New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Tuesday faced backlash from protesters gathered at his home, concerned over his stance on the Jewish people and Israel. Footage from End Jew Hatred, the group that led the rally, appeared to show a few thousand protesters assembled across from Gracie Mansion, accusing the mayor of failing to target antisemitism and turning a blind eye to the rising hate that the city’s Jewish community is experiencing. Some called on Gov. Kathy Hochul (D-NY) to remove the city’s first socialist mayor from office, amid outrage that he revoked the city’s use of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, and scrapped his predecessor’s prohibition on city agencies engaging in the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel. “We are here not to be silent,” Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney with the Lawfare Project, said. “We are here because we stand for the truth and the truth to be heard.”
“We are not here to beg for protection,” Goldstein said, referencing a series of recent attacks on Jews. “We are here to demand equal protection. We are here because Jewish rights is civil rights.”
The rally came after a spate of antisemitic violence in the city, including what authorities described as a thwarted terrorist attack at a prominent synagogue earlier this month. Multiple synagogues, Jewish homes, and a car in Queens were vandalized with swastikas and other antisemitic graffiti in May as well. The incidents came after a man was arrested on charges of repeatedly ramming his car into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn in January, the same month a local man was arrested on charges of attacking a Queens rabbi on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
