...
By Anna Rahmanan
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani has released a detailed strategy to fight antisemitism in New York City while leaving unsettled the question that followed him into office. What will his administration consider antisemitic when Israel and Zionism are involved?
Mamdani's plan is substantial in the places where the answer is easy. City Hall is putting $7.4 million into security and hate-prevention grants, expanding Jewish history education, helping institutions improve security and funding efforts to track and prevent hate. The mayor said the goal is to “confront the scourge of antisemitism now and in the future.” Considering the distrust between the mayor and parts of New York’s Jewish community and the fact that antisemitic hate crimes rose 9 percent through the first eight months of this year, according to the NYPD, the new plan is important.
But what happens when alleged antisemitism comes wrapped in political speech about Israel or Zionism? There is little ambiguity about a swastika on a synagogue or an assault on somebody because he is Jewish—those harder cases begin when consensus ends.
Read More on News
The strategy explicitly declines to adopt a definition of antisemitism.
“New York City can and will leverage all of the tools at its disposal to combat antisemitism effectively without needing to adopt a definition for this specific form of hate,” the document says.
There is an irony in announcing a campaign against antisemitism while declining to say precisely what that entails. Mamdani has a political reason for resisting a firm definition. The argument over antisemitism has become inseparable from the argument over Israel.
The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition, adopted by Mamdani’s predecessor Eric Adams and revoked by Mamdani on his first day in office, includes Israel-related examples such as denying Jewish self-determination or holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions. Mamdani has rejected that approach. The result is an administration promising an aggressive response to anti-Jewish hate while reserving for itself considerable discretion over what qualifies as anti-Jewish.
Related Story
The Football Politics of Trump’s Washington
Mamdani’s antisemitism chief, Phylisa Wisdom, has said City Hall prefers to make judgments case by case because context matters and Jewish communities themselves disagree over definitions. She has also argued that government should not settle that debate. But if City Hall will decide case by case what counts as antisemitism while declining to say in advance what standard it is applying, how much clarity does the promise to fight it really provide?
Perhaps, the idea is that giving government a sweeping definition of antisemitism risks turning a tool for fighting prejudice into a test of permissible political speech about Israel. But this is New York in 2026 and, given all that has happened and transpired, Mamdani may not really have the option of avoiding the conversation.
Yet New York does not give Mamdani the option of avoiding those judgments altogether. Some of the most contentious disputes involving Jewish New Yorkers sit precisely on the boundary his strategy leaves undefined—protests outside synagogues, hostility toward Jewish institutions over Israel, rhetoric about “Zionists,” and demonstrations where participants disagree over whether the target is Israeli policy, Zionism or Jews themselves.
The relevant question is not whether criticism of Israel is antisemitic, but when anti-Israel politics crosses into discrimination or intimidation directed at Jews.
Even definitions written partly to protect criticism of Israel recognize such a line. Nexus, for example, says that holding Jews responsible for Israel’s conduct and using traditional conspiracy theories about Jewish power against Israel can be antisemitic.
Several major New York Jewish organizations argue Mamdani has yet to deal adequately with that problem. UJA-Federation of New York, JCRC-NY, AJC New York and the New York Board of Rabbis welcomed parts of his strategy but said it “fails to address a central issue”—rhetoric they believe demonizes Israel and can spill over onto Jewish New Yorkers.
Mamdani’s answer, in effect, is that context should decide, but by refusing to define antisemitism to draw that line is, in its own way, a definition.
It tells New Yorkers which cases the administration is prepared to name in advance and which it will leave to its own judgment.
For a mayor promising to fight antisemitism, that may be the most consequential definition of all.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines