MESSAGE
| DATE | 2025-11-21 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
|
| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] =?utf-8?q?Mamdani_says_Israel_immigration_even?=
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Targeting Jews for being Jewish
jpost.com
Zohran Mamdani claims aliyah event 'misused' synagogue | The Jerusalem Post
7–9 minutes
ByJOSEPH STRAUSS/JTA
NOVEMBER 21, 2025 03:48
(JTA) — Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor-elect, has responded to a
protest targeting an event promoting migration to Israel at an Upper
East Side synagogue, suggesting that the event was an inappropriate use
of a “sacred space.”
The protest on Wednesday night, organized by a group called Palestinian
Assembly for Liberation, has drawn allegations of antisemitism from
Jewish leaders in the city. During it, participants shouted phrases
including “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF” as well as
insults toward pro-Israel counter-protesters like “f**king Jewish
pricks,” according to reports from the scene. Police separated the
protesters and counter-protesters but did not halt the demonstration.
“The Mayor-elect has discouraged the language used at last night’s
protest and will continue to do so,” Mamdani’s press secretary, Dora
Pekec, said in a statement Thursday afternoon.
She went on, “He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a
house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces
should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Pekec did not offer further comments about whether or why Mamdani
believed the event at Park East Synagogue, a prominent Orthodox
congregation, promoted violations of international law.
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the
Unisphere in the Queens borough of New York City, US, November 5, 2025.
(credit: Reuters/Kylie Cooper)
New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani holds a press conference at the
Unisphere in the Queens borough of New York City, US, November 5, 2025.
(credit: Reuters/Kylie Cooper)
The event was organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh, the nonprofit that
facilitates immigration to Israel for North American Jews. The
organization bills its open house events as a chance to “get your
questions answered, learn about the process, and discover what life in
Israel could look like for you and your family.”
The group is considered a quasi-governmental agency in Israel, receiving
funding from the Israeli government and works closely with its
ministries. It does not assign immigrants to particular communities, but
has showcased West Bank settlements, which most of the world, though not
Israel or the United States, considers illegal under international law,
in events and on its website as possible destinations for new
immigrants. (Previous protests in New York and beyond have targeted
events at synagogues advertising real estate for sale in the West Bank.)
The organizing group suggested that all of the Jews who have moved to
Israel with Nefesh B’Nefesh’s support are “settlers,” a term that some
pro-Palestinian activists apply to all Israelis, not just those living
in the West Bank.
“Nefesh b Nefesh is an affiliate of the Israeli government and the
Jewish Agency for Israel, mainly responsible for the recruitment of
settlers to Palestine from North America. Since 2003, they have
recruited over 80,000 settlers of which over 13,000 served in the IOF,”
Palestinian Assembly for Liberation said in an Instagram post
advertising its demonstration, using an acronym by which anti-Israel
activists refer to the Israeli army as the “Israel Occupation Forces.”
It also called El Al “Genocide Settler Airlines.”
Mamdani’s deeply held anti-Israel views may influence NYC
The demonstration is providing an early window into how Mamdani’s long-
and deeply held pro-Palestinian views might influence his leadership of
the city.
As a state Assemblyman, he sponsored legislation aimed at blocking
nonprofits from funding Israeli settlements in the West Bank that some,
including critics of the settlement movement, decried as casting an
overly broad net.
During the campaign, he initially declined to condemn the protest phrase
“globalize the intifada,” drawing allegations of antisemitism. He later
shifted to say that he would “discourage” the phrase’s use in New York
City, saying that he had learned from a rabbi that many Jews interpret
it as a call to violence against them.
Now, Mamdani’s response to the Park East demonstration offers a stark
contrast to two robust condemnations of antisemitism he has offered up
since being elected, after a swastika was painted on a Brooklyn yeshiva
and after the words “F–k Jews” were painted on a Brooklyn sidewalk. Both
times, he quickly offered a full-throated denunciation on social media.
This time, even as prominent Jewish voices in the city alleged
antisemitism on the part of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, Mamdani
did not make a public comment himself. His office’s statement did not
address allegations of antisemitism.
Mayor Eric Adams, who is in Uzbekistan after a visit to Israel this
week, said in a statement that he planned to visit Park East upon his
return to the city. Calling the rhetoric shouted there “desecration,” he
suggested that the protest augured a grim future for the city under Mamdani.
“Today it’s a synagogue. Tomorrow it’s a church or a mosque. They come
for me today and you tomorrow,” Adams tweeted. “We cannot hand this city
over to radicals.”
The event came the same day that Mamdani announced that Adams’ police
commissioner, Jessica Tisch, would stay on once he becomes mayor. Tisch,
who is Jewish, has previously criticized the conduct of pro-Palestinian
protesters in the city.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, who has been staunchly critical of Mamdani and
whose father is the longtime senior rabbi at Park East Synagogue, said
he was distressed by how the police allowed the confrontation to unfold.
“What I find most disturbing is that the police, who knew about this
protest a day in advance, did not arrange for the protesters to be moved
to either Third or Lexington Avenues,” he said. “Instead, they allowed
the protesters to be right in front of the synagogue, which put members
of the community at risk.”
One of the demonstrators repeatedly shouted about the Nefesh B’Nefesh
event attendees, “We need to make them scared,” according to video from
the scene.
“This kind of intimidation of Jewish New Yorkers is reprehensible and
unacceptable,” tweeted Mark Levine, the Jewish comptroller-elect. “No
house of worship, of any faith, should be subjected to this.”
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York,
decried the demonstration as “reprehensible.”
“It is not a violation of any law, international or otherwise, for Jews
to gather in a synagogue or immigrate to Israel,” he said.
“Using violent rhetoric and hurling antisemitic insults in front of a
crowded synagogue was a direct threat to our community’s safety,” he
added. “JCRC-NY reached out to city officials and we have confidence
that the NYPD will thoroughly investigate this serious matter. No one
should ever have to fear entering or leaving their house of worship and
that includes our Jewish neighbors. We stand with the Park East
community and with all New Yorkers who reject hate.”
In a statement from a spokesperson, UJA-Federation New York said they
were “outraged by the demonstration outside Park East Synagogue.”
“We’ve been in contact with our partners at the NYPD, and they are
taking this matter very seriously,” the statement reads. “Calls to
‘globalize the intifada’ and ‘death to the IDF’ are not political
statements—they are incitements to violence against Jewish people. Every
leader must denounce this heinous language, and the choice to target a
house of worship makes it especially vile.”
--
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that Brooklyn, like Atlantis, reaches mythological
proportions in the mind of the world - RI Safir 1998
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