New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani fled from an appearance in Manhattan on Friday as an angry protester tailed the Democrat nominee — accusing him of antisemitism and demanding he disavow Hezbollah and Sharia law.
As someone in the background pounded out a drum beat in Foley Square, Mamdani and his aides hightailed it to a waiting black SUV as the protestor in a backward baseball cap shouted, “Denounce Hezbollah!” and “Denounce Sharia Law” and “Denounce it. You can’t denounce it. You can’t denounce it, you fucking rat!”
The confrontation nearly erupted into violence as the protestor and one of Mamdani’s aides got into a shoving match before the SUV sped off.
Mamdani had earlier attended a rally in the square to support New York Attorney General Letitia James, who this week was charged with mortgage fraud in an indictment related to a Virginia property she owns.
Mamdani is running for mayor as a Democrat but self-identifies as a “Democratic socialist.”
During the summer months of his campaign, Mamdani was repeatedly called upon to denounce Palestinian terrorists and reject the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which many Jews consider a call to violence not against Israel but the entire Jewish race.
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In a June appearance on Meet the Press, the candidate finally said, “That’s not the language I would use” and promised he would “protect Jewish New Yorkers” if elected. In a later appearance he said he would “discourage” the use of the term “intifada” by others.
However, the candidate has not stopped his harsh criticism of Israel’s military tactics in the war against Hamas.
On Tuesday, he appeared to sympathize with the plight of the victims and hostages from Hamas’s October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel.
“Two years ago today, Hamas carried out a horrific war crime, killing more than 1,100 Israelis and kidnapping 250 more,” he wrote in a statement on X. “I mourn these lives and pray for the safe return of every hostage still held and for every family whose lives were torn apart by these atrocities.”
However, in the same statement Mamdani went on to condemn not only Israeli leadership but the U.S. government as well:
In the aftermath of that day, Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Israeli government launched a genocidal war: a death toll that now far exceeds 67,000; with the Israeli military bombing homes, hospitals, and schools into rubble. Every day in Gaza has become a place where grief itself has run out of language. I mourn these lives and pray for the families that have been shattered. Our government has been complicit through it all.
The very next day, President Donald Trump announced the Israel-Hamas peace deal his administration had helped engineer with surrounding Arab nations to end the war and return the hostages held by Hamas.
On Tuesday, Mamdani’s statement was reposted by the Israeli Foreign Ministry (IFM) on X, where it accused him of “acting as a mouthpiece for Hamas propaganda.”
“By repeating Hamas’s lies, he excuses terror and normalizes antisemitism. He stands with Jews only when they are dead. Shameful,” the IFM post stated.
Contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the author of the New York Times best seller House of Secrets and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.
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