New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday faced backlash from protesters gathered at his home, concerned over his stance on the Jewish people and Israel.
Footage from End Jew Hatred, the group that led the rally, appeared to show a few thousand protesters assembled across from Gracie Mansion, accusing the mayor of failing to target antisemitism and turning a blind eye to the rising hate that the city’s Jewish community is experiencing. Some called on Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) to remove the city’s first socialist mayor from office, amid outrage that he revoked the city’s use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, and scrapped his predecessor’s prohibition on city agencies engaging in the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel.
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“We are here not to be silent,” Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney with the Lawfare Project, said. “We are here because we stand for the truth and the truth to be heard.”
“We are not here to beg for protection,” Goldstein said, referencing a series of recent attacks on Jews. “We are here to demand equal protection. We are here because Jewish rights is civil rights.”
The rally came after a spate of antisemitic violence in the city, including what authorities described as a thwarted terrorist attack at a prominent synagogue earlier this month. Multiple synagogues, Jewish homes, and a car in Queens were vandalized with swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti in May as well. The incidents came after a man was arrested on charges of repeatedly ramming his car into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn in January, the same month a local man was arrested on charges of attacking a Queens rabbi on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Data from the New York City Police Department indicate that in 2025, the city’s Jewish community was the target of more hate crimes than all other target populations combined. NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said antisemitic incidents comprised 57% of reported hate crimes, despite Jewish New Yorkers making up roughly 10% of the city’s population.
Mamdani has often issued statements condemning antisemitic attacks and chose not to revoke former Mayor Eric Adams’ creation of the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism when he assumed office in January. Mamdani tapped Phylisa Wisdom to lead the office in February.
“This is a disgusting and heartbreaking act of antisemitism, and it has no place in our beautiful city,” Mamdani said last November, when vandals attacked a Jewish day school in Brooklyn and painted a swastika on the window.
But he has continued to come under fire from critics, including for refusing to condemn the antisemitic phrase “globalize the intifada,” being reluctant to condemn Hasan Piker, an influencer who holds antisemitic views, and for at one point appearing to question whether Hamas should disarm and relinquish its leadership role in Gaza.
He has also been pressed over his response to demonstrators who say they are supporting Palestinian rights, including after protesters targeted worshipers at Upper East Side’s Park East Synagogue in Manhattan. Protests broke out at the synagogue last year and again sparked earlier this month, with some demonstrators being accused of carrying Hezbollah flags in the most recent demonstrations.
“An antisemitic mob gathered outside Park East Synagogue last night to chant ‘Death to the IDF’ and ‘Globalize the Intifada,’” Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-KY) said last November. “How did Zohran Mamdani respond? He hid behind his spokesperson, who tepidly ‘discouraged’ the mob’s language.”
On Tuesday, protesters at Gracie Mansion criticized Mamdani’s oversight of the situation, expressing concern that his wife liked Instagram posts that appeared to cheer Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israeli civilians, and illustrated an essay by an author who described the Oct. 7 attack as “spectacular” and called Jewish Israelis “rootless soulless ghouls.”
“Something is deeply, deeply wrong,” Goldstein told the crowds. “What happened outside Park East is not normal. What happened in Brooklyn is not normal. We have to stop pretending this is a new normal.”
A number of popular Jewish influencers spoke at the rally, including Zach Sage Fox, Ghazal Mizrahi, whose parents are Jewish refugees from Iran, Abraham Hamra, a Jewish refugee from Syria, and Tanya Tsikanovsky, whose parents are Jewish refugees from the Soviet Union.
Actor James Maslow told attendees that “the root of this massive and growing and spreading problem lies right here with Mayor Mamdani.”
“I was born in this city,” he said. “My father was born in this city, and my grandfather, Captain Robert Maslow, a Jewish American pilot who called New York home, helped protect this city and this country. Three generations of my family have loved New York, and that’s exactly why I’m standing here right now. New York has the largest population of Jews anywhere in the world outside of Israel. It has always been a place where Jewish families build lives.
“But something right now is not right,” Maslow said. “Mayor Mamdani has refused to condemn the term globalize the intifada on his very first day in office. … On his very first day in office, he revoked the city’s expanded definition of antisemitism, one of his first acts as mayor, with two-thirds of the Jewish population not voting for him, and so many more Jews in this city saying loud and clear that they do not feel safe.”
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Organizers estimated that thousands of people attended the rally. Videos showed large crowds waving Israel and U.S. flags, carrying signs that said “Anti-Zionism gets Jews killed,” and wearing stickers that read: “Make love, not intifada.”
The Washington Examiner reached out to city hall for comment, but did not receive a response.
