(New York Jewish Week) — Though he was elected to represent Astoria, Queens, in New York’s State Assembly, Zohran Mamdani — who last week pulled off a stunning upset in New York City’s mayoral primary — has called the Palestinian cause “central to my identity,” both in and out of politics.

Mamdani consistently and proudly associates with the pro-Palestinian movement in high-profile settings across New York City. Take Saturday night, for instance, when he took the stage with Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by the Trump administration, at comedian Ramy Youssef’s show at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side.

So it’s no surprise that as Mamdani aims to become mayor of New York — the city with the largest Jewish population in the world — that Jewish New Yorkers are closely scrutinizing what he has said about Jews, Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.

Below is a round-up of what Mamdani has said on a range of Israel and Jewish-related topics in a variety of interviews that have made headlines.

Israel’s right to exist

During the long mayoral primary campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that Israel has a right to exist. But he usually qualifies that statement by adding that Israel is flaunting its responsibilities under international law, based on its treatment of Palestinians.

He has also been asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. As he stated at a town hall in May with the UJA-Federation of New York, co-moderated by the New York Jewish Week’s Lisa Keys: It should exist “with equal rights for all.”

He later said on a local Fox channel’s morning show: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”

BDS movement against Israel

As he said at the UJA-Federation town hall, he supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which lobbies for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Pro-Israel groups have fought a decadeslong battle to marginalize the movement, which its critics say seeks the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.

“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” he said.

Academic boycott of Israeli universities

While a student at Bowdoin College — where he co-founded the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter — Mamdani agreed with the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions in 2014.

“Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms,” Mamdani wrote in an op-ed in the school’s student newspaper, published in 2014, the year he graduated. “Israeli universities give priority admission to soldiers, discriminate against Palestinian students, and have developed remote-controlled bulldozers for the Israeli Army’s home demolitions.”

He added that the boycott “is decidedly not aimed at individual persons.”

“In other words, a professor from the University of Tel Aviv can still present research at an ASA conference, provided that he or she does so as an individual scholar and not expressly as a representative of Israeli academic institutions or of the Israeli government,” Mamdani wrote.

Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza

Mamdani’s first statement about the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which he issued the day after, expressed mourning for “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.”

He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “declaration of war” will “undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering… The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”

Since then, Mamdani has consistently referred to Israel’s retaliatory actions in Gaza as a “genocide” — a word he had used to describe previous Israeli military conflicts, long before Oct. 7. (More on that below.) He has also said that the United States, through its support of Israel, is “subsidizing a genocide.” Israel denies it is carrying out a genocide.

At a rally in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, some local members of the Democratic Socialists of America — of which Mamdani is a member — celebrated Hamas, which killed close to 1,200 Israelis and abducted 251 people on Oct. 7.

Mamdani condemned the rally on Oct. 10, telling Politico: “My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life. I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally seeking to make light of such deaths.”

Attacks on Jews in D.C. and Colorado

Mamdani also condemned the shooting outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in May that killed two staffers of the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C.

“My thoughts are with the victims and their families—as well as all those who must contend with the appalling rise in antisemitic violence,” he wrote in a statement on X.

He also condemned the firebombing of an event in Boulder, Colorado, for Israeli hostages, and he again commented on it on Monday, after the death of a woman injured in the incident — including in his statement a phrase often used by Jews after the death of a loved one.

“I am heartbroken by the news from Colorado where Karen Diamond, a victim of the vicious attack earlier this month, has passed away,” he wrote on X. “May Karen’s memory be a blessing and a reminder that we must constantly work to eradicate hatred and violence.”

Tackling antisemitism

On the campaign trail, Mamdani has stated that he wants to work to combat hate crimes across New York City, including those on Jews.

Just before the primary, he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” alongside Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive who finished third in the ranked-choice primary; the two had cross-endorsed each other in the race. In the appearance, Mamdani claimed that the city is experiencing a “crisis of antisemitism” and said that he would like to create a Department of Community Safety that would focus on anti-hate programming.

“Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about — it’s something that we have to tackle,” he said on the show. “We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.”

In the UJA-Federation town hall, Mamdani also said that he would be “proud” to appoint a senior adviser to tackle antisemitism in New York.

