Jewish leaders boycott Mamdani's Jewish American Heritage Month event following ‘Nakba Day’ post

Socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani was slammed by Jewish leaders after honoring “Nakba Day” on his official New York City social media accounts, a Palestinian term meaning “catastrophe,” referring to the founding of the State of Israel in 1948.

The post included a video interview with “Nakba survivor” Inea Bushnaq. “I firmly believe that acknowledging any one people’s pain does not preclude you from the acknowledgment of another people’s,” Mamdani said. “When it comes to New Yorkers like Inea and so many others, not only has their pain never been acknowledged, but so often we have seen that even their identity is up for debate.”

During a press conference on Monday, Mamdani doubled down on the post, claiming it “commemorates the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians from 1947 to 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and for the year that followed.”

Mamdani made no mention of the fact that  it was the Arab countries surrounding Israel that created the Palestinian refugee crisis when they attacked the fledgling Jewish state or the over 1 million Jews that were expelled from Arab countries in response to the creation of Israel.

In response, many Jewish organizations boycotted a Jewish American Heritage Month event at Gracie Mansion. Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, executive vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis, told the New York Post, “Jewish heritage should include recognition of the state of Israel. Jewish history didn’t end in 1946.”

The UJA-Federation of New York announced it would not attend the celebration, saying it “will not be attending the Jewish American Heritage Month celebration at Gracie Mansion being hosted by a mayor who denies a core pillar of our heritage—the State of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.”

The controversy has also sparked concerns about media access and ideological bias in press credentialing surrounding the event. Menachem Wecker, US news editor for Jewish News Syndicate, wrote on X, “JNS, a wire service with 100-plus subscribing news publications, was told there was no room for it to cover this event.”

Other outlets viewed as more left-leaning were granted credentials despite JNS being denied access.

The dispute comes as antisemitism continues to skyrocket in the Big Apple. 13 days after the Oct 7, 2023, massacre, Mamdani was seen leading a group of anti-Israel radicals calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Mamdani openly supports the antisemitic boycott, divest, sanction movement against the Jewish state and is planning on boycotting the city’s Salute to Israel parade this year.

Last week, Mamdani’s wife, Rama Duwaji was revealed to have created Spotify playlists with songs that have anti-Israel lyrics shortly after her past tweets celebrating the Oct. 7 massacre and a post claiming the rapes carried out by the terror group against Israeli hostages and victims were a “mass hoax.”