New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani marked the third anniversary of Hamas's October 7, 2023 massacre of some 1,200 people in Israel by devoting most of his official statement to condemning the Jewish state — and the backlash arrived from three directions in 48 hours.
Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha called the statement "intentionally insulting" during an appearance Saturday on Fox Business's Kudlow, saying it "was designed to gaslight the Jewish community." Concha's remarks were first reported by the Washington Examiner.
"This was intentionally insulting," Concha said. "Quite frankly disgusting."
Mamdani's statement acknowledged that the day was "profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers" and said the city grieves "alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss." It then pivoted to the Israeli government's military campaign in Gaza, which the mayor called an "ongoing genocide" that has killed "more than 74,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children" — figures Mamdani asserted without citing a source. He added that "even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed," and charged that "our tax dollars fund these war crimes."
The statement closed with a call to "refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue."
Concha was not the only critic. Comedian Bill Maher used Friday's episode of Real Time to mock the mayor's pivot, saying Mamdani "did make some nice remarks about it. But then he pivoted right to, 'but Israel made them do it,'" according to coverage of the segment. Maher, who has been sharply critical of Mamdani, also needled the mayor's past career as a rapper, when he performed as "Young Cardamom" and "Mr. Cardamom."
Religious leaders in the city were blunter. Ammiel Hirsch, president of the New York Board of Rabbis, called the statement "so offensive to so many Jews that it is hard to describe how offensive it is," per a New York Times column by Bret Stephens that also took the mayor to task for dining Wednesday at Ayat Hinds Hall, a Palestinian restaurant. The restaurant's sister location drew criticism in 2023 over menu language that critics described as antisemitic.
Stephens, a Times columnist, compared Mamdani's approach to a hypothetical mayor marking the 25th anniversary of 9/11 with a passing nod to the victims before a long denunciation of American foreign policy. He noted that many of the Jews murdered on October 7 lived in kibbutzim with left-leaning politics and had volunteered to drive sick Palestinians to Israeli hospitals for treatment.
This is not the first time Mamdani has drawn fire over Israel since taking office less than a year ago. His critics on the right and within parts of the city's Jewish community argue that his statements consistently pair condolences with accusations against Israel — a pattern they say treats the October 7 attack as a footnote to a broader grievance rather than as an unprovoked act of terror.
The political math in New York is unforgiving. The city is home to roughly 1.6 million Jewish residents, one of the largest concentrations in the world outside Israel, and Jewish voters turn out. Mamdani won office with a coalition that leaned heavily on progressive voters and did not depend on the Jewish community's support — but governing a city where synagogues, day schools and community centers sit behind visible security details is a different task than winning a primary.
The mayor's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Concha's remarks.
What the statement did not include matters as much as what it did. There was no explicit reference to Hamas as the perpetrator. There was no mention of the hostages — several of whom are New York constituents' relatives — or of the roughly 250 people taken into Gaza on October 7. Both omissions are the kind that Jewish leaders in the city have said they notice.
Concha's segment is part of a broader conservative media push this week to keep attention on the mayor's rhetoric as the anniversary coverage fades. The question Republicans are now asking is whether Mamdani's posture toward Israel becomes a national Democratic liability heading into the midterms, or stays contained within New York's five boroughs.
Our Take
October 7 was not a policy dispute. It was a pogrom, livestreamed by the men who carried it out, and the mayor of America's largest Jewish city could not bring himself to name Hamas as the guilty party. Instead he turned a day of mourning into a lecture about Israeli war crimes, using casualty figures he did not source, and then went to dinner.
Concha called it gaslighting. Hirsch called it hard to describe how offensive it is. Maher — no conservative — called it tone-deaf. When a comedian, a rabbi and a Fox Business panelist reach the same conclusion, that is not a media pile-on. That is a consensus.
Every voter in this city should understand what Mamdani's statement reveals about whose grief he considers mandatory and whose he considers optional. And every Democrat running in 2026 should be asked, on the record, whether they agree with the mayor of New York — or whether they are willing to say so out loud. Patriots, the answer to that question is the whole ballgame.