The phrase “Globalize the intifada”

Mamdani has in multiple interviews declined to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” a phrase used by many in the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses and beyond. The word “intifada” directly translates to “shaking off,” but most Jews associate it with two violent Palestinian uprisings, which led to several terrorist attacks across Israel from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.

When asked about the phrase earlier this month, Mamdani said “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” U.S. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York strongly rebuked Mamdani on the topic. (Notably, Jewish pro-Israel politicians such as U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Jerry Nadler, both of New York, have both praised Mamdani since his primary win.)

On Sunday, Mamdani clarified that the term is “not language that I use,” but still declined to disavow it.

“The language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights,” Mamdani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mamdani used similar language in an interview with The Bulwark posted on June 17. That led Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, to write in a post on X, “Globalize the Intifada is an explicit call for violence. Globalize the Intifada celebrates and glorifies savagery and terror.”

The Holocaust 

While Mamdani has commemorated the Holocaust on social media, he took heat for declining to sign onto a resolution memorializing the genocide in the state assembly in May.

“He absolutely supports the Holocaust Memorial Day resolution,” campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein said at the time. “He had to narrow down the capacity” during a busy campaign season, Epstein added.

Mamdani said in the UJA-Federation town hall that would like to see more Holocaust education in New York City schools.

Hasan Piker interview

In April, Mamdani sat for a three-hour interview with popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has repeatedly called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” compared Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan, and defended Hamas’ attack on the Nova music festival, in which the Palestinian militants killed hundreds of Israelis and committed widespread sexual assault. On one of his shows, Piker told off a listener who condemned the massacre, saying “Bloodthirsty violent pig dog, suck my d***.”

A number of progressive politicians, including U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California, have also appeared with Piker. When asked about Piker, Mamdani said, “I am willing to speak to each and every person about this campaign.”

Wearing a kaffiyeh

This week, a video of Mamdani speaking in Queens in 2023 went viral, thanks in part to Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who criticized Mamdani for eating food with his hands in the video. “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World,” Gill wrote on X on Sunday.

Similar videos attacking Mamdani led one Jewish group, the Nexus Project, to object that many of Mamdani’s critics are “trafficking in Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia, and distorting our broader political discourse.”

In the video, Mamdani sheds more light on his views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The son of two India-born parents — filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani — the candidate spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 7.

“Specifically growing up in South Africa post-apartheid, it felt as if one of the most natural things to wear around my body was a kaffiyeh,” he said, referencing the scarf that Palestinians have long worn and which has since become a symbol of resistance to Israel.

In the interview, Mamdani calls discussing Palestinian issues “entirely taboo” in U.S. politics and criticizes PEPs — politicians who he says are “progressive except for Palestine.”

He also says that he believes the U.S. has put Palestinian lives “in jeopardy” for “decades.”

Arresting Netanyahu

“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani said to former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in December. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law.”

In June, he said the same thing at B’nai Jeshurun, a large synagogue in Manhattan.

“My answer is the same whether we are speaking about Vladimir Putin or Netanyahu,” he said. “I think that this should be a city that is in compliance with international law.”

The International Criminal Court, headquartered in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu — along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif — in November, accusing him of war crimes. Given that the United States is not a party to the ICC, it would be highly unlikely that the mayor of New York would be able to arrest Netanyahu.

The Holy Land Five

Before his political career, Mamdani released rap songs under the monikers Young Cardamom and, later, Mr. Cardamom.

In one 2017 song, “Salam,” he praised the “Holy Land Five” — the heads of a former Islamic charity organization founded in the U.S. who were convicted of aiding Hamas. In 2001, the U.S. government designated the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development a terrorist organization and seized its assets; some have argued that the trial was based on “hearsay” evidence.

“My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up,” Mamdani raps in the track.

“Not On Our Dime!” act

The Holy Land Five story concerned foreign funding of players in the Middle East conflict. Mamdani may have drawn a lesson from the case: He is the lead sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” which he proposed in the New York State Assembly in May 2023. Its stated goal is to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”

Sixty-six lawmakers, a majority of the Democratic state caucus, signed onto a letter condemning the proposal. “Its purpose is to attack Jewish organizations that have wide ranging missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans,” the letter read.

