POLITICS: Mamdani’s antisemitism is out in the open after rescinding executive orders aiding Israel

There are good and bad ways to start an administration, then there’s the way Zohran Mamdani did it. Dreadful, awful and horrible don’t fully capture his First Day fiasco.

No political guru in the history of New York elections would advise a new mayor to launch his administration by picking a fight with Israel and adding fresh evidence to the suspicion that the city’s first Muslim mayor is an antisemite.

Yet that’s exactly what Mamdani did by announcing that he had rescinded all the executive orders of his predecessor, Eric Adams, going back 15 months.

Some were inconsequential, but two notably put the city on the side of Israel and were aimed at blocking official acts that smacked of antisemitism.

With New York home to more than 1 million Jews, and with Israel, a key American ally, fighting for its survival against terrorists, it’s an extremely odd way for a mayor to start a four-year term.

The sheer irrationality of it is a revealing sign, I believe, of Mamdani’s deep hostility bordering on hatred for the Jewish state and its supporters.

Plenty of other targets

Additionally, the swift and broad condemnation of what he did reveals that the Socialist Democrat is not the political wizard his enthralled followers believe he is.

He got himself elected, but governing is the point and he begins the long march with a major unforced error.

The first acts of any new administration are by definition outsized symbolic statements about priorities. If Mamdani felt the need to single out a foil and use the bully pulpit to engage in rhetorical combat, there is no shortage of deserving targets.

He could have — and should have — used the Day One spotlight to come down hard on gun runners, drug dealers, murderers and rapists, or crooked politicians, failing schools, rapacious unions and sluggish bureaucrats.

But to launch an attack on Israel and its supporters by going after the Adams’ executive orders as if they were the devil makes no sense.

It was a choice borne wholly of the new mayor’s long-established antipathy. That same strain of hatred is reflected in how some of his advisers have expressed condemnation of Israel but never once criticized the savagery of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and Iran.

Mamdani’s argument that he had deleted all of Adams’ orders after Sept. 26, 2024 because that was the day Adams was indicted on federal corruption charges isn’t persuasive. The case was subsequently dropped and none of the executive orders were relevant to it.

Truth be told, it’s almost certainly the details of just two orders signed by Adams that sparked Mamdani’s ire.

One of them had the city adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism. Its provisions include, “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Other clauses include “accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust” and accusing Jewish citizens of being “more loyal to Israel, or to Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations.”

Still others cite “Accusing the Jews as a people, or Israel as a state, of inventing or exaggerating the Holocaust.”

Which of those clauses does Mamdani find illegitimate? He didn’t say.

‘True face’

Another executive order that Adams signed, and Mamdani rescinded, prohibited all city agencies from boycotting Israel and divesting from it.

In response to the mayor’s actions, the blowback came fast and hot, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry accusing him of fueling antisemitism.

“On his very first day as @NYCMayor, Mamdani shows his true face: He scraps the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lifts restrictions on boycotting Israel. This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire,” the ministry posted on X.

American Jewish organizations also condemned the move, with the UJA Federation of New York and the New York Board of Rabbis issuing a joint statement saying Mamdani’s action reversed “significant protections against antisemitism.”

That’s certainly true, and there’s another angle that also deserves attention. It appears to me that Mamdani himself was in violation of the spirt and the letter of both of the Adams’ orders he rescinded.

First, he has made no secret of the fact that he believes Israel does not have the right to exist as the Jewish homeland. Asked during the campaign if he accepted it as a Jewish state, he tried to weasel out saying, he supported Israel as “a state with equal rights” for all its people.

But, he added “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else . . . Equality should be enshrined in every country in the world. That’s my belief.”

It’s a standard he applies only to Israel, despite the fact it has over 2 million Arab citizens. Yet he has never condemned the Arab and Muslim lands that have few if any Jewish or Christian citizens.

He has also vowed to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he comes to New York, under a warrant by the International Criminal Court, which the U.S. does not recognize.

‘Clean slate’ excuse

Second, his longtime support of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement — a global campaign calling for isolation of Israel as a way to support Palestinian rights — would put him at odds with the Adams order barring that stance for city officials.

By rescinding both orders, Mamdani removes his likely violation of them.

The mayor’s dark-hearted move strikes me as that of an arrogant amateur who is besotted with power. If he’s smart, he’ll realize that the price he’s paying isn’t worth the candle.

With the topic dominating his first days in office and drawing the wrong kind of attention, the subject is likely to remain a lasting black mark that could haunt his tenure.

At a Friday press conference, he struggled to defend the rescinding action by insisting he simply wanted a “clean slate” to start his administration.

He also promised that his team will be “relentless in its efforts to combat hate and division, and we will showcase that by fighting hate across the city, and that includes fighting the scourge of antisemitism by actually funding hate crime prevention, by celebrating our neighbors, and by practicing a politics of universality.”

The kumbaya gibberish echoed a passage in his Thursday address where he promised to “govern audaciously” and “replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism.”

As one critic noted, the Mamdani agenda can be summed up as “audacious collectivism.”

Even worse, I predict it will be repeatedly spiked with the poison of Jew hatred.