Mamdani’s twisted Nakba narrative fits the record of New York’s first anti-Israel mayor

At Bowdoin College, he co-founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter. SJP is widely considered an arm of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, whose branches in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Sudan were recently designated as foreign terrorist organisations by the U.S. government.

Mamdani’s political party, Democratic Socialists of America, distributed a letter to all candidates running for office in the 2021 New York City elections insisting that, if elected, they pledge support for the Boycott-Divestment-Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel and refuse to travel to Israel.

Apropos, the DSA did not denounce any other nation – not China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Venezuela, or other repressive states – in its political lobbying campaign, only liberal democratic Israel.

And Mamdani has been very public, both before and after October 7, in his vilification of Israel, support for BDS, refusal to recognise the Jewish character of the state, and unwillingness to condemn the “globalise the intifada” chant, which is an open call to incitement and violence against Israelis and Jews around the world.

After his election as mayor of New York in November 2025, some hoped he would modify his outlook. After all, the reasoning went, he was about to lead a city with the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel, and a metropolis where the Jewish presence, dating from 1654, and its impact has been profound in virtually every nook and cranny of America’s pre-eminent urban centre.

They were wrong, of course. They failed to grasp that Mamdani is a true believer. As such, any change would only be tactical at best. He hates Israel. And now, we have learned, so does his Syrian-born wife, Rama Duwaji.

Indeed, on his very first day in office, he rescinded the city’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, even as dozens of countries have adopted it in the face of surging antisemitism.

And he has done his utmost to block efforts to create protective zones around houses of worship and schools, while anti-Israel mobs, encouraged by Mamdani’s election, have become increasingly brazen in gathering outside to flex muscles, intimidate, threaten, or engage in Muslim public prayer.

So, his May 15 post is entirely of a kind with who the mayor is, how he sees the world, and what animates him. But he can’t be allowed to play fast and loose with history. Facts are facts, even if he chooses to ignore or manipulate them.

Mamdani makes no reference to the United Nations partition plan, which was recommended by a decisive majority of the 11-member UN Special Committee on Palestine and adopted overwhelmingly by the UN General Assembly in 1947.

That plan recognised two populations, Arab and Jewish, in British-ruled Palestine, both of which merited statehood. The Jews agreed to the two-state proposal, but the Arabs rejected it and went to war. It was precisely the rejection and declaration of war that led to the refugees whom Mamdani cites. Does he take us for fools to ignore these historical truths?

Five Arab armies attacked Israel immediately after its Declaration of Independence, despite the Jewish state’s outstretched hand of peace to its Arab neighbours. The goal? Destroy the fledgling nation.

In every war, tragically but inevitably, there are refugee populations. Some flee of their own accord. Others are displaced due to fighting. And some are encouraged to get out of the way by the aggressors with the promise of return and the spoils of war after victory.

Incidentally, when the war ended in 1949, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and eastern Jerusalem were all in Arab, not Israeli, hands, yet there was no move to establish a Palestinian state in these areas. Rather, Jordan annexed the West Bank and eastern Jerusalem, while Egypt imposed harsh military rule on Gaza.

Moreover, Mamdani conveniently forgets that there were two refugee populations created by the Arab war of aggression. As many as 850,000 Jews living in Arab and predominantly Muslim countries were compelled to leave their ancestral homes, driven out by persecution, pogroms, and fear. Yet that’s not on Mamdani’s radar screen either, as it might complicate his otherwise pristine version of history, in which Palestinians occupy a unique, hallowed, and blameless place as eternal victims.

Is the mayor incapable of noticing the number of countries where Jews once lived for centuries, even millennia, and have entirely disappeared – from Afghanistan to Algeria, Lebanon to Libya, Sudan to Syria, and beyond?

Yet these refugees, like hundreds of millions of others from countless wars, were eventually resettled and given the chance to start new lives. It was painful, of course, but possible. By contrast, Palestinians have been given refugee status in perpetuity by the UN, which has no mandate to resettle them.

And Mamdani, while fiercely opposed to Israel’s existence as a Jewish-majority state, has nothing to say about another partition plan in 1947, one that should be closer to home for him, given his own family history.

Without any of the layers of legitimacy that the UN plan gave to Arab and Jewish states in 1947, British colonial rule in South Asia led to partition of the vast region into India and Pakistan. Why was Pakistan created as a separate country (and, to boot, with Islam as the official state religion)?

To establish a Muslim-dominant nation, where the population could feel safe and in charge rather than living as a potentially vulnerable minority in a Hindu-majority country.

The price of that partition was immense in terms of fatalities and refugees on both sides. But it succeeded in crafting a two-state solution, which eventually became a three-state solution when East Pakistan broke away and became independent Bangladesh.

The lessons in South Asia are applicable in the Arab-Israeli context, though Mamdani is hardly likely to cite them.

No, let’s face it, Mamdani is the real deal. He despises Israel, detests Zionism, and embraces the hardcore Palestinian movement, including the frenzied protests and encampments, none of which, incidentally, call for a peaceful two-state solution, far from it.

That’s who he is. Some Jews may still live in la-la land and pretend otherwise. And some bizarrely voted for him and continue to stand by his side. They reject Israel and Zionism as if these were disposable parts of Jewish history and identity. In doing so, they serve as useful props, as we have seen before in history, to try to shield the mayor from charges of antisemitism.

It’s a cautionary tale of how quickly a political situation can change. Since 1948, the year of Israel’s rebirth, New York’s mayors have all stood, proudly and loudly, in support of the unique links between the city and Israel. No more.

In three-and-a-half years, New Yorkers will go back to the polls to vote for mayor. Will the 2025 election result prove to be a one-time anomaly or a terrifying new trend?

In 2029, we will have the answer.

David Harris is executive vice-chair of the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy (ISGAP), and author of “Antisemitism: What Everyone Needs to Know” (Oxford University Press, 2025)