As Politico reported, Mamdani highlighted the act in campaign pamphlets during the primary campaign.

(JTA) — Many details of Zohran Mamdani’s stunning win in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday are yet to become clear, including exactly how many voters ranked him first and whom he will face in November’s general election.

But whatever happens in November, Mamdani already has earned the most support of any U.S. politician who endorses the movement to boycott Israel. His victory offers a clear sign that backing the movement, known as BDS, is hardly the red line that its critics long tried to make it.

Mamdani drew at least 432,000 votes, according to a preliminary tally, to top a crowded field of mayoral hopefuls. The second-place candidate, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, received fewer than 362,000.

Mamdani earned nearly twice as many votes as either of the two BDS supporters in Congress, Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib and Minnesota’s Ilhan Omar, received in any of their general-election wins in much smaller districts.

The clear conclusion: In the city with the most Jews in the entire world, backing the boycott of Israel is hardly an impediment to electoral success.

“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence, and I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” said Mamdani at a recent forum at the UJA-Federation of New York.

The BDS movement — short for boycott, divest and sanctions — was launched in 2005 by a coalition of Palestinian civil society organizations. It calls for boycotts, divestment and sanctions as a form of non-violent pressure on Israel for the “liberation” of Palestinians.

Jewish groups see it as unfairly singling Israel out for pressure, and say the movement’s ultimate goal  — not a two-state solution but a “free Palestine” that doesn’t acknowledge a Jewish state — is essentially calling for Israel’s demise.

Jewish and pro-Israel groups devoted themselves to tracking BDS’ inroads on college campuses and opposing candidates who said they supported the movement. The American Israel Public Affairs Committee actively campaigns against the movement, lobbying for laws that make boycotting Israel illegal and identifying candidates who appear unsympathetic. 

In 2022, a Super PAC associated with AIPAC said it was  “proud to have played a role” in defeating Yuh-Line Niou, a BDS supporter, in a Democratic primary for the U.S. Congress seat in New York’s 10th district. The winner of that primary, Levi Strauss heir Dan Goldman, went on to win the general election.  

Over the last two decades, the movement has notched some concrete wins, including endorsements from some schools and universities in the United States as well as some private companies.

But its most sweeping impact may have been found in the opposition it engendered. Joe Biden summarized the position of mainstream Democrats when he was running for president in 2020.

“The calls here in the United States to boycott, divest from, and sanction Israel are wrong. Period,” Biden said in a Jewish Telegraphic Agency questionnaire. “The BDS movement singles out Israel — home to millions of Jews — in a way that is inconsistent with the treatment of other nations, and it too often veers into anti-Semitism, while letting Palestinians off the hook for their choices.”

The strategy to make Israel boycotts illegal was also widely successful. Dozens of states have passed laws that make it illegal to do business with companies that boycott Israel and its settlements. In 2016, then Gov. Cuomo ordered stated agencies to divest themselves of companies and organizations aligned with BDS.

Pro-Palestinian groups, bolstered by the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, say such moves restrict constitutionally protected rights of freedom of expression and association.

In an interview with the journalist Peter Beinart in the left-wing Jewish magazine Jewish Currents, Mamdani discussed his support for BDS.  

“I’m someone who’s been supportive of it, as I’ve been supportive of nonviolent movements to create accountability when it comes to international law,” said Mamdani.  “And I think it’s important to just have that consistency, because ultimately, we are being told to accept that which is unacceptable.”

Supporters of BDS hailed his victory. 

“A socialist, BDS supporter, and son of immigrants just toppled a pro-Israel machine politician,” the anti-Zionist site Mondoweiss wrote last night on X.  

Mamdani has received endorsements and votes from some Jewish groups in New York, including Jewish Voice for Peace Action, a group that describes itself as anti-Zionist. JVP calls BDS “a principled, non-violent set of tactics led by Palestinian civil society and modeled after the international campaign that brought about an end to South African apartheid in 1994.”

Pro-Israel and anti-BDS critics of Mamdani understood — and lamented — the significance of his win.

“I hope this puts to rest the notion that Jews control politics. We couldn’t even elect a non-antisemite in the most Jewish city in America,”  Bethany Shondark Mandel, a pro-Israel influencer and columnist, wrote on X.  

