Democratic New York State Assembly member Zohran Mamdani is advocating for a BDS bill that he calls the “Not on our dime! Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act.”
The legislation would “prohibit [New York state] not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity; allows for recovery of a civil penalty by the state attorney general; creates a private right of action for violations,” according to the Jewish Press.
Mamdani is a close ally of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and was also endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America.
In August 2022, he wrote on Twitter that “NYC politics operates on an understanding of Palestine that's grounded purely in imagination, w/o any relationship to reality.”
He also claimed that the IDF “initiates terror” against Palestinian Arab civilians.
“It's how you get politicians lining up to say that they believe in Israel's right to defend itself, on the Monday after the IDF initiated a weekend of terror – targeting apartment buildings and killing 44 Palestinians, incl. 15 CHILDREN, and injuring 360 others,” he said.
He further criticized American aid to Israel, writing: “It's how you get politicians saying Israelis & Palestinians should resolve their differences themselves, that we shouldn’t put a thumb on the scale.”
The Assembly member’s proposed legislation would enact punishments on New York non-profits that help struggling communities in Judea and Samaria, citing BDS talking points.
According to the StopAntisemitism NGO, the bill would “punish not-for-profit groups in NY that support Jewish communities in Israel.”
“Thankfully Queens Democrat assembly members Daniel Rosenthal and Nily Rozic – part of a group of 25 assembly members – are fighting to ensure the bill is ‘dead on arrival,’” StopAntisemitism said on Twitter.
“This is just another example of Linda Sarsour's antisemitic tentacles looking to cause Jews harm, here and abroad,” the added, posting an ad from Mamdani in which he is endorsed by the Palestinian-American BDS-supporting activist Sarsour.
The group of 25 members released a joint letter highlighting the dangers of Mamdani’s bill, which they said would penalize Jewish non-profits that support the poor and pay for medical treatments for victims of Palestinian Arab terrorism.
“This bill targets them all. In response, we say Not on our watch,” Rosenthal and Rozic said, according to the Jewish Press.
They described the bill as a “ploy to demonize Jewish charities with connections to Israel. It was only introduced to antagonize pro-Israel New Yorkers and further sow divisions within the Democratic Party.”