Israel And Palestine On The Ballot In New York City Mayor's Race

NEW YORK — Andrew Cuomo joined the legal team defending Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from war crime charges. His leading opponent in the New York City mayoral race, Zohran Mandani, vowed to arrest Netanyahu if he stepped foot in the city.

Mamdani — a democratic socialist lawmaker making a splash with slick campaign videos and a robust fundraising operation — would be the first Muslim mayor of New York City, and has accused Israel of committing an American-funded genocide in Gaza.

The politically moderate Cuomo, on a redemption tour boosted by donors who support Israel, has gone to lengths to portray antisemitism as a leading issue in a race that’s more about subway safety and housing costs. He’s called it “the most serious and the most important issue” in New York City and deemed himself a “hyper aggressive supporter of Israel and proud of it.”

That juxtaposition underscores the degree to which Middle East politics is shaping the race for a job with more oversight of potholes and trash collection than an international conflict that dates back more than a century. New York City is home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside Israel and the biggest Muslim contingent in the Western Hemisphere. Pro-Israel donors have been spending to shape New York elections in their favor, following the movement that took root on college campuses across the city in response to the Israel-Hamas war. Over just the last week, a man was charged for setting fire to Jewish Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro’s home during Passover and the Trump administration detained another pro-Palestinian demonstrator. Hate crimes against both Jews and Muslims are on the rise in New York City.

Against that backdrop, the diametrically opposed leading candidates for New York City mayor are leaning into thorny global politics ahead of the June 24 primary, while pretty much everyone else in the crowded Democratic field is focused on issues closer to home.

“It's a litmus test for different constituencies,” said David Greenfield, a former City Council member and Orthodox Jew who leads an anti-poverty nonprofit. He described the “pro-Israel constituency” as New Yorkers focused on law and order and business growth, and the “anti-Israel constituency” as wary of police and relatively anti-establishment. “It's really a reflection of how polarized the political moment is.”

Cuomo has been readily maligning his opponents as anti-Israel — resorting to that line of attack no matter its relevance to the subject at hand: real estate laws, public safety and taxpayer-funded legal fees to defend him in scandals that forced his ouster as governor. He recently delivered remarks at a Manhattan synagogue accusing his rivals of being anti-Israel — which he said is synonymous with antisemitism. And a super PAC boosting his candidacy received $250,000 last week from pro-Trump Israel defender Bill Ackman.

Mamdani, meanwhile, spent the year leading up to his campaign sharpening his pro-Palestinian bonafides. He pressed Mayor Eric Adams in a legislative budget hearing about the deaths of Palestinians in Gaza, led a five-day hunger strike for Palestine outside the White House and blocked the entrance of the New York Stock Exchange in a call for the U.S. to stop arming Israel.

As a mayoral candidate, he promotes spliced TV interviews in which he defends the term “genocide” to describe Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, blames Democrats’ shift toward Donald Trump on “despair over the continued genocide in Gaza,” and touts his bill in the state Assembly “to make it illegal for charities to fund Israeli war crimes” in his campaign literature.

Cuomo maintains a commanding lead in the polls, with Mamdani routinely in second place. Everyone else was in single digits in a Siena poll this week.

“I think many New Yorkers, far more than the political class would have you imagine, have been rightfully horrified by a genocide that they've seen over more than 15 months of,” Mamdani said in April during a three-hour-plus livestream with leftist pundit Hasan Piker, who has been accused of antisemitism.

“And I've long stood up for universal human rights and extending them to Palestinians,” Mamdani continued, “because I think that any politics worth its salt has to be one that is universal, that doesn't draw an exception.”

Many Jews in New York politics took exception with Mamdani’s appearance with Piker.

"On October 8th, 2023, while Jews were still being butchered, Zohran Mamdani condemned Israel and couldn't even bring himself to mention Hamas,” Assemblymember Sam Berger, who represents a district with a high concentration of Orthodox Jews and endorsed Cuomo, said in a statement. “Zohran just spent 3 hours sipping espresso with an influencer who has used his platform to refer to Jews as bloodthirsty pigdogs, Orthodox Jews as inbred, and has said it doesn't matter if rape happened on October 7th.”

“Zohran Mamdani is running the most deceptive, divisive, and antisemitic campaign in the history of New York City,” he added.

Cuomo, who launched a pro-Israel advocacy group that drew criticism for its underwhelming efforts, is anxious to portray the crowded primary as a two-man battle between himself and Mamdani over support for law and order at home and Israeli alliance abroad. He laced into Mamdani at his recent appearance at the West Side Institutional Synagogue in Manhattan.

“The DSA calls for an end of American aid to Israel; it does not recognize the existence of the State of Israel, and we have a New York State Assemblyman named Zohran Mamdani, who is a DSA devotee, who proposed a bill that would revoke the standing of a not for profit organization that helped Israel,” Cuomo told congregants, referring to the Democratic Socialists of America, of which Mamdani is a member.

In an interview with POLITICO, Mamdani said his criticism of Israel is based on equality and his sense the country is held to a different standard in American politics. But he also avoided specific policy prescriptions.

He didn’t choose between a one-state or two-state solution, instead saying “adherence to international law and equal rights for all involved” is paramount, with “dignity, equality and freedom for all.” He didn’t say whether the U.S. should cut off all funding to Israel, but says it is incumbent to “stop subsidizing a genocide.”

He has supported the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, but didn’t say whether he would push for it to be official city policy. “As mayor, my focus would be on New Yorkers, and on making this city a more affordable city for each of the New Yorkers who have built and sustained it for so many years,” he said.

