A keffiyeh worn by someone featured prominently in a New York City public service announcement that Mayor Zohran Mamdani released on Wednesday is raising questions and hackles among Jewish New Yorkers.
Two young workers from the mayor’s office of mass engagement, identified as Tascha and Mohamed, are shown in the video knocking at Gracie Mansion, the mayoral home.
Mamdani opens the door and asks them to tell him more about testifying at the June hearing of the Rent Guidelines Board, which sets cost increases for the city’s rent-regulated apartments.
Mohamed wears a keffiyah visibly tucked under his jacket, which has upset many Jewish New Yorkers.
“Everyone knows that the keffiyeh is now associated with events against Israel,” Benny Polatsek, a Chassidic Jew who worked in the creative communications department at City Hall under former mayor Eric Adams, told JNS. “Why is he presenting that message in a video that is not supposed to be political?”
Polatsek wonders if Mamdani is “going out of his way to offend the Jewish community.”
The first rule in the mayor’s communications department when Polatsek worked there was that nothing it produced could offend any segment of New York’s wide array of religious and ethnic communities, Polatsek told JNS.
“If we had produced anything like this, I would have been fired the next day,” he said.
Moshe Spern, who teaches history at a Queens public high school, told JNS that “the message being sent to me and every other Jewish person by this video is that, ‘I’m going to trigger you and make you remember Oct. 7, the biggest pogrom to face the Jewish people since the Holocaust.’”
“They can try to spin this if they want to and say it’s about bringing people together,” said Spern, who is president of United Jewish Teachers, an advocacy group that represents Jews in teachers unions. “But you are the mayor of New York City and should respect the million-plus Jews here.”
The black-and-white keffiyah is a symbol of Palestinian resistance, and anti-Israel demonstrators often use it to cover their faces.
Wendy Melillo, an associate professor of journalism at American University whose research focuses on how communication impacts society and the media, told JNS that “visual representation of one’s personal beliefs is a statement about what is valued in that person’s life.”
“Wearing that particular clothing as a representative can suggest that this is valued by the Mamdani administration,” she said.
“It’s really important to understand what the agenda is behind any public service messaging,” Mellillo told JNS. “That requires research into what the intent is.” (JNS sought comment from the mayor’s office.)
Mohamed Alharbi, deputy Queens borough director in the mayor’s mass engagement office, who wears the keffiyeh in the video, has said that his family is Yemeni, not Palestinian.
For some Jewish New Yorkers, Mamdani’s intent in the public service announcement is clear. “This is a mayor consistently sending a message to the Jewish people of New York that you don’t matter,” Spern told JNS.
Russell Drew, who identifies on social media as a political junkie and native New Yorker, wrote that “this kid is wearing a keffiyeh. I won’t even listen to another thing he says.”
“Or anybody else who wears a garment associated with terrorism,” Drew added. “Zohran Mamdani doesn’t care. He knows what he’s doing. Everything he does is about Palestine.”
