NEW YORK — More than 100 anti-Israel demonstrators marched from City Hall to Union Square on Wednesday and surrounded a candlelight vigil marking the third anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terror attacks — then aimed their rage at the man holding one of the candles: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Protesters beat drums and tried to drown out speakers at the Israelis for Peace Vigil, which was held just inside a ring of barricades to mourn those killed in the attacks and the bloodshed that followed, according to City & State New York. Outside the barricades, the crowd chanted "Traitor, traitor, come on out! You sold all your people out!" and "Zohran, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?"
One demonstrator told the mayor he "cannot weaponize being brown anymore" — "We don't care about where you're from. You cannot talk about being Muslim anymore," the group shouted, per City & State New York. Another person claimed to be a former Mamdani intern and said the mayor "was never working for the people."
Mamdani stood at the vigil holding a candle as the insults flew. The demonstration dispersed peacefully and no arrests were made, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported. As vigil attendees filed out, protesters shouted "Death to the IDF!" according to JTA.
Wednesday marked three years since Hamas terrorists stormed southern Israel, killing roughly 1,200 people and taking hundreds hostage. Vigils were held across Israel and in cities worldwide. In New York, the evening was organized as a joint mourning for Israelis killed on Oct. 7 and Palestinians killed in the war since — a framing JTA reported was central to the event's purpose.
"That level of heartbreak is a lot more than the level of having some people shouting," Rep. Brad Lander, the Jewish Democratic nominee running for a Lower Manhattan and Brooklyn seat, told JTA after reciting testimony from the mother of a 20-year-old murdered at the Nova music festival. "The flattening of empathy is another sadness."
Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie of Lab Shul, who led the Mourner's Kaddish, told JTA that "in the heat of these protest battles, there's no room for nuance. It's the slurs and the slogans."
JTA also reported that one demonstrator carried a poster depicting Yahya Sinwar — the Hamas leader who helped mastermind the Oct. 7 massacre — at a vigil for his victims. That image, at that event, tells you everything about what the crowd outside the barricades came to do.
Demonstrators also demanded Mamdani act against New York real-estate events marketing properties in Israeli West Bank settlements, which they characterize as stolen Palestinian land, and called for abolishing the City University of New York's Board of Trustees over its refusal to divest from Israel-linked holdings, per City & State New York.
Mamdani's record gave the protesters a target, even if they rejected him. His administration's $30 million plan to combat antisemitism includes a $6.4 million grant to Partners Against Hate, which partners with six other groups — including the Arab American Association of New York, once led by Women's March co-founder Linda Sarsour, Fox News reported. Jewish hate crimes in the city have hit 181 so far in 2026, the largest category in NYPD tracking, in a year that has seen an overall 16% hate-crime increase.
The mayor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday's demonstration. It is not known whether Mamdani addressed the protesters directly.
What is known is where this leaves New Yorkers: a mayor who has staked his political identity on his background stood at a memorial for slaughtered Israelis while a mob accused him of genocide for showing up at all. The vigil's organizers wanted a night of mourning. The crowd outside wanted a fight. Both got what they came for — and the people who lost family three years ago got drowned out by drums.
Our Take
Let's be clear about what happened Wednesday night in Union Square, because the legacy media will blur it: a mob showed up at a memorial for 1,200 murdered civilians, beat drums to silence the grieving, and waved a poster of the butcher who planned the massacre. That isn't activism. That's desecration.
And notice who they turned on. Mamdani has spent his career courting these exact groups — his antisemitism plan routes city money to an outfit tied to Linda Sarsour, who mainstreamed this poison into Democratic politics a decade ago. On Wednesday, the movement he helped legitimize came for him. They called him a traitor, a killer, a fraud trading on his skin color. You don't get to build that fire and then complain about the heat.
Patriots, here's the lesson: the anti-Israel left is not a coalition you can manage, and it is not a coalition that can be reasoned with at a candlelight vigil. It is a movement that eats its own the moment it smells weakness. Every Democrat who has spent three years equivocating about Oct. 7 — every member of Congress who won't say the words "Hamas" and "terrorist" in the same sentence — should watch that video and understand what is waiting for them.
One more thing. The NYPD recorded 181 antisemitic hate crimes this year. That number didn't come from nowhere. It came from a political culture that treats the murder of Jews as a debate topic and treats their memorials as fair game. Three years after Oct. 7, the message from Union Square is simple: mourn publicly in this city, and you'd better have a barricade.
Next News Network will keep asking the question the mayor's office won't answer: if you can't protect a vigil from a drum circle, what exactly are you protecting?
