mayoral run last year.) The day after winning the election, he denounced recent vandalism at a Jewish day school where swastikas had been spray-painted on the property – an easy move, many pundits noted, as those acts were not anti-Israel in any way. In that case, Mamdani himself directly condemned the acts.
Outgoing Mayor Eric Adams, currently abroad on a multi-day trip that included a visit to Israel, also addressed the protest in a social-media post:
“Houses of worship are where people go to heal, reflect, and respect one another. Church, mosque, synagogue, it makes no difference. Screaming vile language outside any of them isn’t ‘protest’ it’s desecration. It shows how sick and warped these agitators have become. When I’m back in New York, I’ll be stopping at Park East to show my support. Pray for our city. Today it’s a synagogue. Tomorrow it’s a church or a mosque. They come for me today and you tomorrow. We cannot hand this city over to radicals.”
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, who endorsed Mamdani, similarly condemned the incident. “No New Yorker should be intimidated or harassed at their house of worship,” she said on social media. “What happened last night at Park East Synagogue was shameful and a blatant attack on the Jewish community. Hate has no place in New York.”
“Antisemites have showed up outside Park East synagogue and are chanting for intifada,” Rabbi Elchanan Poupko, host of The Jewish World podcast, said in his post on X. “The Rabbi of the synagogue is a holocaust survivor who remembers vividly the horrors of Kristallnacht. Now, he gets to see the same human material that shattered the glass of synagogues in Berlin and Vienna in 1938, outside his own synagogue. This is not about Gaza and has never been about Gaza. This is an attack on the Jewish people.”
He was referring to Rabbi Arthur Schneier, senior rabbi at Park East Synagogue. Schneier himself said, ““What I find most disturbing is that the police, who knew about this protest a day in advance, did not arrange for the protesters to be moved to either Third or Lexington Avenues,” he said. “Instead, they allowed the protesters to be right in front of the synagogue, which put members of the community at risk.”