New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s newly unveiled strategy to combat Jew-hatred is a “brazen and disingenuous political maneuver” that fails to address the mayor’s own rhetoric, according to Rabbi Etan Tokayer, Rabbinical Council of America president and rabbi of the Kingsway Jewish Center, a Modern Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn.
“The absurdity of the arsonist offering to help douse the fire he helped set is maddening for anyone who harbors the most rudimentary respect for truth,” he told JNS.
The new strategy that Mamdani unveiled on Sept. 29 doesn’t mention anti-Zionism and has drawn criticism from Jewish leaders.
Tokayer told JNS that the strategy has some good things in it.
“Security grants and educational programs are always welcome; however, were Mayor Mamdani at all serious about combating antisemitism, he would begin by changing the rhetoric from his own office,” he told JNS, “first and foremost by stopping to promote the vicious genocide lie.”
“We urge the mayor to shift gears immediately before the consequences of his words lead to more serious violence against Jewish New Yorkers,” he said.
