New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani stood by his charge that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and refused to revise his October 7 remarks despite bipartisan anger and Jewish community outrage.
Fox News reported that Mamdani doubled down Thursday while speaking to reporters at an unrelated event, repeatedly declining to say he would change anything about the statements he made the day before.
The confrontation came on the heels of the third anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack. On Wednesday, Mamdani issued a formal statement and attended a vigil. Jewish New Yorkers and elected officials objected to the timing and the content. He did not retreat.
Asked whether he had made any missteps that inflamed tensions “in this very difficult moment for a lot of New Yorkers,” Mamdani answered with the same framing he used the day prior.
He told reporters:
“I believe that there must be room to mourn every single life.”
He continued:
“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.”
Mamdani added there must be room “to reckon with the ways in which so many New Yorkers' lives have been shattered.” At the vigil, he referred to those killed “either on the day or the genocide since,” and accused the Israeli government of using the October 7 massacre as “a justification for a genocide.”
His Wednesday written statement struck the same note. He condemned Hamas’s attack as a “horrific war crime,” then pivoted hard.
“The suffering did not begin nor end that day.”
The statement went on:
“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 and the “genocide” label are Mamdani’s claims. Israel has rejected accusations that it is committing genocide in Gaza, saying its military targets Hamas and other terrorist groups while seeking to minimize civilian casualties.
Rep. Dan Goldman, a Democrat from New York who is Jewish, called the mayor’s statement egregious and insulting. He told Politico the anniversary was the wrong day for that message.
“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 on the substance:
“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.”
Mamdani’s justification for weighting the Palestinian death toll more heavily was blunt. He described those deaths as “something that is ongoing, as opposed to something that simply happened three years ago.” In plain terms, he treated the anniversary of a massacre of Israelis as the moment to center an accusation against the Israeli government.
That pattern fits a larger record. Critics have already flagged his push on an International Criminal Court warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including the moment when Jeffries sidestepped a yes-or-no on Mamdani’s arrest push tied to the ICC.
Mamdani has said in a Fox News interview he would uphold such a warrant. For a mayor of New York City, home to one of the largest Jewish populations outside Israel, the combination of genocide language on October 7 and talk of arresting Israel’s prime minister lands as more than foreign-policy commentary. It lands as a signal about whose grief gets pride of place.
Public pushback has not been limited to press conferences. At a law-enforcement gathering, Mamdani was booed off stage on Staten Island in under a minute, a raw measure of how some New Yorkers are receiving his leadership.
Celebrity voices have joined the pile-on over the Netanyahu stance as well, with Kyle Kuzma calling out Mamdani as a mayor playing president over the arrest rhetoric.
Thursday’s press availability did not introduce new evidence, new numbers, or a softer tone. It was a choice to repeat the charge, keep the October 7 frame, and refuse the off-ramp when a reporter offered one.
Other controversies continue to trail him, from a resurfaced 2016 clip drawing fire over his shifting accent to local fights over spending priorities. An immigrant business coalition is also preparing action over his costly grocery-store plan, another front where taxpayers are asked to support ideological experiments.
On the core October 7 fight, the record is simple. Hamas murdered more than 1,100 people three years ago. Mamdani called that a horrific war crime, then used the anniversary to accuse Israel of genocide and to cite more than 74,000 Palestinian dead, including more than 21,000 children. When asked if any of that inflamed a raw moment for New Yorkers, he would not yield.
A mayor who cannot set aside an anti-Israel talking point on the anniversary of a massacre is telling Jewish New Yorkers exactly where they stand in his hierarchy of concern.