Imagine if bigots protested outside a New York City mosque, screaming obscenities and calling for violence and death against the Muslims entering their house of worship and saying that it is important to make them “scared” to attend the event happening inside.
You would expect the winner of the most recent mayoral election to make a strong condemnation of the protesters, saying that hate has no place in the city. You would not expect him to stay silent and only have a spokesperson issue a weak statement that condemns the victims more than it condemns the perpetrators.
And yet that is exactly what New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Madani did after a mob gathered outside the historic Park East Synagogue to shout calls for violence and calls to make Jews “scared.”
These “protesters” - a better term would be pogromists - shouted “From New York to Gaza, globalize the Intifada," a call for the murder of Jews around the world. The synagogue’s cantor told the New York Post that they also shouted "Kill the Jews," as well as "Destroy Israel" and "No Jews in America."
The response from Mamdani has been crickets. Instead of a strong statement from the mayor-elect, the only statement came from Mamdani’s press secretary Dora Pekec, who told Fox News and Jewish Insider that Mamdani “has discouraged the language used at last night’s protest and will continue to do so.”
That’s it. The response to calls to “Kill the Jews” and to remove more than 5 million Jewish citizens from the country is so say that the pogromists should have chosen their words better.
It would be bad enough if Pekec stopped there. Already, the statement demonstrates a lack of commitment to the safety and well-being of Jewish New Yorkers and a disgraceful tolerance for murderous antisemitism. But then she added that Mamdani "believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
According to the incoming Mamdani administration, the lawbreakers are not the people who openly call for violence and murder, who merely need to find a better way to express themselves, but the people who attended their own house of worship.
What was the “international law” that was supposedly violated at the Park East Synagogue? Nefesh B’Nefesh was holding a workshop on making Aliyah to Israel, which Mamdani and his people believe Jews have no right to do.
With this statement, Mamdani has officially declared Jews to be second-class citizens of New York. Not only do they not deserve the same protections as other citizens, but they are also denied the rights of other New Yorkers. Every other resident of the city has the inalienable right to move to whichever part of the world they choose, but according to Mamdani, Jews alone are in violation of international law if they attend an event about moving to the Jewish State and the ancient Jewish homeland.
Under Mamdani’s warped interpretation of international law, Jews have even fewer rights than actual illegal immigrants who violated US federal law by entering the country illegally and who Mamdani seeks to protect from federal authorities.
After Pekec’s initial statement sparked a justified backlash, Mamdani’s office attempted to walk it back, saying that she only meant to refer to Jews moving to Judea and Samaria. This is despite the fact that Nefesh B’Nefesh makes no reference to that area or the “settlements” in its advertisements for last week’s event and that even if that was what she had meant, it was still a disgusting instance of victim-blaming and justifying death threats against law-abiding New Yorkers.
What makes this incident especially ominous is that Mamdani has made “international law” his personal shibboleth, repeating over and over again his deep desire to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in violation of American law on the basis of the illegitimate International Criminal Court warrants. He has already demonstrated that for him, this mythical “international law” trumps the law of the land in which he holds office. So when he declares the very citizens he is sworn to serve and protect to be in violation of “international law” for attending a synagogue event which he does not approve of, all should be concerned.
If this is what Mamdani’s mayoralty will look like, then Jews are in for four years of a lack of protection, of a tolerance for people who wish to murder them, and of being held to legal standards that do not exist for any other citizens. Jews will be second-class citizens in every sense of the word.
Gary Willig is a veteran member of the Arutz Shevaa news staff.