New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani criticised a pro-Israeli group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), and compared it to “monsters” who “move millions in dark money”.
The remarks, which the NYC Mayor defended on Monday, drew widespread condemnation from Jewish leaders and advocacy groups, who alleged that Mamdani was repeating anti-Jewish statements that have been getting reiterated by antisemites for centuries, Politico reported.
Critique of regional status quo
During an address at City Hall on Monday, Mamdani said, “When I am speaking about AIPAC, I’m speaking about an organisation that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people, not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region, and it is a status quo for immorality.”
The NYC Mayor highlighted that over 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed since a US-brokered ceasefire was signed in October last year to halt the Israeli offensive and Hamas’ retaliation in the region.
Allegations of financial influence in politics
The AIPAC has spent heavily to support pro-Israeli candidates in this year’s congressional primaries in the United States, Al Jazeera reported.
Referring to AIPAC, Mamdani said they have “moved millions in dark money” to achieve single goal: “To preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary. In the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we need not live in fear of monsters any longer.”
Accusations of Antisemitic Rhetoric
Democratic New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer accused the NYC Mayor of antisemitism and wrote in a post on X, “Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books.”
Condemnation of official statements
“That’s not criticizing a lobby. That’s laundering antisemitism from your podium as Mayor of a city with more than a million Jews. This bullshit is dangerous,” Gottheimer added.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, speaks during a Get Out The Vote rally ahead of New York's primary election in the Brooklyn borough of New York. (AP Photo) 
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