Growing up in Israel, Ofir Akunis remembers spending Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israeli Independence Days, dancing in Kings of Israel Square, which was renamed Rabin Square after Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1995.
This year, it felt different to Akunis, Israeli consul general in New York.
“It’s a unique feeling—to be somewhere else in the world during Yom Ha’atzmaut,” he told JNS. “It’s totally different. This is an ordinary day here. It’s a day off for the employees of the Israeli consulate and other consulates around the country and the world, but it’s not the same.”
Akunis, who assumed his post in the Big Apple in May 2024, spoke with JNS after the consulate’s Yom Ha’atzmaut celebration at Pier 60 in Chelsea, in Manhattan, on May 3.
The event, which drew hundreds, honored Israeli fashion designer Elie Tahari and Brooklyn Nets player Ben Saraf.
“This is the very first year that the mayor of New York has refused to recognize the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people,” Akunis told JNS.
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the city and his spokeswoman said that synagogues that host pro-Israel events violate international law.
Akunis directed some of his remarks during the event to Mamdani, who scrapped many of his predecessor’s executive orders, including those protecting Israel and Jews, in his first hours on the job.
The Jewish community “does not need your recognition,” the Israeli envoy said to the mayor, who was not present, during the event.
“The Jewish people and the State of Israel do not need your recognition,” he told JNS, referring to Mamdani, when asked to expand on his remark.
“It was not a direct call to him, but he is among those who automatically criticize Israel,” Akunis said, “and, in fact, refuse to protect the Jewish educational system.”
“This is unacceptable,” he added. “But we will continue, with or without him.”
Benjamin Netanyahu, prime minister of Israel, and Isaac Herzog, president of the Jewish state, spoke at the event via recorded message, as did Gideon Sa’ar, Israeli foreign minister.
Elected New York and New Jersey officials, consuls general from several countries and leaders of Jewish and pro-Israel organizations attended the event.
Lizzy Savetsky, 40, a Jewish social media influencer and pro-Israel activist, told JNS that events like Sunday’s are “her favorite to attend.”
“We are living at a time where people are trying to delegitimize Israel in the city, and it just makes us want to hold our heads higher,” the N.Y. native said.
Savetsky, who has nearly 500,000 Instagram followers, told JNS that facing antagonism from Mamdani, and from the mayor’s wife Rama Duwaji, has led to a resurgence of Jewish New Yorkers asserting their identities.
“We feel even more excitement about celebrating our pride, our Zionism and our Jewish identity,” she told JNS. “When somebody is trying to take something from you, or tell you that you don’t have a right to your ancestral homeland, as a first response, it just makes you want to push back.”
Duwaji, a Syrian-American artist who married Mamdani in 2025, has apologized for harmful language in past social media posts. She has also reportedly “liked” posts interpreted by critics as supportive of the assault or dismissive of allegations of sexual violence, prompting backlash and questions for the mayor.
“My wife made the decision to be an artist,” Mamdani has said, of his wife’s social media activity. “I think that these kinds of questions are part and parcel of what is coming with myself being the mayor of the city.”
Dedy Simhi, whose son Guy Simchi, an Israeli paratrooper, was killed at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, addressed the audience at the event.
“Israel’s unshakeable spirit lives in the daily lives of its people, in the families who continue to build, to dream and to believe and in the soldiers who defend our borders,” he said.
“Among them was my youngest son, Guy, who fought with his bare hands against Hamas and saved the lives of 30 of his friends but did not return,” Simhi told attendees.
Akunis told JNS about what he said is a unique balance of celebrating Independence Day immediately after Yom Hazikaron, Remembrance Day for fallen soldiers.
He referenced Israeli poet Naomi Shemer, who wrote in a song penned after the Yom Kippur War, of “the sting and the honey.”
“This is part of our long story, part of our long journey as a nation,” Akunis told JNS. “None of our achievements could have happened without the sacrifices of our brave soldiers. We get to celebrate our independence year after year because of them.”
“The result of their sacrifice is the fact that we can celebrate our independence,” he said. “They paid the highest price—their lives.”
