A Rare Mamdani Misstep
There was no reason for Zohran Mamdani to wade into a controversy on the anniversary of the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel. The fact that he felt compelled to do so anyway shows that the gifted politician is not immune to committing unforced errors.
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New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani is a rare political talent with great instincts who has been able to charm voters and even political adversaries. Had he been born as Steve Mamdani to non-Muslim parents in Brooklyn, pundits would certainly declare him to be a future presidential contender. On Wednesday, however, he screwed up.
On the third anniversary of the Hamas-led October 7 terrorist attack on Israel that claimed the lives of nearly 1,200 people — the vast majority of whom were civilians — Mamdani couldn’t resist tying his condolences to highlighting the resulting atrocities being committed against the Palestinians.
“This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7,” Mamdani stated. “On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.”
That would have been a great place to stop, especially for the mayor of a city that (depending on how you count it) has the largest Jewish population in the world.
But Mamdani, who feels very strongly about the plight of the Palestinian people and made it a theme of his winning campaign last year, kept going.
“The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” he added. “It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians — including more than 21,000 children.”
The mayor still wasn’t done and also riffed on how US taxpayers are funding “these war crimes.”
All in all, only about a quarter of his statement was dedicated to the Hamas attack and the rest to criticizing Israel.
Yes, there are plenty of reasons to do the latter. It’s not an accident that the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued a warrant for the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes and crimes committed against humanity.
However, there is a time and place for everything. October 7 isn’t the day to give short shrift to the murder of 1,200 people, and New York isn’t that place in light of how many of the city’s residents were affected by that terrorist attack.
Along the same lines, it wouldn’t be appropriate to use a 9/11 memorial service to point to the killing of tens of thousands of Afghans and Iraqis in the War on Terror or the torture, extraordinary rendition, and other crimes committed by the US in response — not even for a representative of one of those governments.
And Mamdani is not a representative of the Palestinian people; he is the mayor of an American city. It would have been good if he had remembered that on Wednesday.
