New York City's Jewish community leaders are publicly accusing Mayor Zohran Mamdani of contributing to a climate of hostility toward Jews, and say his response to a pair of hate-fueled stabbings on the Upper West Side was little more than a rehearsed script.
A 51-year-old man named Raul Morales allegedly drove a screwdriver into the chest of a Jewish man and knifed an Asian man in the back in two separate attacks blocks from Central Park on a Thursday afternoon. Morales allegedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" during the assaults, the New York Post reported. Police charged him Friday with attempted murder as a hate crime in the attack on the Jewish victim, Moshe Yezhak Grunhaus, 50, and with attempted murder, not classified as a hate crime, in the stabbing of Chok Sung, 57.
By Friday, Jewish leaders had gathered for a press conference that turned into a direct indictment of the mayor's record. Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, did not hold back.
"We're horrified and heartbroken by yesterday's attacks. But to be clear, we're no longer surprised."
That line, "no longer surprised", captures the depth of frustration among Jewish New Yorkers who say Mamdani has spent months singling out Israel and its supporters while offering only boilerplate reassurances when violence follows.
The stabbings happened minutes apart. Sung was knifed in the back first. Moments later, Grunhaus was stabbed in the chest with a screwdriver. Grunhaus was exiting a synagogue during Tisha B'Av, one of the most solemn days on the Jewish calendar, when Morales allegedly struck.
A witness reported that roughly 30 minutes after officers responded to the first stabbing, Morales was still in the area, randomly screaming "Islam!" Both victims were later described as being in stable condition.
Officers executed a search warrant on Morales' Upper West Side residence on Friday. Among the items seized: a Koran and a biography of Che Guevara. Law-enforcement sources told the Post that officers were also scouring the scene for video footage to strengthen the hate crime case.
Mamdani, for his part, did not address the attacks until after Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch posted details of the case. Multiple top city officials had already issued statements condemning the stabbings within two hours of the attacks. The mayor's eventual response struck Jewish leaders and critics as detached.
Mamdani told reporters that he wanted to "make clear that this is a city where we have no tolerance for hatred of any kind" and said he was "so relieved to hear that both of these victims are in stable condition." He added that early NYPD investigation indicated "mental health may have been a role" and that police were "evaluating whether both of these constitute hate crimes."
That evaluation had apparently already concluded by Friday afternoon, when prosecutors filed the hate crime charge against Morales in the Grunhaus attack. The gap between the mayor's hedging and the charging decision did not go unnoticed.
Goldstein drew a direct line between the mayor's public posture toward Israel and the environment Jewish residents now face on city streets. He told the Post that Mamdani's approach amounted to political calculation, not governance.
"When the mayor of New York repeatedly uses his platform to relentlessly single out and demonize Israel, the world's only Jewish state, and calls those who support it 'monsters,' he contributes to a climate in which Jewish New Yorkers are increasingly targeted and unsafe."
Goldstein was not done. He addressed Mamdani directly at the press conference.
"Mayor Mamdani, stop fanning the flames of hatred and division. The consequences are not abstract, they are playing out on our streets. But make no mistake, we are not going anywhere."
In a separate comment to the Post, Goldstein said, "A slick political strategy is not the way to govern the city." He added: "His words have meaning, and as the mayor of New York, you have incredible reach. You need to behave responsibly."
Mamdani's troubles with Jewish communities and the broader public are not new. His administration drew criticism earlier this month after a city-produced immigrant heritage map left out Italian, Irish, and Jewish neighborhoods, a controversy the mayor tried to pin on his predecessor.
Rabbi Dr. Ari Berman, president of Yeshiva University, offered one of the sharpest assessments. He told the Post that Mamdani had "absolutely failed" the city's Jewish residents.
"It's not that he's just not lowering it; he's raising it. He has absolutely failed."
Berman pointed to a specific recent episode: Mamdani's public statements against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which Berman described as a "rant." The mayor had threatened, via social media, to attempt to arrest Netanyahu over alleged war crimes if the Israeli leader visited Manhattan. He later acknowledged he lacked the legal authority to carry out the threat.
Berman posed a pointed question: "After Mamdani's rant this past week against the prime minister of the only Jewish state, do New Yorkers feel less safe or more safe? Do they feel unified or divided?"
The Netanyahu arrest threat was not an isolated incident in a pattern of provocative conduct. House Republicans recently demanded a DOJ probe of the Mamdani administration over a proposed meeting with Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, another move that raised questions about the mayor's judgment on foreign policy matters far outside his jurisdiction.
The criticism extended beyond New York's Jewish community. Danny Danon, Israel's Ambassador to the United Nations, issued a statement addressing Mamdani by name.
"Zohran Mamdani, your incitement is putting Jewish lives in danger in New York, home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel."
Danon continued: "You have spent months fueling hatred, demonizing Israel and legitimizing hostility toward Jews." He called on the mayor to "take responsibility for the consequences" and warned: "Every time you pour more fuel on this fire, you make violence more likely. Stop the incitement. Before more people get hurt."
State Assemblyman Micah Lasher, described as poised to become the next congressman from the district where the attacks occurred, struck a different tone, less accusatory, but no less urgent. He said he would "beseech all those in a position of power, including our mayor, to hear our cry from the heart, to please help take the temperature down."
Witnesses near the scene expressed shock that such violence could happen in their neighborhood. Fox News reported that Mamdani publicly called the stabbings "hateful and despicable", stronger language than his initial remarks, though the timing and context of that statement left many Jewish leaders unconvinced that the mayor grasps the weight of his own rhetoric.
Mamdani's tenure has produced a steady stream of controversies that collectively paint a picture of a mayor more interested in ideological posturing than in the basic obligations of the office. He has clashed with figures in his own party over his vow to defy the Supreme Court on immigration, a stance Senator John Fetterman warned could invite a constitutional crisis.
The contrast at the center of this story is straightforward. Mamdani found time to record a social-media video threatening to arrest a foreign head of state, a threat he later admitted he could not carry out. But when a man allegedly shouting "Allahu Akbar!" drove a screwdriver into a Jewish man's chest on the Upper West Side, the mayor waited for his police commissioner to speak first, then offered remarks that tracked closely with what Tisch had already said.
That sequence tells Jewish New Yorkers where they rank on the mayor's list of priorities. Goldstein, Berman, Danon, and Lasher all said as much in their own ways on Friday. The question now is whether Mamdani will treat their concerns as a governing obligation, or dismiss them as another political inconvenience.
His record on accountability has not inspired confidence. The mayor blamed rising rape statistics on an "expanded definition" rather than confronting the numbers directly, the kind of deflection that has become a hallmark of his administration.
Morales faces attempted murder charges, one of them classified as a hate crime. Both victims are alive. But the damage from these attacks extends well beyond two hospital beds on the Upper West Side. Jewish New Yorkers are asking a simple question: does their mayor see them as constituents to protect, or as a political problem to manage?
When the people you govern have to hold a press conference to beg you to stop making their city less safe, the answer is already clear.