New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a multimillion-dollar antisemitism strategy that boosts funding and creates a task force while refusing to define the hate, drawing sharp rebukes from Jewish leaders.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani announced the plan Tuesday afternoon as part of a broader push he framed as a commitment to Jewish New Yorkers’ safety. The strategy creates an Interagency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and sharply increases city spending on hate-crime work.
Fox News reported that the framework raises annual funding to combat hate crimes from $3 million to $29 million, sets cooperation pathways among the NYPD, the Office for Prevention of Hate Crimes, and the Commission on Human Rights, and designates $2 million for a Queens Holocaust memorial plus $2.5 million for the Center for New Jewish Culture in Brooklyn.
The same document states the administration will not adopt any existing definition of antisemitism. “New York City can and will leverage all of the tools at its disposal to combat antisemitism effectively without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate,” the framework says. It adds that federal hate crimes statutes do not adopt a standalone definition of discrimination either.
That choice sits at the center of the backlash. Critics say money and task forces mean little if City Hall will not name the hate or confront the anti-Israel propaganda they say is driving much of it. The gap lands harder against the city’s own crime numbers.
Antisemitic acts make up the largest share of New York City’s tracked hate crimes in 2026, roughly 9 percent of the total, according to NYPD reporting. In the first eight months of 2026 the city recorded a 16 percent overall hate-crime uptick over the prior year.
Hate crimes against Jews stood at 181 incidents. One hundred thirty-one of those were felonies. By comparison, the city logged 29 incidents in the “homosexual” category and 21 against Muslims. The disparity is stark, and it is the backdrop against which Mamdani’s refusal to define antisemitism is being judged.
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has faced repeated scrutiny over his posture toward the Jewish community and Israel. That record includes earlier backlash over anti-Israel rhetoric as antisemitic incidents climbed.
In the strategy document Mamdani wrote: “My administration has a responsibility to ensure New York City remains a place where Jewish New Yorkers can live their lives peacefully and safely, where they can walk down the street, enter their houses of worship and build their lives knowing that this city will stand with them.”
He continued: “But too many Jewish New Yorkers have told me that they are no longer certain that promise can be taken for granted.” He also pledged to “fight antisemitism with urgency and resolve” and called the strategy “an important milestone: a clear commitment from New York City government and a roadmap for the meaningful work ahead.”
Reporting on the rollout noted he did not formally recognize the existence of Israel as he unveiled the plans. The document itself acknowledges numerous “useful” definitions of antisemitism already exist, then stipulates the administration will adopt none of them.
Mamdani’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Moshe Spern, president of United Jewish Teachers, told the New York Post he met with the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism in July and laid out clear needs.
"I sat with the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism in July and told them what Jewish teachers and families need: a definition of the hate, an honest reckoning with anti-Zionism, and real security for synagogues and schools. What the mayor announced today does none of that,"
Spern added: “Quoting the Talmud while refusing to name Zionism and putting $1 million in security across every house of worship in New York City is not a strategy. It is a disappointment.”
Those demands, a definition, a reckoning with anti-Zionism, and concrete security, track the same concerns that have followed Mamdani through other high-profile controversies, including the moment Netanyahu called him out by name at the UN for fueling antisemitism.
Moshe Davis, executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism, gave Mamdani some credit for using parts of his proposals. He still rejected the core approach.
"It seems to make a conscious effort to erase the connection between the violence against Jews we are seeing in our city and the anti-Israel propaganda clearly fueling it,"
Davis said a report on antisemitism that “ignores what is driving much of the hate and violence against Jews is tone-deaf and dangerous.”
When the person running the city’s dedicated antisemitism office calls the product tone-deaf and dangerous, the political problem is no longer abstract. It is internal.
The pattern fits a larger stretch of public anger at City Hall, from the fury over a symbolic 9/11 pen handed to a former al Qaeda defense lawyer to other moments that left victims’ families and mainstream New Yorkers cold.
The proposal’s concrete pieces are real: the funding jump to $29 million, the new Interagency Task Force, the agency cooperation pathways, and the millions earmarked for the Queens memorial and the Brooklyn cultural center. Those are measurable commitments.
What remains unmeasured is the thing Spern and Davis both flagged. The strategy spends heavily while declining to define antisemitism, declining to grapple publicly with anti-Zionism, and declining to draw a straight line from anti-Israel agitation to the violence Jewish New Yorkers are reporting.
Mamdani has also drawn bipartisan condemnation in separate settings, including when he was caught grinning during a 9/11 reading of the names. The through-line critics see is a mayor quick with process and funding announcements, slower to meet the community on the substance of the threat.
His political circle has kept the pressure high from the left as well, with figures such as the guests at a recent socialist leaders breakfast underscoring the ideological lane he occupies. That lane has rarely prioritized the definition fight Jewish leaders are demanding now.
New Yorkers watching the hate-crime totals do not need another roadmap that celebrates its own refusal to name the problem. They need a city government willing to say what antisemitism is, where it is coming from, and what will actually stop it.