As of this week, five people died, and dozens more have fallen gravely ill from an outbreak of Legionnaires’ disease concentrated on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
An extreme form of pneumonia, it is contracted not from contact with others but from environmental features, like cooling towers and water systems, where the lethal bacteria that cause the disease tend to flourish in warm conditions.
This is a matter, then, that is squarely inside the remit of the city government.
As New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin pointed out in an op-ed for the New York Post, those who have lost loved ones to the disease, along with New Yorkers, in general, “deserve real answers from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration,” which has failed them appallingly.
For most of last week, Mamdani and his gang of Stalinist functionaries weren’t even focused on the outbreak. In parodic fashion, which would have been amusing were lives not at stake, Mamdani diverted attention to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s forthcoming visit to New York in September for the annual U.N. General Assembly. A “war criminal” was coming to our city, he breathlessly warned, almost as if he expected New Yorkers to down their tools and rush into the streets in protest.
The episode demonstrates that when it comes to international politics, which are squarely outside the remit of the city government, Mamdani is as clueless as he is on the issues upon which he is supposed to make a difference. What it also indicates is that having performative socialists running any kind of government is dangerous to our collective health, physically and politically.
After mooting the possibility of dispatching the New York City Police Department to arrest Netanyahu, Mamdani was compelled to withdraw his threat. Releasing an explanatory video in which he amplified the blood-libel allegations against not just Netanyahu but the State of Israel, the mayor conceded that he had no authority to incarcerate the Israeli leader. He then suggested that the federal government do so.
But this is equally fallacious. The United States never acceded to the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, meaning there is no jurisdiction to execute its arrest warrants for Netanyahu or anyone else in the United States. Additionally, the status of the United Nations, as an institution headquartered in New York City, is sufficiently protected to prevent arrests of leaders attending the General Assembly.
That’s why, every year, New Yorkers have to put up with assorted dictators and tyrants, like Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, snarling traffic and necessitating police checkpoints around Manhattan’s key arteries. Of course, Mamdani doesn’t complain about those leaders because he admires them; more than that, he seeks to emulate them.
Yet just because Mamdani can’t arrest Netanyahu doesn’t mean that he won’t attempt to upend the Israeli leader’s visit. This year, for the very first time, New York will have a mayor who is on the side of violent demonstrators—not the men and women in blue safeguarding law and order on city streets.
The playbook is well-established. In the past two years, Netanyahu’s attendance at the General Assembly has been marked by angry pro-Hamas protests. Additionally, in common with other cities around the country and the world, New York has regularly been the site of demonstrations where the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah have been proudly displayed alongside slogans urging Israel’s destruction, together with antisemitic chants urging “Zionists” to “go back to Poland.”
For the very first time, a mayor might position himself on the side of violent demonstrators—not the men and women in blue safeguarding law and order.
Since Mamdani assumed office in January, these protests have become more brazen. At least three pro-Hamas protests have been permitted outside synagogues in the boroughs of Queens, Manhattan and Brooklyn. Rather than condemning and preventing these violations of freedom of worship—perhaps because that is a value that is too “American” for an Islamist like Mamdani to stomach—he has encouraged them, asserting that “these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
That, of course, applies only to Jewish institutions, not Muslim ones like the Shia Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens, where Mamdani has cultivated a close relationship with its Holocaust denying imam, Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani.
When Netanyahu arrives in New York this September, protesters will be buoyed by the knowledge that they have the backing of the mayor and his administration. At a time when the pro-Hamas movement globally is training activists in the techniques of “direct action”—otherwise known as “violence” to you and me—it is reasonable to expect that these demonstrations will be the most febrile so far.
Representatives of nations like Russia, Iran, China and Turkey can nevertheless rest assured that they will not be subjected to the same treatment as the Israeli premier. Anyone attempting to interfere with the passage of their motorcades along First Avenue will surely be frowned upon by the mayor.
The irony of the most Jewish city outside of Israel being run by an antisemite committed to Israel’s destruction is often commented on, and let’s also admit that part of the reason for that outcome is that a significant minority of New York Jews voted for Mamdani, just as some Jews in Vienna voted for the legendary antisemitic Mayor Karl Lueger at the beginning of the 20th century. Like Mamdani, Lueger maintained relationships with certain prominent Jews when it was politically useful. “I decide who is a Jew,” he famously said. Mamdani is following suit.
Even so, pro-Mamdani Jews do not speak for the city’s Jewish population and certainly not for the myriad Jewish organizations based there. In their approach to Mamdani, these groups have adopted a tone implying that while he is a problem, he is still someone they can do business with.
Frankly, that needs to stop. The mayor of New York City believes that Israel has no right to exist as a Jewish state and that synagogues are fair game for his pro-Hamas base whenever they host events related to Israel.
Pragmatism, which comes naturally to Jewish politicians, will fail in this case.
The only option is for New York’s Jewish leaders to boycott Mamdani and his allies while boosting his critics inside the city government, like Menin and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. Yes, it will be a long four years, but that is the price to be paid when dealing with a mayor and a man like this one.
Either he will be defeated or we will.
