During the program's announcement, Mamdani's wife attended a luxury retreat hosted by a group that called for the abolition of Israel.
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New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s new antisemitism strategy doubles funding for a community grant program whose partners include an anti-Israel organization previously led by Linda Sarsour, while omitting Zionism and declining to adopt a definition of antisemitism.
According to City Hall’s announcement, the strategy includes $6.4 million for Partners Against the Hate, or PATH, doubling the program’s funding from the previous year. However, among PATH’s six core partners is the Arab American Association of New York, which Sarsour led for more than a decade. The organization supported the Columbia University’s violent Gaza encampment and other anti-Israel protests following October 7, according to the New York Post.
The September 29 announcement coincided with his wife's participation in a luxury Islamic wellness retreat in Portugal organized by Women Sanctuary, which had publicly called for Israel’s abolition.
Sarsour’s relationship with Mamdani extends beyond campaigning for him. She warned that her activist network would hold him to his campaign promises, including dismantling the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, which responds to major protests and other emergencies. “Electing Zohran doesn’t mean we’re going to let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall,” Sarsour said.
Sarsour has a long history of antisemitic statements, including her assertion: “Israel was built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else.” Sarsour left Women’s March leadership in 2019 amid controversies over antisemitism.
Mamdani’s 33-page strategy does not mention Zionism. It discusses several definitions of antisemitism but explicitly declines to adopt one, arguing that a single definition is unnecessary for the city’s work. That omission ignored the connection between anti-Israel hostility and attacks on Jews.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition identifies denying Jewish self-determination, applying discriminatory double standards to Israel, and holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions as examples of antisemitism, while distinguishing ordinary criticism of Israeli policy. Since October 7 and the ensuing Gaza war, Israel-related antisemitism has become a substantial share of reported incidents.
According to ADL’s latest audit, 48 percent of New York state’s antisemitic incidents in 2025 involved Israel or Zionism; nationally, that share was 45 percent in 2025 and 58 percent in 2024, compared with approximately 10 percent before October 7. ADL also recorded 227 incidents at Jewish institutions in New York state in 2025.
Mamdani’s plan also allocates $1 million for security at synagogues and other houses of worship. However, Mamdani’s figure is a fraction of the cost of protecting Jewish institutions. UJA-Federation supports approximately 300 Jewish day schools and yeshivas across the New York area, while its security initiative serves more than 3,400 Jewish institutions, including synagogues, schools, and community organizations, across New York City and surrounding counties and Connecticut.
A 2026 Teach Coalition survey found that responding Jewish schools across four states spent an average of $401,432 annually on security, with guards accounting for 63 percent of those expenses. At that rate, the entire $1 million would cover less than three schools’ annual security bills, while Mamdani’s allocation is intended for synagogues and other houses of worship across the city.
More than two dozen Jewish organizations have called for a revised strategy addressing anti-Zionist harassment and violence presented as political activism.
While the mayor was announcing his plan, Mamdani's wife Rama Duwaji was finishing a week as an artist-in-residence at Women Sanctuary’s retreat near Porto with an anti-Israel group. The organizer had posted on Instagram in October 2025: “Abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel. Free Palestine.”
Duwaji has her own history of liking antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric on social media. She liked an Instagram post published on October 7 showing a bulldozer breaching the Gaza-Israel barrier and attackers riding a captured Israeli military vehicle. The images included the slogans “Breaking the walls of apartheid and military occupation” and “Resisting apartheid since 1948.” She also liked posts supporting an October 8 rally promoting Palestinian “resistance.” The outlet could not determine when she liked those posts.
Duwaji liked an Instagram post dismissing The New York Times’ investigation into October 7 sexual violence as fabricated and referring to a “mass rape” hoax.
Other activity included sharing a photograph of Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled, who participated in aircraft hijackings in 1969 and 1970. Duwaji also reposted praise for PFLP member Shadia Abu Ghazaleh and amplified a tweet declaring that Tel Aviv “Shouldn’t exist in the first place.”
