New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani managed something rare this week: he got booed by both sides of the Israel-Gaza fight on the same night.
On Wednesday, the third anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack, Mamdani put out a statement mourning the victims and then spent most of it accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza. Jewish leaders, Israeli officials, Republicans on Fox News and a long list of his fellow Democrats tore into it. Hours later, at a vigil in Union Square, he was booed on arrival, and pro-Palestinian protesters called him a “traitor” for showing up at all.
What did Mamdani’s October 7 statement say?
It opened with the attack. “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,” he wrote.
Then it turned. “The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” he wrote, accusing Israel’s government of an “ongoing genocide in Gaza” that has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, a figure from Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry. He said New Yorkers mourn “all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes,” and called for an end to “occupation and apartheid.”
Who criticized Mamdani?
Democrats went first. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz said he was “desecrating the memory of murdered, innocent Jews.” Rep. Josh Gottheimer said he was blaming the victims. Rep. Dan Goldman called the message “reprehensible,” and Bronx Rep. Ritchie Torres, without naming him, said Israel’s critics could “take a vacation” for one day, CBS News reported. ADL chief Jonathan Greenblatt wrote that “not once do you say ‘Jews.'”
On the right, U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee called it an “outrageous & disgusting rant” and went on Fox News’s The Story with his daughter, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, to keep hammering it. Israel’s consul general in New York called it a “disgrace.”
Why did pro-Palestinian protesters turn on him?
Mamdani went to the Union Square vigil, organized by Israelis for Peace, to hear from families of people killed on October 7 and since. Video shows him met with boos and chants of “traitor” from pro-Palestinian protesters who see his outreach to Jewish groups and his appearance at an October 7 event as a betrayal of the movement that helped elect him. After the vigil, he met with Palestinian New Yorkers.
On Thursday, he didn’t back down. “As for those protesting me, I am the mayor of New York City, and this is what I signed up for,” he said, per CBS New York, repeating that Israel’s government has used October 7 as “justification for an ongoing genocide.”
The BeezLoop Take
Mamdani didn’t say anything this week he hasn’t said for years, and voters knew it when they elected him. Gaza’s death toll is real, U.S. weapons are part of the story, and a mayor is allowed to say so. But October 7 is the one day set aside to mourn the 1,200 people killed in the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, and a statement that spends most of its words on Israel’s government reads to many grieving families as changing the subject. He could have mourned on Wednesday and made his case on Thursday.
The people attacking him deserve scrutiny too. Fox and Republican officials who rarely mention dead Palestinian children found plenty of airtime for this, and activists screaming “traitor” at a mayor for attending a vigil for murdered civilians are telling on themselves. When both extremes are furious that he showed up to grieve with Israelis and then met with Palestinians the same night, that says as much about them as about him.
The open question: can Mamdani rebuild trust with Jewish New Yorkers without losing the base that elected him?
Also on BeezLoop: Netanyahu made a video about New York’s mayor, NYPD arrested 103 people at a sit-in outside the UN organized by a Jewish group, and Mamdani called Trump after an ICE agent shot a man in Upper Manhattan.
Sources: CNN · CBS News · CBS News New York · ABC7 New York · CNBC-TV18 (vigil video) · Fox News, The Story (video)