“Along with all New Yorkers, the Jews of New York City are right to be concerned today. New Yorkers deserve a mayor who fights antisemitism, not incites it,” Sacha Roytman, CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, said Tuesday night in a statement. Mamdani’s “disturbing record of supporting BDS and legitimizing ‘globalize the intifada’ rhetoric should be disqualifying for public office in a city home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel.”

In the first hours of 2020, I called the NYPD to confirm that a Jewish 15 year-old had been held up at knifepoint on a public bus.

“Wow. There’s a lot of this stuff happening. What the hell,” was the officer’s response.

He confirmed the incident, and told me I had missed another: in South Williamsburg, two women had approached a 22 year-old Hasidic man. One grabbed his cellphone and punched him in his throat. The other yelled, ““F—— you Jew” and “I will kill you Jews.”

The Jewish community was reeling and afraid. Four days earlier, a man had stabbed multiple Hasidim at a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York. Long before anyone had heard of COVID-19, ADL vice president Oren Segal characterized the spate of antisemitic violence in New York as “an epidemic.” Five days later, tens of thousands marched in the streets of New York City to protest.

This pain and protest came to mind on Monday when the FBI released its 2020 hate crimes report. A casual glance at the report offers a bright spot — anti-Jewish hate crimes dropped 29 percent last year from 2019.

But hate crimes, overall, are on the rise, and 2020 was an anomalous year for crime generally because of the pandemic — plus, more recent reports from New York, Los Angeles and other police departments show a 2021 surge after the Israel-Gaza war in May.

This new FBI data, like all hate crime data, are somewhat helpful for understanding patterns, but do not even begin to accurately reflect the size and scale of the problem.

Policymakers, academics, civil rights groups and other experts I spoke to about the data all described a decades-long hate crime tracking enterprise plagued by system failures.

Thousands of U.S. police departments, year after year, don’t take hate crimes seriously enough to track and report them at all. Individuals who are most likely to be attacked because of their race, religion or sexual orientation often deeply distrust the authorities and don’t report hate crimes when they occur. And resources allocated to fighting hate crimes, distributed largely based on lawmakers’ understanding of available data, often don’t end up where they are needed most.

When data that directly affects policy isn’t accurate, everyone suffers.

Though anti-Jewish incidents comprise a small fraction of nationally reported hate crimes, in New York City, Jews are the No. 1 target, followed by LGBTQ people, Blacks and Asians. But the natures of the crimes differ sharply among these groups.

The majority — 55 percent — of anti-Jewish incidents reported to the FBI in 2020 were property crimes, like vandalism. Another 35 percent involved intimidation, and 11 percent assault.

This is not a new phenomenon. In general, “hate crimes directed against individuals are more numerous than property, but not so for the Jewish community,” Michael Lieberman of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told me.

“Jewish community centers, synagogues and day schools are more frequently targeted,” he added. “And that is just because the Jewish community has lots of institutions that are pretty public, pretty easily identifiable.”

There was a total of 7,759 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 2020, a 6 percent increase from 2019; 676 of those — roughly 9 percent — were anti-Jewish bias incidents, down from 953 — 13 percent of the total — the previous year.

About a quarter of the nation’s anti-Jewish hate crimes took place in New York. The NYPD said anti-Jewish hate crimes in the five boroughs were down 52 percent in 2020 from 2019, something Deborah Lauter, head of the city’s hate crime office, attributed in part to the pandemic. “There was less interaction,” she told me, and thus fewer opportunities for hate crimes.

With notable exceptions, like 2018’s heinous mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, visibly Orthodox Jews are the most frequent victims of violent anti-Jewish hate crimes. The reason is readily apparent: most Jewish Americans, without a kippah or obviously religious attire, pass as just plain white.

Members of other minority groups do not have the same luxury. The lion’s share of hate crimes reported in 2020 — 2,755 incidents, or 36 percent — were anti-Black. There were also 928 anti-LGBTQ hate crimes, 773 anti-white, 274 anti-Asian and 104 anti-Islamic incidents reported.

While the total number of reported hate crimes in 2020 increased by 6 percent, the number of anti-Asian and anti-Black hate crimes surged 70 percent and 40 percent, respectively.

