On Sunday, Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, told Jonathan Karl of ABC that he supports Israel as a “state with equal rights,” but “any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can’t tell you I support.”
“Whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else,” added the mayor, who has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York City and whose spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law when they host pro-Israel events. “A lot of that comes back to a fundamental belief that we should all be considered equal no matter what our faith is.”
The mayor’s comment is another attempt on his part to use the language of “equal rights” to justify denying Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, experts told JNS.
“People make those kinds of general statements, because it rests on a principle where they can have some type of principled opposition to Israel as a state,” David May, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS.
“It allows them, rather than framing themselves as people who are discriminatory, people who have some type of animus toward Israel, to frame themselves as someone who is just for ‘equality’ and ‘equal rights,’” he said.
Mamdani’s comment drew backlash almost immediately from Jewish leaders, who denounced the mayor’s refusal to recognize the Jewish state.
The mayor is guilty of a double standard and of deliberate misrepresentation of the role Judaism plays in Israel, according to May.
“When he frames it in that way, it allows him to see himself in a favorable light,” he told JNS. “He holds Israel to a standard that he doesn’t hold any other country to, even though he claimed to hold Saudi Arabia to that.”
“I highly doubt that he really holds any of the officially Arab or officially Muslim or officially Christian countries to that standard,” May said.
A Muslim country, Saudi Arabia cannot be compared to Israel in that regard, and though non-Muslims are barred from entering certain places in Saudi Arabia, like Mecca, Israel has no comparable policy privileging Jewish access, nor does Judaism play the same role in Israel’s government, according to May
“The way that it stands is actually the opposite,” he told JNS. “There are places where, even though it’s a Jewish state, Jews are not allowed to travel to, depending on the sensitivities, especially for the holy places.”
Israeli law bars Jews from praying, even silently to themselves, on the Temple Mount, which is the most sacred site for Jews, and which is the reason that the location became subsequently holy to Christians and Muslims.
“Judaism doesn’t have a special hold on government,” May told JNS. “I accept that it’s the Jewish traditions, but in terms of it being an official religion of the state, that’s just simply not true.”
Eugene Kontorovich, a law professor at George Mason University and director of the international law department at the Jerusalem think tank Kohelet Policy Forum, told JNS that Mamdani’s logic would require him to object to Muslim states.
“If Mamdani was telling the truth, he would have a real problem with all the Muslim countries,” Kontorovich said. “In fact, he seems very friendly to them, from the Palestinian Authority to the mullahs of Iran, and he specifically never voiced any objection to them.”
Kontorovich said that Saudi Arabia “claims to be the guardian of the holy places,” but Israel does not have complete jurisdiction over the Temple Mount, which it shares with the Jordanian Waqf.
“I think he happened to pick one little country that he probably doesn’t like, because they crack down on the Muslim Brotherhood, which he’s sympathetic with,” Kontorovich said, of Saudi Arabia.
Kontorovich told JNS that he would like Mamdani to clarify publicly whether he “objects to the state of ‘Palestine’ being created as a state with Islam as its official religion” or “denounces the Muslim Brotherhood for trying to create states with Islam as the official religion.”
“Of course, nothing he was saying was sincere. He was just making up talking points to criticize Israel and justify not recognizing Israel in its current configuration,” he said. “It’s a shame that the interviewer didn’t follow up on it.”
Ofir Akunis, Israeli consul general in New York, stated on Sunday that the Jewish community “does not need” Mamdani’s recognition of the Jewish state.
“If you knew a little history, instead of spending all day inciting and spreading hatred, you would know that Israel’s Declaration of Independence guaranteed full equality for all its citizens,” the envoy stated. “That has been the reality since the day our state was established.”
“The surge in antisemitism across the United States, and particularly in New York, is the result of ignorance and a lack of knowledge, combined with a fundamental hatred of the Jewish people,” Akunis stated.
“I once again warn that Mamdani’s inflammatory rhetoric will end in very serious and violent acts against Jewish and Israeli communities throughout the city,” he said.
Karl, of ABC, also asked Mamdani about rising Jew-hatred in the Big Apple and about Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.), a pro-Israel Jewish Democrat who lost to Brad Lander in the Democratic primary. Lander, a former city comptroller who is Jewish, pressed Goldman during the campaign to accuse Israel, as Lander did, of “genocide.”
A coffee shop owner returned Goldman’s money and told him that his business was unwelcome due to his support for the Jewish state.
Mamdani told Karl that Jews make up a disproportionate amount of hate crime victims in the city, but he did not say that Goldman’s mistreatment was antisemitic.
The mayor only calls out Jew-hatred when it “aligns with his view of antisemitism,” May told JNS.
“It’s this kind of wishy-washy in between, where he doesn’t condemn it but also allows it to go on,” he said. “He’s tried to find that middle ground, where he can give a wink and a nod to those kinds of very violent, extremist rhetoric, but without being forced to condemn it.”
At one point in the interview, Karl asked Mamdani about the Democratic Socialists of America, of which the mayor is a member, no longer supporting a two-state solution.
Mamdani did not respond directly. He repeated that he supports “equal rights.”
May told JNS that the comment was another example of Palestinian leaders using the notion of “equal rights” and calling for “voting rights within Israel in a binational state” to “dismantle any type of Jewish state.”
If Israel were to cave to those demands and relinquish control over its security, it would be “suicidal,” he said.
“A two-state solution would include sovereignty for the Jews, something that they’re not willing to countenance,” May told JNS. “That was the original position, too, that there shouldn’t be a Jewish state, and they’ve come back to this position.”
“That’s where the activism is,” he said. “That’s where their ideology has gone.”
The language can appeal to some Western audiences, according to May.
“It’s something that’s framed as equal rights for all citizens, and in these kinds of terms that can appeal to people in the West who have an ideal, or just an inaccurate view, of how the Middle East operates,” he told JNS.
May said Mamdani’s “camp” does not see how anti-Israel activism, including “blood libel,” is “animating people to not only criticize Israel but also to attack Jews.”
The mayor endorsed Lander and Darializa Avila Chevalier, who was part of the anti-Israel encampment at Columbia University, and New York state Assembly member Claire Valdez, who has accused Israel of “genocide.” All three won their primaries.
The anti-Israel rhetoric of Mamdani and his followers will “engender a lot of opposition,” according to May, who thinks that it is unlikely that the Democratic Party will again elect “ardent pro-Israel leaders.”
“It’s never going to return to where it was before, but what we’ve seen with this kind of yo-yo back and forth, this whiplash that we’ve seen in politics, is that after this victory, those DSA candidates will likely have the opportunity now to rule, instead of being activists in opposition and just able to spout what they want,” he said.
“Now they’re going to be forced to rule, and I don’t think that they will be successful,” May told JNS. “That will generate backlash.”
