A resurfaced video from May 2021 has dropped a political bombshell, showing New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani in full-throated protest mode against Israel at a rally in the Big Apple, as the New York Post reports.
This footage, handed over to the Post by the Investigative Project on Terrorism -- a nonprofit research outfit founded by author Steven Emerson -- captures Mamdani, then a freshly elected assemblyman from Queens, leading a charged pro-Palestinian demonstration.
At the rally, Mamdani didn’t hold back, criticizing city officials for their support of Israel and rallying the crowd with calls for the BDS movement, a campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction the Jewish state.
Protestors at the event waved signs demanding an end to U.S. aid to Israel and even calling for an intifada. It is a term tied to uprisings with implications of destroying the Jewish state.
Mamdani, who boasted about co-founding the first Students for Justice in Palestine group during his college years at Bowdoin from 2010 to 2014, seemed right at home among the fervent crowd.
“Let us say from this day forward we will stand in solidarity with Palestinians and we will hold every single person who has power in this city, in this state, in this country, accountable for their incomprehensible fealty to the Israeli state,” Mamdani declared, as captured in the video.
Let’s not gloss over the company Mamdani kept at this rally, including Siraj Wahhaj. He's a Brooklyn imam tied as an unindicted co-conspirator to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and a past character witness for the terrorist behind it.
Mamdani has already faced heat for campaigning alongside Wahhaj, a connection that raises eyebrows for anyone concerned about the optics of radical associations in a mayoral race.
Then there’s Raja Abdulhaq, another speaker at the 2021 event, who has openly advocated for the destruction of both Israel and the United States while championing the BDS movement and later joining a pro-Hamas encampment at Columbia University in April 2024.
Mamdani’s rhetoric at the rally included sharp jabs at U.S. funding, claiming, “$3.8 billion dollars every year sent from the United States to Israel…while our family here are homeless, while our family here do not have money for schools.”
While it’s fair to question foreign aid priorities, Mamdani’s framing sidesteps the complex security dynamics in the Middle East, including Hamas’ violent takeover of Gaza after Israel’s complete evacuation in 2005 -- a fact that undercuts simplistic narratives of oppression.
Critics might argue that focusing solely on Israel ignores the brutal governance of Hamas, a terrorist group responsible for immense suffering on both sides of the conflict, as Steven Emerson of the Investigative Project on Terrorism pointed out to the Post.
Mamdani’s campaign for mayor isn’t just a solo act; it’s boosted by the Democratic Socialists of America, a progressive faction of the Democratic Party known for endorsing controversial stances like BDS.
This backing raises questions about whether Mamdani’s views align with a broader agenda that some New Yorkers might find out of step with the city’s diverse values and security concerns.
Two years after this rally, Mamdani was spotted at another protest, decrying what he called funding for “Israeli settler violence,” just weeks before the horrific Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, which claimed 1,200 Israeli lives. That's a reminder of the stakes in this divisive debate.
