New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani refused to retract his claim that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, even after bipartisan criticism of his October 7 remarks.
Speaking to reporters Thursday at an unrelated event, the mayor repeatedly declined to say he would change anything about the statements he issued a day earlier. Those remarks came on the third anniversary of the Hamas terrorist attacks that killed more than 1,100 people.
Fox News reported that Mamdani stuck by language accusing the Israeli government of an “ongoing genocide” in Gaza. Israel has rejected that charge, saying its military targets Hamas and other terrorist groups while seeking to minimize civilian casualties.
The mayor’s Wednesday statement and vigil appearance sparked bipartisan backlash, including from a Jewish Democrat in his own state. Critics said he turned a day of mourning for a massacre into an attack on the victims’ country.
Mamdani had condemned the Hamas assault as a “horrific war crime.” In the same breath he cast Israel’s subsequent military operation as genocide and said the suffering “did not begin nor end that day.”
In his formal written statement, Mamdani framed the anniversary around Palestinian deaths rather than the original massacre. He wrote that the suffering continued through what he called Israel’s campaign in Gaza.
"The suffering did not begin nor end that day."
He went further in the same statement, putting a precise accusation on the record.
"It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, including more than 21,000 children."
Those casualty figures appear in the mayor’s own words. The Fox News account presents them as his claims, not as independently verified totals. Israel maintains it is fighting Hamas, not civilians.
Mamdani also attended an October 7 vigil. He later described that gathering as one that highlighted testimonies from people killed “either on the day or the genocide since,” again pairing the Hamas massacre with his charge against Israel.
The pattern fits other recent fights over his posture toward the Jewish state, including an Israeli U.N. envoy’s rebuke of how he handled the anniversary.
Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York, did not treat the statement as a routine policy disagreement. He called it “egregious and insulting” and spoke to Politico about what he said the mayor had done on a day set aside for the dead.
"There are 364 days of the year to focus on that. This is a day that should just be focused on what was by all agreement a horrific terror attack."
Goldman went further. He said the mayor’s words shifted blame onto the people who were murdered and kidnapped three years ago.
"What the mayor’s statement did today was to blame Israelis for the attack that they suffered three years ago. Regardless of what you actually think of the conflict and what’s happened either since or before, there’s no excuse for victim blaming."
That critique landed from inside the Democratic Party, not only from Republicans. It underscored how raw the anniversary remains for many New Yorkers, especially Jewish New Yorkers still living with the aftermath of October 7.
Similar pressure has come from outside politics as well, including when a View panelist challenged Mamdani over the same October 7 language.
When reporters pressed him the next day, Mamdani did not walk it back. Asked whether he had made missteps that inflamed tensions “in this very difficult moment for a lot of New Yorkers,” he answered with a call for mourning on both sides of the ledger he keeps.
"I believe that there must be room to mourn every single life."
He then restated the numbers and the pairing that drew the outrage.
"There must be room to mourn the lives of the more than 1,100 that Hamas killed three years ago; there must be room to mourn the 74,000 Palestinians that the Israeli government has killed since."
He added that there must be room “to reckon with the ways in which so many New Yorkers’ lives have been shattered.” He framed heavier emphasis on Palestinian deaths as fitting because, in his words, that killing is “something that is ongoing, as opposed to something that simply happened three years ago.”
In plain terms, the mayor treated the anniversary of a Hamas massacre as the moment to elevate his genocide charge against Israel. He would not say the Wednesday statement should have been different.
His record on related fights is not limited to one week. He has clashed with Israeli leaders before, including after he pushed ICC action against Netanyahu and branded the Israeli prime minister in those terms.
October 7 is not an abstract foreign-policy seminar for New York. The city is home to large Jewish and Israeli-American communities. Hamas murdered more than 1,100 people three years ago, in what the reporting describes as terrorist attacks and a massacre. Hostages were taken. Families were shattered.
A mayor can condemn Hamas as a “horrific war crime” and still choose his next sentence with care. Mamdani’s next sentences accused Israel of genocide, cited more than 74,000 Palestinian dead including more than 21,000 children, and told New Yorkers the suffering never stopped because of Israel’s campaign.
Israel’s position, noted in the same coverage, is that it targets Hamas and other terrorist groups and tries to limit civilian harm. Mamdani’s language leaves no room for that defense. He has also said in a prior Fox News interview that he would uphold an International Criminal Court warrant for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, another signal of how far he is willing to go.
That history includes the strange spectacle of Mamdani reacting to a Netanyahu rebuke at the U.N. after having pressed for the Israeli leader’s arrest.
Goldman drew the brightest line available to an elected Democrat: whatever one thinks of the wider war, the anniversary of the massacre is not the day to blame Israelis for the attack they suffered. Mamdani heard that criticism and held his ground anyway.
Voters can judge the incentives. On the date marked by Hamas’s slaughter, New York’s mayor centered an accusation of Israeli genocide, attended a vigil he described in those same terms, and told reporters he saw no reason to revise the message. Accountability starts with noticing what he chose to emphasize, and what he refused to retract.
When City Hall uses the anniversary of a terrorist massacre to prosecute Israel, it tells Jewish New Yorkers exactly where they stand in the mayor’s moral lineup.
