Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, posted a video on Friday of a woman, who says that her family left its home in Jerusalem during Israel’s War of Independence.
“Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed,” the mayor stated. “Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us—one of home, tradition and memory over generations.”
In the video, which has been viewed nearly 9.5 million times, Inea is seen leafing through faded family photos under a travel poster for “Palestine” hung on her wall in the video, which is reminiscent of Holocaust survivor testimonies.
“I was 9-years-old and it was nighttime, and my father came and told us to get on all fours and go to the staircase to the roof, because there were no windows and bullets had come through the wood shutters,” Inea says in the video. “The next day, we took what we could carry and went to my uncle Hussein’s house in Nablus,” she adds. “The Zionists were, you know, coming into Jerusalem.”
David Greenfield, CEO of Met Council, the nation’s largest Jewish poverty-fighting organization, stated that “I’ve been doing this a long time and have never seen this kind of anger from moderate Jewish New York City leaders, who tried working with Mayor Mamdani.”
Greenfield, a former member of the New York City Council, posted screen captures of responses from a Chabad spokesman, the government releations vice president at UJA-Federation of New York, a Jewish New York state representative and the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council-N.Y.
Greenfield told JNS on Sunday that the video that Mamdani posted “has strained relationships with a lot of us in the leadership, who have tried to work in good faith with the administration.”
“Last week, I sat down for a meeting with the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism to talk about issues of concern, believing there was an interest in working together in good faith,” he told JNS.
Now Greenfield has doubts that the good faith is reciprocated.
“We have seen that the mayor has been willing to compromise on a lot of issues but if anything, he’s become more strident on this one issue,” he said. “It is frustrating and disheartening at the same time in month five of a 48-month administration.”
Met Council, like UJA-Federation of New York, relies heavily on city funding to provide many of its social services to poor and marginalized New Yorkers, which includes Jews and others.
“If I have to pick between being a Jewish leader and a nonprofit leader, I will pick being a Jewish leader, and the chips will fall where they may,” Greenfield told JNS.
UJA-Federation posted an uncharacteristically pointed response to Mamdani’s video.
“You chose 5:40 p.m. on Friday to post it, as Jewish New Yorkers prepare to light Shabbat candles,” the Federation stated. “We noticed.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) wrote that “Nakba” is “Arabic for catastrophe” and that “the only catastrophe here is a mayor of New York who lets antisemitic mobs run wild to terrorize law-abiding Jewish New Yorkers while he spreads anti-Israel propaganda.”
Ari Fleischer, a former White House press secretary under President George W. Bush, stated that “my mother and her parents fled the Nazis to come to New York City in 1939. My grandfather kept hidden Swiss francs and gold coins in his apartment in case he ever had to flee again.”
“My heart breaks for New York City,” he wrote. “Mamdani is a menace. Pro-Hamas and Hezbollah mobs are harassing Jews. Mamdani has empowered them.”
Some critics of the mayor’s posted noted on social media that the poster on a wall in Inea’s home is actually a 1936 Zionist advertisement encouraging people to move to what would become the modern Jewish state.
The media watchdog HonestReporting said that after Mamdani put out the “propaganda video,” it was “no surprise that the New York Times simply repeats the false narrative without scrutiny.”
“Because Inea Bushnaq is not a ‘Nakba survivor,’” it stated. “She is the descendant of Bosnian Muslims and was not forcibly displaced from her home. But facts don’t matter to the Times.”
Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor, is not of Palestinian or Arab descent. He was born in Uganda to an Indo-Ugandan family.
He has not posted a video about any other of New York City’s ethnic communities’ commemorations or observances. (JNS sought comment from the mayor.)
There are about 1 million Jewish New Yorkers in a city of 8.7 million residents, the largest population of Jews anywhere outside of Israel.
“It’s the obligation of any mayor, regardless of personal views, to try and bring people together. This is clearly divisive,” Greenfield, of Met Council, told JNS. “It’s obviously misinformation as well that really does concern the leaders of the community. When you put out disinformation like this it does tend to take people who are otherwise on the fence and push them toward an extremist view.”
“The reality is that for most non-Jewish New Yorkers, they are not able to separate between Israel and Jews,” he said. “It’s going to have a negative impact on how people treat and work with the Jewish community.”