According to City Hall’s announcement, the strategy includes $6.4 million for Partners Against the Hate, or PATH, doubling the program’s funding from the previous year. However, among PATH’s six core partners is the Arab American Association of New York, which Sarsour led for more than a decade. The organization supported the Columbia University’s violent Gaza encampment and other anti-Israel protests following October 7, according to the New York Post.
The September 29 announcement coincided with his wife's participation in a luxury Islamic wellness retreat in Portugal organized by Women Sanctuary, which had publicly called for Israel’s abolition.
Sarsour’s relationship with Mamdani extends beyond campaigning for him. She warned that her activist network would hold him to his campaign promises, including dismantling the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group, which responds to major protests and other emergencies. “Electing Zohran doesn’t mean we’re going to let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall,” Sarsour said.
Sarsour has a long history of antisemitic statements, including her assertion: “Israel was built on the idea that Jews are supreme to everybody else.” Sarsour left Women’s March leadership in 2019 amid controversies over antisemitism.
Mamdani’s 33-page strategy does not mention Zionism. It discusses several definitions of antisemitism but explicitly declines to adopt one, arguing that a single definition is unnecessary for the city’s work. That omission ignored the connection between anti-Israel hostility and attacks on Jews.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition identifies denying Jewish self-determination, applying discriminatory double standards to Israel, and holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions as examples of antisemitism, while distinguishing ordinary criticism of Israeli policy. Since October 7 and the ensuing Gaza war, Israel-related antisemitism has become a substantial share of reported incidents.
According to ADL’s latest audit, 48 percent of New York state’s antisemitic incidents in 2025 involved Israel or Zionism; nationally, that share was 45 percent in 2025 and 58 percent in 2024, compared with approximately 10 percent before October 7. ADL also recorded 227 incidents at Jewish institutions in New York state in 2025.
Mamdani’s plan also allocates $1 million for security at synagogues and other houses of worship. However, Mamdani’s figure is a fraction of the cost of protecting Jewish institutions. UJA-Federation supports approximately 300 Jewish day schools and yeshivas across the New York area, while its security initiative serves more than 3,400 Jewish institutions, including synagogues, schools, and community organizations, across New York City and surrounding counties and Connecticut.
A 2026 Teach Coalition survey found that responding Jewish schools across four states spent an average of $401,432 annually on security, with guards accounting for 63 percent of those expenses. At that rate, the entire $1 million would cover less than three schools’ annual security bills, while Mamdani’s allocation is intended for synagogues and other houses of worship across the city.
More than two dozen Jewish organizations have called for a revised strategy addressing anti-Zionist harassment and violence presented as political activism.
While the mayor was announcing his plan, Mamdani's wife Rama Duwaji was finishing a week as an artist-in-residence at Women Sanctuary’s retreat near Porto with an anti-Israel group. The organizer had posted on Instagram in October 2025: “Abolish the colonial apartheid state of Israel. Free Palestine.”
Duwaji has her own history of liking antisemitic and anti-Israel rhetoric on social media. She liked an Instagram post published on October 7 showing a bulldozer breaching the Gaza-Israel barrier and attackers riding a captured Israeli military vehicle. The images included the slogans “Breaking the walls of apartheid and military occupation” and “Resisting apartheid since 1948.” She also liked posts supporting an October 8 rally promoting Palestinian “resistance.” The outlet could not determine when she liked those posts.
Duwaji liked an Instagram post dismissing The New York Times’ investigation into October 7 sexual violence as fabricated and referring to a “mass rape” hoax.
Other activity included sharing a photograph of Palestinian plane hijacker Leila Khaled, who participated in aircraft hijackings in 1969 and 1970. Duwaji also reposted praise for PFLP member Shadia Abu Ghazaleh and amplified a tweet declaring that Tel Aviv “Shouldn’t exist in the first place.”
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