Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani listens to a reporter’s query throughout a press convention in Manhattan on Dec. 22, 2025.
REUTERS/Kylie Cooper
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appointed greater than 400 individuals to his transition workforce, the most important variety of people an incoming mayor has had on such a workforce in current reminiscence. Their opinions and beliefs are various, however an Anti-Defamation League audit of the Mamdani transition workforce introduced Monday discovered that most of the members engaged in exercise deemed antisemitic or anti-Israel.
Among the reported conduct was fairly galling.
Kazi Fouzia, who’s on the mayor-elect’s employee justice committee, wrote on social media, “Resistance are [sic] justified when people are occupied” the day after the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist assaults by Hamas upon Israel. Zakiyah Shaakir-Ansari, appointed to the committee on youth and schooling, posted images on social media of her participation in a CUNY pro-Palestine encampment. The photographs included one among herself standing in entrance of a banner with an inverted purple triangle, an emblem popularized by Hamas that glorifies violence, and the phrases “LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE.”
The ADL’s report got here days after a Mamdani cupboard appointee, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, resigned after previous tweets of her antisemitic and anti-police statements resurfaced.
In some way, the Mamdani vetting workforce didn’t see, or utterly ignored, such statements that ADL present in its in depth research.
As an alternative of taking duty for woeful vetting and welcoming individuals with antisemitic beliefs, the brand new mayor selected to assault the ADL, insinuating that the group conflates opposition to the Israeli authorities with antisemitism.
But it surely was the Mamdani transition workforce members uncovered within the ADL report who selected to specific their obvious opposition to the Israeli authorities by embracing symbols and statements condoning violence towards Israelis and Jews basically. May they not categorical their opposition to conflict with out supporting symbols of violence?
Would the Mamdani transition workforce settle for members of the John Birch Society or the Proud Boys? Wouldn’t it settle for anti-Muslim radicals inside its ranks? We doubt it.
So why is there room at Mamdani’s desk for antisemitic conduct?
When New York News interviewed then-Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in October, he expressed a need, if elected, to construct an administration of various voices, together with individuals whose beliefs differed from his personal.
“There will be many a New Yorker in real decision-making authority within my own mayoral administration that will have a very different view on Israel and Palestine,” he instructed us, referencing his personal robust opinions on the matter. “Because, why do I need to ask the Department of Transportation commissioner what they think about Israel and Palestine?”
Mamdani ought to attempt to have as various a variety of voices as doable in his administration. However as a substitute of excusing hatred, the brand new mayor should hold the haters out.
