Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries have ducked comment on Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s Oct. 7 Israel “genocide” blast as fellow Democrat Dan Goldman unloaded on the mayor.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack to accuse the Israeli government of an “ongoing genocide” in Gaza, briefly nodding to the massacre before turning most of his statement into a broad indictment of Israel and U.S. support.
Fox News reported that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had not responded to requests for comment on Mamdani’s remarks, even as both men issued their own separate statements marking the anniversary. Fellow New York Democrat Rep. Dan Goldman did not stay quiet. He tore into the mayor on X.
The silence from the top two Democrats in Congress left a clear political gap. A mayor of America’s largest city leveled disputed war-crimes charges on the anniversary of the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, and the party’s New York leaders treated the controversy as optional.
Mamdani posted on X on Wednesday. He acknowledged Hamas’s attack, then pivoted hard. The bulk of the message framed Israel’s military campaign as mass murder funded by American taxpayers.
In the post, Mamdani wrote:
"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,"
He kept going. He claimed more than 1,400 Palestinians had been killed “even since the so-called ceasefire,” described Israeli strikes on ambulances and residential buildings, and said New Yorkers’ tax dollars “fund these war crimes.”
The New York Post reported that less than a quarter of the 211-word statement focused on Hamas killing more than 1,100 Israelis and abducting 251 people. The rest attacked Israel. The post made no mention of Jews, even though a 2023 UJA-Federation of New York study found nearly 1 million Jews live in the city and antisemitic attacks have surged.
That omission is not a drafting error. It is a choice. On the day set aside to remember slaughtered Israelis and Jewish hostages, the mayor of New York centered a contested death toll from Gaza and skipped the community that still bears the trauma.
Rep. Dan Goldman answered directly. He did not parse the mayor’s language as a policy dispute. He called it an offense against the people Mamdani claimed to mourn with.
Goldman posted:
"This is a reprehensible statement on the anniversary of the horrific terrorist attack by a Palestinian terrorist organization against innocent Israelis,"
He added that Mamdani, “in the guise of ‘grieving’ with those mourning that day,” asserted “as fact hotly disputed allegations that he knows full well will offend and further upset those same people he pretends to grieve with.”
Goldman’s point lands because the record supports it. Mamdani presented “genocide” and “war crimes” as settled fact. Goldman labeled those claims disputed and said the mayor knew the effect they would have on Jewish New Yorkers marking the anniversary.
Jewish leaders and pro-Israel officials echoed that anger in separate coverage. The pattern matches earlier fights in which Jewish leaders blasted Mamdani for turning a day of mourning into an attack on Israel.
Schumer and Jeffries both put out Wednesday statements on the anniversary. Neither addressed Mamdani’s post when asked.
Schumer called Oct. 7 the “single deadliest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust” and reaffirmed support for Israel’s security alongside aid for Palestinians and a two-state outcome. His statement read:
"Today, we reaffirm our commitment to the security of the Israeli people, to the aid and wellbeing of the Palestinian people and the recovery of the devastation in Gaza that the ensuing conflict brought, and to doubling down on efforts for a lasting peace resulting in two states where Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side in equal measures of peace, security, dignity, and mutual recognition,"
Jeffries struck a different balance. He noted the Jewish people’s “constant struggle for survival,” condemned civilian deaths and devastation in Gaza, and said American policy “must change dramatically,” including a commitment to an independent Palestinian state.
Jeffries wrote that “the horrific death of Palestinian civilians, destruction of civil society and devastation in Gaza is reprehensible and can never be allowed to happen again,” and that the cycle of bloodshed requires a sharp shift in U.S. policy.
Both leaders found words for the anniversary. They found none for their party’s New York City mayor when he used that same anniversary to accuse Israel of genocide and call U.S. funding “war crimes.” Requests for comment on Mamdani’s remarks went unanswered.
That gap is the story. Schumer’s long record of backing Israel has already been a wedge with progressive Democrats who push to cut arms funding. Staying mute while a high-profile New York Democrat recycles the harshest charges against Israel keeps the coalition calm and leaves Jewish constituents to absorb the insult alone.
The Washington Examiner reported additional condemnation. U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called Mamdani’s statement “an outrageous & disgusting rant” and labeled him a “jihadist sympathizer,” adding there is “NO genocide in Gaza.” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt accused the mayor of weaponizing a day meant to mourn the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle anti-Zionist talking points, and noted Mamdani did not mention “Jews.”
Greenblatt’s charge tracks the text. The mayor spoke of “New Yorkers” in grief without naming the Jewish community that filled the hostage posters and still faces street harassment three years on. Israeli officials and local Jewish advocates made the same complaint in real time.
Diplomatic pushback has followed Mamdani before. Coverage of the anniversary fight included an Israeli UN envoy saying Mamdani hijacked the day to attack Israel, underscoring how far the mayor’s rhetoric travels beyond City Hall.
Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023 assault left more than 1,100 Israelis dead and more than 250 people captured and held hostage. Three years later, the mayor of a city with nearly a million Jews treated that anniversary as a platform for contested casualty figures and “war crimes” language aimed at the Jewish state.
Mamdani has floated multimillion-dollar plans billed as fights against antisemitism while drawing repeated fire for how he defines the problem, or refuses to. Jewish groups have already pressed him after earlier blueprints that critics said sidestepped hatred tied to Israel.
Readers following that trail will recognize the same tension in reports on how Jewish groups demanded a fresh plan once his blueprint soft-pedaled Israel-related hatred, and in earlier coverage of a mayor who commits millions to fight antisemitism but will not define it.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also called Mamdani out by name on the world stage for fueling antisemitism. The Oct. 7 statement fits the pattern those critics describe: high-volume concern for Palestinians paired with language that flattens Israel’s war against Hamas into “genocide” and treats American support as criminal.
None of that required Schumer or Jeffries to adopt Goldman’s full phrasing. It did require a basic answer when reporters asked whether the mayor’s anniversary message was acceptable. They declined.
Democratic leaders can mourn Oct. 7 in carefully balanced statements and still freeze when a rising progressive star turns the anniversary into an indictment of Israel. Goldman named the offense. Schumer and Jeffries changed the subject by saying nothing about the mayor at all.
New York’s Jewish voters are left to notice the difference. One member of their state’s delegation called the mayor’s words reprehensible on the day itself. The party’s highest-ranking New Yorkers in the House and Senate marked the massacre, then treated Mamdani’s “genocide” charge as a question they did not have to answer.
Leaders who will not defend the plain meaning of Oct. 7 against their own allies should not expect trust from the people who still live with its dead and its hostages.