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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the third anniversary of the October 7th massacre on Wednesday to accuse Israel of “ongoing genocide” and “apartheid,” turning a day of mourning into an indictment of the Jewish state.
In a statement, Mamdani referred to “the horrific war crimes of October 7” and acknowledged Hamas’s killings and abductions of Israelis, but then quickly shifted his focus to accusations against Israel.
“The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” he wrote. “It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children.”
This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.
— Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) October 7, 2026
Hamas received no further mention. Its victims became the prelude to anti-Israel claims, as well as a charge of American “complicity.” Mamdani supplied no source for the casualty figures he cited. The figures were consistent with the toll kept by Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, which does not distinguish terrorists from civilians.
Mamdani’s genocide accusation recast the medieval “blood libel” — the lie that Jews ritually murdered Christian children– against the Jewish state. He invoked dead children to falsely portray Israel’s war against Hamas as a campaign of deliberate extermination, rather than a war of self-defense launched after terrorists massacred roughly 1,200 people and abducted 251 hostages in the Hamas-orchestrated October 7th invasion of southern Israel.
His “apartheid” accusation identified no law, policy, or place to substantiate it. Arab citizens of Israel vote and serve in the Knesset. In 2021, Ra’am joined Israel’s governing coalition, and in 2022 Khaled Kabub became the Supreme Court’s first Muslim justice. In 2023, Arabs accounted for approximately one-quarter of employed Israeli physicians up to age 67, according to a published study.
A mayor’s duty is to protect Jewish New Yorkers, not amplify antisemitic libels. Mamdani used the anniversary of the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to, once again, put the Jewish state on trial.
Responding to Mamdani, Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Chief Government Affairs Officer Lisa Katz said, “For Jews in Israel and across the globe, the anniversary of October 7th, the deadliest act of antisemitic violence since the Holocaust, marks a day of sorrowful mourning and painful reflection. The fact that Mayor Mamdani used this solemn moment to parrot Hamas propaganda and promote the ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid’ libels spoke volumes, further exposing, as if there was still any doubt, the antisemitic animus at the core of his ideological worldview.”
“Last week, Mayor Mamdani unveiled a so-called ‘Strategy to Combat Antisemitism,’ but slandering and demonizing the Jewish state does the exact opposite, only elevating the threats already facing Jewish New Yorkers. This alone should be disqualifying for leadership in a city home to the largest Diaspora Jewish community, who deserve a mayor who fights antisemitism, not incites it.”
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Read more:
Ahead of Netanyahu’s UN Visit, NYC Mayor Mamdani Once Again Calls for Israeli PM’s Arrest
