Mayor Zohran Mamdani used the third anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre to accuse Israel of an “ongoing genocide,” sparking sharp rebukes from Jewish leaders and Israeli officials.
On the third anniversary of the Hamas assault that killed more than 1,100 Israelis and took 251 hostages, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a statement that spent most of its space condemning the Jewish state. Less than a quarter of the message focused on the “unthinkable loss” of that day. The rest leveled charges of genocide, war crimes, occupation, and apartheid.
The New York Post reported that Mamdani framed the anniversary as a platform to attack Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the U.S. government’s role in arming it. Jewish leaders and Israeli officials called the move a hijacking of a day set aside for victims and survivors.
Mamdani wrote that the suffering “did not begin nor end that day.” He then pivoted hard.
"The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza."
He went further, describing bombs on ambulances, drone strikes on residential buildings and journalists, and food aid turned away at border crossings. He closed by refusing “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.”
That language landed like a political statement dressed as mourning. Critics said it erased the distinction between a terrorist massacre and a nation’s response.
Israeli UN Ambassador Danny Danon told reporters the mayor was trying to seize the only day reserved for the dead and the survivors. Danon compared the tactic to marking 9/11 by focusing on the terrorists rather than the victims, a charge that echoes earlier friction, including when 9/11 families petitioned to keep Mamdani away from Ground Zero ceremonies.
"What he is trying to do is hijack the only day we have for the victims and survivors. He’s trying to hijack the day to talk about attacking Israel."
Danon added that Mamdani is “dangerous and sophisticated,” predicting the mayor would appear at both a vigil for Oct. 7 victims and a separate sit-down with Palestinian New Yorkers the same evening. The dual schedule, Danon said, lets Mamdani claim he feels for both sides while driving a one-sided narrative.
The ambassador’s criticism fits a longer pattern of Israeli officials confronting the mayor’s rhetoric, including prior condemnations from Israeli leaders across the political spectrum over Mamdani’s attacks on Israel’s government.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt answered on X. He noted the mayor’s statement never named Jews as the targets of the Oct. 7 slaughter.
"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 anti-zionist talking points."
Greenblatt’s point was simple. A day of remembrance for Jewish dead became another vehicle for the same anti-Zionist script. That charge tracks with wider debates over how political figures talk about Jews and Israel, including arguments that Schumer’s own antisemitism standard would snare Mamdani.
Mamdani cited death figures of 74,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children, plus another 1,400 since last year’s cease-fire. Those numbers come from the Hamas-run Ministry of Health. The ministry does not separate terrorists from civilians and only counts deaths recorded in hospitals or official registries. UN and humanitarian groups have said the true toll may be higher. The IDF has previously estimated its operations killed more than 22,000 Hamas fighters. UNICEF has estimated at least 300 children killed in the past year as fighting continued.
Menashe Shapiro, a former adviser to ex-Mayor Eric Adams, rejected the mayor’s reliance on those figures.
"It’s incitement and electronic violence against New York’s Jews. Mamdani said the same thing before Israel retaliated; he doesn’t get to hide behind Hamas’ made-up stats to justify his open Jew-hatred."
Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, the Republican candidate for governor, rejected any moral equivalence between a land dispute and a terrorist rampage that included murder, rape, and the killing of children.
"I thought it was unconscionable to draw a moral equivalency between the land dispute between two nations and a terrorist group going in, and murdering innocent, unarmed people, raping women, burning babies, beheading babies. I don’t see the moral equivalency."
Blakeman’s line cut to the core complaint: treating the butchers of Oct. 7 and the state they attacked as twin victims flattens reality.
Moshe Spern, president of the United Jewish Teachers group, tied the mayor’s words to street-level risk. NYPD figures show anti-Jewish offenses jumped 8% in the last year. Overall hate crimes rose nearly 16%.
"Libeling Jews and the Jewish state puts Jewish New Yorkers at risk. The mayor’s own hate crimes statistics support this."
Spern’s warning sits against a backdrop of repeated public clashes over the mayor’s posture toward the Jewish community, including moments when a Jewish activist confronted Mamdani inside a Brooklyn Judaica store.
Israeli officials have gone further in other settings. One prior episode saw an Israeli ambassador call for Mamdani’s arrest and accuse him of backing Hamas while courting Iran. The Oct. 7 statement fit the same pattern critics have flagged for months: minimize Jewish suffering, maximize charges against Israel, and treat Hamas-supplied tallies as settled fact.
Mamdani was scheduled to attend a vigil marking the attack Wednesday evening, then host a sit-down with Palestinian New Yorkers. Danon flagged the sequence as deliberate optics, appear for the victims, then shift the frame. The mayor’s own statement had already done the work. The anniversary language about “unthinkable loss” was brief. The indictment of Israel filled the rest.
Hamas planned and carried out the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre. It murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies, and dragged hostages into Gaza. Three years later, New York’s mayor answered that history with a statement that spent most of its length prosecuting Israel and Washington. Jewish leaders called it weaponization. An Israeli ambassador called it hijacking. A county executive called the moral equivalence unconscionable. The hate-crime numbers in the mayor’s own city kept climbing while he recycled the charge of genocide on the day set aside for the dead.
Remembrance that forgets who was slaughtered, and why, is not remembrance at all, it is politics with a black ribbon.