“To see such a significant increase in such a quick time, and especially to see the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans and African Americans,” is notable, said Phyllis Gerstenfeld, chair of Criminal Justice at California State University, Stanislaus.

And the majority of anti-Black hate crimes targeted people, not property: 32 percent involved assault, 45 percent intimidation, and 23 percent property destruction, damage or vandalism.

The data on anti-Asian crimes are similar: 33 percent involved intimidation, 45 percent involved assault, 16 percent involved property. Anti-Islamic, anti-LGBTQ and even anti-white hate crimes show a similar pattern.

More troubling, though, is that the FBI data only capture the tip of the iceberg. The report has serious limitations, and those limitations have serious implications.

Not a single expert I’ve interviewed expressed confidence in the FBI data’s accuracy.

“What we’ve seen over the course of 30 years is consistent under-reporting,” Lieberman told me.

While it can be helpful for identifying trends, Gerstenfeld said, “as far as trying to get a real handle on exactly how many hate crimes are happening out there, and exactly who the victims are, I don’t find that reliable in that regard at all.”

Lauter was more blunt: “The data is important, but it’s not pure.”

To compile its dataset, the FBI relies on individual police departments to identify, track and report the number of hate crimes that occur in their jurisdictions. Each year, thousands of agencies, including those of major cities, tell the FBI that zero hate crimes took place in their jurisdiction — and for 2020, 1 in 5 of police departments failed to provide hate crimes statistics to the FBI at all.

That brings us to what I call “The Miami Problem”: accurately collecting hate crime data requires that people targeted by hate trust the police. But in order for that trust to be established, police departments must first signal that they take hate crimes seriously.

“This year, and in many years in the past, the city of Miami has affirmatively reported that they have zero hate crimes,” Lieberman pointed out. “So if you live in Miami, and you’re in any way reluctant to report a hate crime anyway, why would you call the police?”

He added: “A large city that, year in and year out, does not report data to the FBI – or affirmatively reports zero hate crimes – does not inspire confidence that they are ready and able to address hate violence.”

Many of the most frequently targeted groups also have concerns about immigration status, general distrust of the police or cultural taboos that make them wary to report incidents to the authorities.

This leads to massive underreporting of hate crimes — with one significant exception: Jews.

Especially in New York, “the relationship between the Jewish community and police is exceptionally strong, a very positive relationship,” Lauter told me. “So that underreporting issue just does not exist.”

Lauter described an illuminating incident at a community meeting her office organized in Brooklyn. A Jewish leader said that what the city really needed to do to address hate crimes was increase police presence. A Black leader responded that this was the last thing his community wanted.

Both were incredulous. “The Jewish person was sort of taken aback, like they had never heard that narrative or had not paid attention to it,” Lauter recalled.

Understanding these differences — and what the data miss — is crucial. It affects not only what crimes get counted, but where resources meant to stop those crimes from occurring are allocated.

In other words, groups that have good relationships with police and other government agencies, and who effectively lobby for crimes against them to be counted and addressed — like the Jewish community — end up with more resources than those that do not.

Government officials tend to “do what looks good, without any consideration for what’s really going to work,” said Gerstenfeld, the Cal State expert. Better data is the first step to addressing this problem.

Lieberman, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, pointed to the Covid-19 Hate Crime Act — which calls for increased law enforcement training, hate crime hotlines and victim services — as a positive example of how documenting hate crimes, in this case involving Asian-Americans, can result in meaningful policy changes.

But training police departments and building community relationships with government agencies is bandaging a bullet wound while the gunman roams the streets.

“We need to do more in terms of education,” Lauter said, to address the sources of hate before they can fester and spread.

She cited the Jewish community’s advocacy of Holocaust education as an example of helping people understand the consequences of hate and the impact it can have on a community, and told me she’s been working with Asian American leaders to do more in schools as well.

Keeping the pressure on politicians and agencies to do more is vital. It’s also critical not to become so entranced by upticks or downswings in the data that we tune out the cries of those who are suffering.

“I know how unbelievably impacted people are individually when they are targeted by crime,” said Lauter.

It’s a healthy sign of democracy, she adds, when we “care about the populations that are most vulnerable to hate, and try to do something about it.”