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In a CNN interview earlier this week, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani discussed his decision to skip the city’s annual Israel Day parade, stating that his choice was not rooted in antipathy toward Jewish New Yorkers but rather opposition to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Mamdani said that he still played a role in ensuring that the parade was safe for participants.
“My job [as mayor] was to prepare for that parade, to ensure it could be a safe experience,” the mayor explained.
His decision not to attend the parade was a political stance against Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, he said.
“Solidarity with a government that is committing genocide is a very different thing than a question of solidarity with people of a specific faith,” Mamdani said. “I’m proud to be a mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population in this country.”
The annual Israel Day Parade took place earlier this month. Mamdani was the first New York City mayor in decades not to attend.
Two weeks prior, Mamdani attended an event recognizing the Nakba; the catastrophe in Arabic, the Nakba refers to the violent expulsion of over 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland following the establishment of the state of Israel.
Mamdani also explained why he wouldn’t attend the Israel Day Parade before it took place, stating that it was a promise he had made during his mayoral campaign.
“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mamdani said.
While many have welcomed Mamdani’s views, others say he has to go further, calling for him to disrupt material support in New York City for Israel’s violent occupation and displacement of Palestinians.
In January, Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian American organizer based in New York City, published an op-ed in Mondoweiss demanding that Mamdani do just that, describing the city as a “hub” for fundraising that goes to charities “that support Israeli settlement activity.”
“Mamdani was elected on the power of a movement energized by his rhetoric on Palestine prior to and during the campaign, but we have seen him back away from other positions he took before the election,” Kiswani wrote.
New York City has the legal tools to act today, and acting is not a favor, it is a minimum standard of justice and accountability. Choosing silence or symbolic gestures while Palestinians are killed, homes are seized, and communities are erased is not a neutral position, it is complicity. Mayor Mamdani can intervene immediately.
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