Yesterday marked the three-year anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attacks against Israel, with approximately 1,200 people killed and 251 taken hostage. As people around the world mourned, others took the day as an opportunity to condemn Israel for the Palestinian lives lost in Israel’s subsequent response to the attacks.
Among the latter was New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who posted the following comments in an X post:
This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. 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.
No complaints so far. Then I read on.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. 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. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them — all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
He just couldn’t help himself, but I’m not surprised. The comments predictably drew sharp criticism from his typical critics and even from some not-so-typical critics, but now, even his own supporters have turned on him.
In addition to protesting in favor of a single-state solution and the extermination of Israel while yelling, “There is only one solution! Intifada revolution!,” protesters in NYC are now attacking their beloved Mayor Mamdani. Chants like, “Zohran pick a side, justice or genocide,” “Muslim mayor we know you, you’re a normalizer too,” and “Traitor, traitor, come on out! You sold all your people out,” now escape from the mouths of pro-Palestinian protesters.
An X post shows an organizer of the pro-Palestinian anti-Mamdani protest in NYC explaining why Mamdani is losing support. “Within activist spaces, especially for people who are focused on global liberation and not just specifically the liberation of the middle class people in NYC city . . . we realized that a lot of the stuff he promised us when it comes to Palestine . . . he just does not protect us in the way we thought he would,” she says. “I do think unless he makes some serious changes, he’s going to lose a lot of his supporters — he already is.”
One of the inciting events that caused the backlash was Mayor Mamdani’s attendance at a vigil honoring the victims of the October 7 attacks. “Zohran Mamdani stands on the Israeli side of an October 7 vigil,” one X post filming the event describes as protesters shout, “Traitor, traitor, come on out! You sold all your people out!” A community note helpfully explains that the vigil was held by Israelis for Peace, an “Israeli anti-occupation” activist group in New York City “mobilizing for an equal and safe future for both peoples.” The group even describes the conflict in Gaza as a genocide.
Let’s be very clear: Mamdani is no Zionist, but for the most radical of his supporters, he isn’t anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian enough. Consider that for a moment. The man who set aside government money for organizations “that practice antisemitism while pretending they’ll fight it,” called Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack a genocide two weeks after the war began, and refused to condemn the phrase, “Globalize the intifada,” is being lambasted as a “traitor” by his own supporters.
Any support he shows for Israel or compassion he musters up for NYC Jews is a fake expression forced for political gain, but the radical left demands perfection. There is no room for mistakes or sympathy for “the occupiers.” It doesn’t matter how hard someone tries; the second that one of its own — one of its leaders — falls short of its impossible activist standards, it turns on that person, even if the failure is for the sake of maintaining power.
The radical left eats its own, and now, Mayor Mamdani is on the menu.