Many Jews break a glass at weddings and leave a part of their home unpainted to remember the destroyed Temple. A similar kind of expression of loss takes place leading up to Israeli Independence Day.
“As an Israeli, there are a few hours every Memorial Day, before we start the celebrations of Yom Ha’atzmaut—like four or five hours, where everything is so quiet,” Akunis told JNS.
“You can even hear the birds. Families are watching movies about our heroes,” he said. “Then we go to celebrate with our families and our friends, our independence.”
“All of our existence is something like the transition between tragedy and very happy days,” he added.
Ami Kozak, a Modern Orthodox Jewish musician and comedian known for his political impressions, echoed that sentiment.
“It’s always nice to be celebrating something rather than fighting something,” he told JNS at the event. “Oftentimes, events are centered around confronting hatred and problems, so it’s refreshing to celebrate Israel and the Jewish community.”
Still, Kozak acknowledged the holiday’s proximity to mourning.
“If you look at this year’s Remembrance Day, we’re not looking at the distant past,” he told JNS. “In the past, you were commemorating people from wars decades ago. Now it feels immediate. This is a here-and-now fight.”
Kozak occasionally takes part in that fight online but “makes sure to have fun while I do it.”
“The Jewish people are strong, so we shouldn’t be so easily rattled when we see hatred,” he told JNS. “Maybe it’s inevitable that people hate those who are virtuous, but I won’t be less virtuous for it.”
‘Sad to be away from home’
Noa Cochva, a former Miss Israel who canceled a recent event at University of Oregon citing security concerns, told JNS at the event in Manhattan that it was “really sad to be away from home” while marking Independence Day.
A former Israeli army combat medic turned pro-Israel activist, Cochva, who moved to New York last year, spoke with JNS during a musical performance by Israeli artist Avihu Pinhasov following dinner, a dance performance and dessert reception at the event.
Cochva was in Seattle recently as part of a college speaking tour. At an event at the University of Washington, protesters gathered outside the venue, and police officers arrested three people.
“It became violent,” Cochva told JNS. “People came with signs saying they don’t want Miss Israel there. Then they tracked the car I was in, posted it online and both of my college events were canceled because people came to spread hate against me.”
“What they don’t understand is that while they were outside calling me a ‘genocide queen’ and things like that, I was inside speaking about being a combat medic and saving innocent people,” she said.
Zach Sage Fox, a social media personality known for viral campus “debate” videos confronting anti-Israel narratives, told JNS that celebrating Independence Day from New York is “interesting” given the climate in the city.
“The last time I was in Israel, I bought this picture of the first Israeli Independence Day in Tel Aviv,” he said. “It’s almost hard to make out what’s happening in the photo, because there are hundreds of people, on rooftops, on balconies, holding Israeli flags.”
“You can see the pride on their faces, and this is just a few years after the Holocaust,” he told JNS. “No matter how dark things feel, I look at that photo every day. It’s right next to my bed, and I remind myself how special it is that we have our homeland back.”
Akunis told JNS that for Jews in New York to truly feel the celebration of Independence Day, “they need to come to Israel.”
“If you want to feel the real happiness of Yom Ha’atzmaut, a very emotional feeling, you have to be there in Israel,” he said. “You can’t feel the same when you’re not there.”
The consulate hopes to bring a delegation of Greek, Romanian and Czech consuls general to Israel in June, but such plans depend on the war in Iran coming to a close.
“I hope there will be no war,” Akunis told JNS. “But it will not be our decision. It will be the Iranian decision.”
He is also holding onto hope that Lebanon will be the next country to join the Abraham Accords, on the condition that Hezbollah is absent from negotiations.
“We can resume the railway from Beirut to Tel Aviv, through Gaza, even to Cairo,” Akunis told JNS. “The port of Beirut and the port of Haifa can collaborate. Why not export and import a lot of commerce? There is huge potential.”
“Our basic instinct as a Jewish people is to live in peace with our neighbors,” he said. “We are doing it with the Egyptians. We are doing it with the Jordanians. We signed peace treaties with Bahrain, with the Emirates and with Morocco. Now our door is open to other countries around us.”
