Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the third anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre to accuse Israel of genocide, sparking outrage from Jewish leaders who say he weaponized a day of mourning.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released a statement on the third anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that condemned the killings, then pivoted hard into charges against the Jewish state. Jewish leaders answered with sharp rebuke, saying the mayor turned a day of grief into a political broadside.
WABC reported that the statement, issued Wednesday, called the Oct. 7 assault “horrific war crimes” while describing Israel’s campaign in Gaza as a “devastating, ongoing genocide.” The mayor was later booed on arrival at a Union Square vigil that night.
The city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel now has a mayor whose first Oct. 7 anniversary in office landed as an insult to many of those residents. Critics said the message recycled familiar anti-Israel lines on a date set aside for mourning.
Mamdani opened by noting the pain of the anniversary and the Hamas attack that, in his wording, killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. The rest of the statement pressed a different case.
He wrote that suffering “did not begin nor end that day” and continued through what he called the Israeli government’s “devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza,” claiming more than 74,000 Palestinians killed, including more than 21,000 children. He also said more than 1,400 Palestinians had been killed “even since the so-called ceasefire,” and that “our tax dollars fund these war crimes.”
"This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss. The suffering did not begin nor end that day. 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. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them, all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment. To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity."
Those figures and labels are the mayor’s claims. The WABC account separately noted the original Hamas attack killed nearly 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, and that Israel’s later military campaign in Gaza has produced thousands of Palestinian deaths. Mamdani’s text went further, framing Israeli conduct as genocide, apartheid, and war crimes met with American complicity.
The New York Post reported that he dedicated less than a quarter of the statement to the Oct. 7 attack itself, focused instead on criticizing Israel, cited Hamas-linked statistics in the critics’ view, and made no mention of Jews.
That omission mattered to Jewish organizations already watching the mayor’s record on Israel and antisemitism, including earlier fights over how City Hall defines the problem in its own plans.
Jewish groups have pressed him before when his antisemitism blueprint sidestepped hatred tied to Israel, and the anniversary statement fit the same pattern of critique they have raised for months.
Joe Potsanik of the New York Board of Rabbis called the statement insensitive at best. He said the reaction in his community was grimly predictable.
"I wish I could say people were surprised, but they weren't,"
Potsanik asked for something simpler than another policy fight on the anniversary itself.
"This is a day of mourning for us. Just give us that day. We can have all the other discussions, debates, on different days. But don't do it today."
The Anti-Defamation League struck harder. In a statement addressed to the mayor, the group noted he never said “Jews,” listed the atrocities Hamas-led attackers committed, and accused him of turning memorial day into a platform.
"@NYCMayor, not once do you say 'Jews.' On Oct. 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies and took hostages. You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual antizionist talking points. The city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel deserves a mayor who can honor the dead without exploiting them."
ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, in the Post’s account, voiced the same charge that the mayor was recycling anti-Zionist talking points on the date of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. The complaint is not abstract in a city where Jewish New Yorkers have watched rhetoric harden into street-level fear.
That fear has a recent paper trail. Reporting on an surge in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City has already tied rising incidents to backlash over anti-Israel rhetoric at the top of local politics.
Ambassador Ofir Akunis of the Israeli Consulate issued one of the bluntest replies. He said the consulate had invited Mamdani in the days before the anniversary to view Oct. 7 footage, and he framed the mayor’s words as contempt for the murdered.
"The mayor's statement is a disgrace, shame, and insult to the memory of those who were murdered on October 7. It is still not too late to attend our screening this evening of the October 7 footage and see with your own eyes, for the first time, the monsters you support,"
Akunis added that “anyone with a heart” should be ashamed of the mayor’s response, and closed with a direct moral charge.
"Mamdani, displaying a shocking lack of basic humanity, continues to spread antisemitic blood libels against the Jewish state. New York City should be appalled that its mayor shows such contempt for the memory of those who were murdered,"
Whether Mamdani accepted the screening invitation was not reported. The public record, as given, shows an invitation extended and a statement released that Israeli officials read as support for the attackers’ cause rather than clear solidarity with the victims.
Foreign leaders have already put his name in the same argument on a global stage, including when Netanyahu called out Mamdani at the UN over fueling antisemitism.
Mamdani’s schedule included appearances through the day and a vigil in Union Square on Wednesday night. WABC reported he was booed upon arrival. No crowd size or breakdown of who booed him appeared in the account, only the fact of the reception.
For a mayor who campaigned as a fierce defender of Palestinian rights, celebrates Jewish holidays in public, and still denounces Israel’s prime minister, the anniversary offered a test of proportion. He chose a statement that spent most of its force on Israel’s conduct and on American “complicity,” not on the Jewish dead of Oct. 7 or the hostages still bound up in that day.
City Hall has tried to walk a similar line before on domestic policy. Mamdani has pledged millions to fight antisemitism while refusing to define it, leaving Jewish critics unconvinced that the money matches the moral clarity the moment demands.
The pattern is consistent. On the calendar date that marks Hamas’s slaughter and kidnappings, New York’s mayor published a text that named “war crimes” by Hamas in passing and then leveled genocide, apartheid, and arms-shipment charges at Israel and Washington. Jewish leaders asked for one clean day of mourning. They did not get it.
When a mayor treats the anniversary of mass murder as another chance to indict the Jewish state, he tells grieving New Yorkers exactly where they stand in his order of concerns.