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Mamdani and antisemitism: the test is not whether he criticizes Israel

A careful look at Zohran Mamdani, antisemitism, "globalize the intifada," Israel criticism, and what Jewish New Yorkers are asking a mayor to understand.

About 8 min read

The Mamdani antisemitism debate should not be reduced to a slogan war: one side yelling "antisemite," the other yelling "smear." New York deserves a sharper test.

Zohran Mamdani is allowed to criticize Israel. Jewish New Yorkers are allowed to ask why a mayoral candidate struggled to condemn language many Jews hear as a call for violence. Those two sentences can both be true.

TL;DR

The lazy version says: Mamdani criticizes Israel, so he must be antisemitic. That is wrong. The equally lazy version says: Mamdani supports Palestinian rights, so every Jewish concern is bad-faith weaponization. That is wrong too.

The serious version asks whether his politics can make room for the lived reality of Jewish New Yorkers: anti-Jewish hate crimes, synagogue security, a post-October 7 threat environment, and the way some anti-Israel slogans do not land as abstract liberation language to Jews who have seen civilians murdered under those words.

Criticism of Israel is not the test

Any useful standard has to begin here: Israel is a state. Its prime minister, military, courts, coalition politics, settlement policy, Gaza policy, police conduct, and rhetoric can be criticized like those of any other state. That includes fierce criticism.

Even the IHRA working definition used by the U.S. State Department says that criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, which is more protective of anti-Zionist speech, also says evidence-based criticism of Israel as a state is not antisemitic in itself.

Not antisemitism by itself

Opposing Netanyahu, supporting Palestinian statehood, backing nonviolent boycotts, or calling a policy unjust.

These are political positions. Argue them with evidence.

Where the line can be crossed

Holding Jews collectively responsible, using classic antisemitic tropes, excusing violence against Jewish civilians, or treating Jewish self-determination as uniquely illegitimate.

That is where politics starts carrying an older hatred.

What Mamdani has actually said

The public record is mixed, which is why a clean caricature does not work. NBC News reported that Mamdani described antisemitism as "a real issue in our city" and said the next mayor should focus on tackling it. In the same controversy, he also appeared to defend or soften the phrase "globalize the intifada" by saying he heard in it a desire for Palestinian equality and rights.

In a later Jewish Telegraphic Agency interview, Mamdani said he would protect Jewish New Yorkers "on the street, on the subway, and in their synagogues" and proposed increasing funding to combat and prevent hate crimes by 800 percent, with an emphasis on preventing antisemitic hate crimes.

Those commitments should be taken seriously. So should the fears that made those commitments necessary.

Why "globalize the intifada" became the flashpoint

In the Bulwark interview covered by NBC News, Mamdani was asked about "globalize the intifada." He said that what he heard in many uses of such language was "a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights." He also pointed to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's Arabic use of the word "intifada" in material about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

"Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize 'globalize the intifada' is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors."

(U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum statement, quoted by NBC News)

The museum's objection matters because context matters. "Intifada" can literally mean uprising. But in modern Jewish memory, the First and Second Intifadas are not just dictionary entries. They are associated with bombings, shootings, stabbings, buses, cafes, and civilians. A mayoral candidate does not have to ban a word to understand why many Jews hear "globalize" plus "intifada" as a threat.

Mamdani later shifted. CNN reported that he told business leaders he would discourage use of the phrase, understood why it is seen by many Jews as a call to violence, and recognized why it is painful and triggering. That was better than the original answer. But the original answer still revealed the trust problem: Jewish fear had to be explained to him after the damage was done.

The Jewish-state question is different, but related

Mamdani has also drawn criticism for declining to say Israel should exist specifically as a Jewish state. CBS New York quoted him explaining his position this way:

"My inability to say what Rabbi [Ammiel] Hirsch would like me to say comes from a belief that every state should be of equal rights, whether we're speaking about Israel or Saudi Arabia, or anywhere in the world."

(Zohran Mamdani, quoted by CBS New York)

That is not the same thing as saying "Jews are evil" or repeating a blood libel. A person can object to ethno-national states in general. But Jewish New Yorkers are also allowed to hear something missing. After centuries of stateless vulnerability, expulsions, quotas, pogroms, and genocide, the Jewish-state question is not an academic seminar prompt for many Jews. It is a question about whether Jewish collective safety counts as legitimate too.

The problem is not that Mamdani says "equal rights." Equal rights are necessary. The problem is whether his framework has room for Jewish peoplehood and Jewish vulnerability, or only for Jews as private religious individuals who must detach from Zionism before their fears become legible.

New York is not a theoretical city

This debate is happening in New York, not in a classroom exercise. The city has the largest Jewish population outside Israel, and anti-Jewish hate crimes are not marginal in the data. New York City's official 2024 Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes report said anti-Jewish bias made up the highest proportion of hate-crime complaints in 2024: 344 complaints, or 53 percent of the total.

A separate city report from the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism said anti-Jewish hate crimes constituted 54 percent of all hate crimes in 2024 and 62 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Whatever one thinks of Israel, that is the local governing context.

A better test for Mamdani and his critics

The question should not be, "Can a Muslim socialist who supports Palestinian rights be trusted with Jewish safety?" That framing is ugly and bigoted. The question should be the same for every candidate:

  • Will he condemn violence against Jews without turning the sentence into a debate about Israel?
  • Will he reject slogans that many Jews reasonably hear as threats, even if some supporters intend them differently?
  • Will he distinguish Israeli officials from Jewish New Yorkers, synagogues, schools, students, and businesses?
  • Will his administration collect and publish hate-crime data clearly?
  • Will he protect houses of worship and Jewish institutions without making them beg for basic security?
  • Will he call out antisemitism on the left as plainly as antisemitism on the right?
  • Will critics avoid anti-Muslim bigotry and judge him by evidence instead of identity?

That last question matters. Mamdani has described anti-Muslim threats against him. Those threats are vile. Fighting antisemitism cannot require excusing Islamophobia, and fighting Islamophobia cannot require minimizing antisemitism. A city with Jews and Muslims under threat needs leaders who can hold both truths at once.

Selected sources

Sources below prioritize mainstream reporting, official city data, and competing antisemitism-definition frameworks.