New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday defended his remarks last week sharply denouncing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after prominent Jewish leaders accused him of antisemitism.
“When I am speaking about AIPAC, I’m speaking about an organization that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people, not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region, and it is a status quo for immorality,” Mamdani said during a press conference at City Hall, pointing to Israeli operations in Gaza. “And when it comes to the way in which they defend the status quo, oftentimes they defend it through direct contributions, as we are seeing right now in New York.”
The mayor, a prominent critic of Israel’s government, is facing pushback after Jewish leaders argued that he went too far in his recent condemnation of the pro-Israel lobby’s spending in a New York House primary.
As Mamdani rallied with a slate of progressive challengers he has endorsed on Thursday, he described“monsters” that he said include “those who fund television ads that blanket the airwaves with misleading and bad faith attacks” against his three endorsed candidates. Mamdani then ripped into AIPAC, which has spent millions to boost pro-Israel candidates in congressional primaries this year, often by running ads that reference domestic issues rather than foreign policy.
