Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked the Oct. 7 anniversary by accusing Israel of genocide, a statement Israeli envoy Danny Danon called an effort to hijack the day of mourning.
On the third anniversary of the Hamas-led attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a public statement that named the Israeli dead, then pivoted hard into charges that the Israeli government is running a “devastating, ongoing genocide” in Gaza.
Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon told JNS the mayor’s message was not remembrance. It was, he said, an attempt to seize a day of Jewish mourning and turn it into another propaganda strike on Israel.
The backlash came fast from Jewish organizations, Israeli-American groups, an Orthodox rabbi, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, and commentator Ben Shapiro. They argued the mayor used the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle anti-Israel talking points.
Danon did not soften the comparison. He said Mamdani’s approach resembled “turning Sept. 11 into a day of mourning for al-Qaeda terrorists.”
"an attempt to hijack the anniversary of Oct. 7 and turn it into yet another propaganda attack against Israel."
Danon added, “We will not let this happen,” and pledged that Israel would remember the murdered and “never forget who was behind this massacre.” Hamas has been a U.S.-designated terror organization since 1997. The Oct. 7 assault killed civilians, featured sexual violence and hostage-taking, and remains the bloodiest day for Jews since the Holocaust in the accounts of the critics who answered Mamdani.
That 9/11 framing lands with extra weight for New Yorkers still alert to symbolism around terror anniversaries, including later fights over how City Hall handles 9/11 remembrance gestures tied to the mayor’s orbit.
Mamdani’s statement opened with pain. “This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of Oct. 7,” he said. He wrote that Hamas “killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others” and that New Yorkers “grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.”
Then the turn. “The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” Mamdani continued. “It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children.”
He claimed more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed “since the so-called ceasefire,” described bombs on ambulances, drone strikes on residential buildings and journalists, and food aid turned away. He told New Yorkers their “tax dollars fund these war crimes” and closed by rejecting “occupation and apartheid” and “federal government” “complicity with every arms shipment.”
Ben Shapiro tallied the balance: “49 words in tribute to the Jews murdered on Oct 7” against “141 words on how Israel is responsible for everything and the only answer is to hand more power, money and authority to those who wish to destroy Israel.”
Anti-Defamation League CEO and national director Jonathan Greenblatt zeroed in on what the statement refused to do. He noted the absence of the word “Jew” while the mayor moved from brief condolence into his standard case against Israel.
"On Oct. 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies and took hostages."
Greenblatt continued: “You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual anti-Zionist talking points.” He said the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel “deserves a mayor who can honor the dead without exploiting them.”
AIPAC labeled the remarks a “disgraceful moral failure.” The group said weaponizing “the anniversary of the mass murder and kidnapping of Israelis to amplify a modern blood libel against Israelis does nothing to promote peace” and “only fuels more violence and hate.”
The Republican Jewish Coalition was blunter. On “the three-year anniversary of the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust,” it said, “the mayor of New York chooses to spew Hamas propaganda.” The coalition called the statement “Vile” and said Mamdani “should be ashamed.”
Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders called it “disgusting and shameful to use Oct. 7 as an excuse to repeat Hamas’s talking points.” She added that terror enemies “will not prevail” and that her state stands with the Jewish people and prays for victims, families, and survivors.
The Israeli-American Council framed Oct. 7 as, “first and foremost, a day of mourning, remembrance and trauma” for Jewish and Israeli communities. On the third anniversary of “Hamas’s mass murder, mass rape, mass torture and mass hostage taking of over 1,200 Israelis,” the group said, Mamdani “chose, once again, to use the day to accuse Israel of ‘genocide.’”
"That claim is demonstrably false. The IDF has taken extraordinary steps to minimize civilian casualties, far beyond what the law of armed conflict requires, while fighting an enemy that systematically hides beyond women and children and uses civilians as human shields."
The council said this was “not a one-time lapse.” “Every year, on the anniversary of the day our community buries its dead, the mayor reaches for the same blood libel against the Jewish state.” It warned that “rhetoric like this doesn’t stay online” and matches “the kind of messaging that has fueled a documented rise in antisemitic incidents across New York City.”
Rabbi Marc Schneier, president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, said Mamdani “cannot give Jewish New Yorkers even a single day to mourn without gaslighting us and appropriating the trauma of Oct. 7.” Schneier argued the mayor “expresses sympathy at rising antisemitism while accusing Israel of deliberately killing children, bombing hospitals and committing ‘genocide,’” and that the rhetoric “fuels hostility toward Jewish New Yorkers.”
Patterns of contested crime and victim narratives around this mayor are not new to New York readers who watched him draw fire over rape statistics and definitions.
Mamdani’s official schedule paired the rhetoric with optics. He was set for a 7 p.m. “vigil in remembrance of Oct. 7,” then a 9 p.m. meeting with “Palestinian New Yorkers.” The statement offered no separate pause that kept the Israeli dead at the center without the genocide indictment that followed within the same text.
That sequencing fits a longer record already on the page in this episode’s reporting. Mamdani campaigned on having the Israeli prime minister arrested. A spokeswoman for him said synagogues violate international law when they host pro-Israel events. Critics read the anniversary statement as the same posture in anniversary clothing.
His national left-wing brand has been a steady theme in coverage of how he sells DSA-style politics as a midterm model, and in gatherings where socialist donors and organizers treat City Hall as home turf.
Readers tracking that lane also saw Alex Soros praise a socialist leaders breakfast tied to the mayor, another marker of the ideological company he keeps while Jewish New Yorkers asked for one clean day of mourning.
Mamdani has also spent capital attacking his own party’s consultant-and-donor class in the name of working people, a fight captured when he accused Democrats of serving insiders over voters. The Oct. 7 statement showed a different priority: converting a terror anniversary into an indictment of Israel and of American arms support.
The numbers inside the statement are the mayor’s. He used “more than 1,100” Israelis killed on Oct. 7; other voices in the same episode, including the Israeli-American Council, speak of more than 1,200. He assigned “more than 74,000” Palestinian deaths, “more than 21,000 children,” and “more than 1,400” since a “so-called ceasefire” to Israeli government “genocide” and “war crimes.” Critics rejected those frames as false and as blood libel, pointing to Hamas’s use of human shields and to IDF steps they say go beyond legal requirements.
None of the condemning statements treated the dispute as a mere tone problem. They treated it as a choice: on the anniversary of mass murder, rape, torture, and hostage-taking, the mayor of New York put the heavier word count and the sharper moral charge on Israel.
Danon’s “hijack” charge, Greenblatt’s “weaponizing” charge, AIPAC’s “blood libel” charge, and the Israeli-American Council’s “not a one-time lapse” charge all land on the same conduct. The mayor named the Israeli dead, then spent the rest of the message prosecuting the Jewish state.
Jewish New Yorkers asked for remembrance. They got a brief nod and a longer brief against Israel. A mayor who governs the largest Jewish community outside Israel can mourn the murdered without turning their anniversary into another campaign against the Jewish state.