Editorial: Zohran Mamdani must do more than talk about fighting antisemitism. He needs to stop fostering it

New York Daily News Editorial Board, New York Daily News on Nov 6, 2025

Published in Op Eds

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Having now been elected mayor, Zohran Mamdani will have to change his ways if he wants to be effective in City Hall when his term begins on Jan. 1., less than two months away.

To start, and most personally, Mamdani will have to drop the pretense that he doesn’t foster antisemitism through his positions, stemming from his monomaniacal obsession on Israel being the source of all the world’s problems. This is not about his support for Palestinians, but his angry hatred for Israel, the world’s only Jewish state.

While he said he would fight antisemitism during his victory speech Tuesday night and on Wednesday he joined the disgust and outrage at a Brooklyn yeshiva and Jewish cemetery being vandalized with Nazi swastikas, he must do more.

He has to renounce his support for the antisemitic BDS Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement targeting Israel and he has to denounce, not just discourage, slogans that call for the killing of Jews and the destruction of the Jewish state such as “Globalize the Intifada” and “from the river to the sea.”

When asked about Israel and BDS, Mamdani says he wants compliance with international law, but he better comply with New York and U.S. law concerning any boycotts. The same goes for his promise to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, a patently illegal act.

Mamdani must rethink his oversimplified stance that Israel shouldn’t have preferences based on “religion” because Judaism is both a religious and a national identity.

Mamdani needs to stop his attacks on Jewish nationalism, Zionism, the only nationalism that he makes a point about opposing, and which forms the core of his beliefs. His anti-Zionism is not just about countering the actions of this Israeli government, but that there shouldn’t be any Israeli government, that there shouldn’t be any Israel.

Anti-Zionism is Mamdani’s passion, not affordability, or buses or child care or rent. This has always been the most important issue to him, what brought him into politics, and he will have to set it aside because by being such a committed and vocal advocate against the existence of a Jewish state fuels antisemitic feelings and antisemitic actions by others, including hate crimes, such as the swastikas in Brooklyn.

Mamdani will also have to give up his hopes for billions in tax increases to fund his programs for child care and to eliminate the fare on buses. The billions he would need every year can only come from Albany and Gov. Hochul is rightly opposed.

Mamdani just doesn’t want higher personal income taxes on the wealthy, he also wants a higher corporate tax rate, which is a levy on the businesses where the non-wealthy work. By adding to their costs, these employers may respond by reducing payrolls (layoffs and hiring freezes) or by raising their prices (contributing to inflation and higher expenses for New Yorkers), which hurts the same people Mamdani says he’s trying to help.

While universal public child care is a worthy goal, extending the successful pre-K and 3-K the city has rolled out, it is a major new expenditure by the government. At least Mamdani smartly now says he’s not wedded to the tax increases as a funding stream, though the money has to come from somewhere.

His other big expensive program, wiping out the bus fare, just won’t work, says the chairman of the MTA. Agreeing with that is Marc Molinaro, head of the Federal Transit Administration, who wrote in the Daily News Tuesday that getting rid of fares would endanger funds from Washington. So much for “free” buses.

Mamdani says he wants Jessie Tisch to stay on as NYPD commissioner. Serving less than a year, Tisch has done an admirable job in bringing down crime, but his concept of policing matters, from the CCRB to state legislation, are at odds with hers. Is a Mayor Mamdani willing to defer to the commissioner and let her continue or is he going to impose his own ideas, which would damage the department and impede its mission to keep New Yorkers safe? That’s an easy question. It would be best if he drops his ideas.

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