“Yes. I recognize Israel,” Mamdani said when asked directly. “And it also has responsibilities under international law. And what I have called for time and time again is the equal application of those responsibilities and an end to a politics of exceptionalism that we’ve seen take hold in our city and in our country when it comes to what so-called universal rights we are willing to apply when it comes to Palestinians.”

Their opposing positions are nothing new for either candidate.

In 2014, Mamdani was publicly feuding with the president of Bowdoin College as he tried to launch a boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions during his senior year. It was necessary, he argued, “to end the oppressive occupation and racist policies within both Israel and occupied Palestine” under Netanyahu.

That same year, Cuomo would meet with Netanyahu on a solidarity tour to Israel, his first international trip as governor ahead of his reelection. A decade later, Cuomo publicly announced he was joining the legal team to defend Netanyahu from war crime charges from the International Criminal Court. He has not yet done any legal work, campaign spokesperson Rich Azzopardi said.

Mamdani is not the only rival Cuomo is seeking to portray as anti-Israel and therefore — by his telling — antisemitic, a charged accusation his team wields with ease.

He recently suggested City Comptroller Brad Lander and City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams are not sufficiently pro-Israel, basing that on several misleading claims about their records.

In 2018, Cuomo was criticized for a mailer tying then-opponent Cynthia Nixon to antisemitism, and misrepresenting her positions.

The Catholic Cuomo’s recent campaign trail criticisms hit a nerve.

“The attacks on Brad essentially accuse him of being a race-traitor. It’s a very specific form of antisemitism directed at progressive Jews,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, political director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, whose political arm co-endorsed Lander and Mamdani.

Lander — once a dues paying member of the DSA who also considered becoming a rabbi — didn’t take kindly to it either.

“He weaponizes anything he can for his own personal gain, including hatred of Jews. I think it's gross,” Lander told POLITICO. “There's a pattern here of treating Jews like pawns.”

For Lander and his predecessor, Scott Stringer — another left-of-center secular Jew running for mayor — the Israel-Hamas war poses a trickier dynamic. Their home bases in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan are typically critical of the Netanyahu regime but sensitive to rhetoric opposing Israel.

Mayor Eric Adams, an ardent defender of Israel who won in 2021 with support from coveted Orthodox Jewish voting blocs, opted out of the Democratic primary to run as an independent.

Lander has aimed to court the Orthodox Jewish bloc — which is more politically conservative and typically pro-Israel — without alienating his lefty base, while celebrating his secular Jewish identity .

It’s a fine line he’s walked throughout his career. In the months following Trump’s election, he sat on a panel discussion with his one-time ally Linda Sarsour, a co-founder of the Women’s March with a history of controversial statements against Israel.

“Just a few days after the election, I bought this hat,” Lander said during the talk, holding up an Orthodox Jewish-style Black hat he said he “brought as a prop.”

“People have asked me like, ‘Why are you — what’s with the hat?’” he said. “And what I’ve said is nothing brings out your inner Jew like seeing swastikas on the playground. But the truth is I’m at least as angry about hat-wearing Trump apologists as I am with Neo-Nazis. And so my answer to both is fight with the hat on.”

Lander told POLITICO last week he sometimes wears the hat, like his grandfather did, and that he and his wife debate whether it looks good on him. “I stand up to hate as a Jew, and that's what I've been doing all my life, and I sure don’t plan to stop now,” he said.

He is also aiming to turn Cuomo’s accusations of antisemitism against him.

Lander held a press conference this month where he cursed out Cuomo in Yiddish, and pointed to a lawsuit that alleges Cuomo’s Covid-era lockdowns were antisemitic acts on Orthodox Jewish communities. He also highlighted a report that Cuomo once likened Jews celebrating the holiday of Sukkot to “these people and their fucking tree houses,” and and slammed him for his pro-Israel advocacy group’s hollow efforts.

“A beyzer gzar zol er af dir kumen,” Lander said at the press conference, which more or less translates into, “get the fuck out of here.”

His daughter, who is studying Yiddish in college, had sent him a list of insults to choose from before the press conference, he later told the FAQ NYC podcast.

“Once you start cursing in Yiddish, honestly it's hard to stop,” he said on the podcast.

Where the issue presents a potential electoral problem for Lander, it stands to be a bigger one for Mamdani.

New York's pro-Israel political operation is more organized and influential in city politics than the pro-Palestinian political movement. And criticism of Israel is a third rail here — something Mamdani appears willing to test.

His campaign expects money to be spent against him over his views.

One political operative granted anonymity to discuss private conversations said pro-Israel donors are beginning to organize to fund an ad campaign targeting Mamdani’s ties to the DSA.

But Cuomo, who has tried to run on this issue whether it fits the day or not, found himself on the defensive after federal agents in New York last month arrested Mahmoud Khalil, who acted as a spokesperson for the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University last year.

Cuomo’s initial statement didn’t call for the Trump administration to release Khalil — something most Democrats demanded — and followed up the next day to criticize the “antisemitic agitators at Columbia.”

“Less than 24 hours after issuing a tepid, barely intelligible statement on the unconstitutional arrest and detainment of Mahmoud Khalil, Cuomo has already walked it back,” Mamdani responded on X. “Some people don't have the backbone to be Mayor.”

Cuomo’s campaign shot back, amNewYork reported — how else? — by saying Mandani had a “fringe extreme left anti-Israel pro-DSA platform.”