NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not attend an annual parade honoring Israel on Sunday, breaking with a decades-long political custom because of his support of Palestinian rights.
Though it has gone by different names over the years, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for mayors, governors and other political leaders eager to win over the throngs of flag-waving revelers who congregate on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.
Not so for Mamdani. Two weeks ago the mayor’s office released a video commemorating the Nakba, an Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
“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 at a news conference Thursday.
But he also promised a robust police presence to make sure it went off “seamlessly and peacefully.”
The city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, did attend the parade.
“It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march proudly,” she had said Thursday as she stood alongside Mamdani at police headquarters.
The mayor’s absence, though long expected, has given fresh fuel to opponents who view his criticism of the Israeli government as antisemitic.
Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding senior rabbi of The Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which advocates for better relationships between Jews and Muslims, called Mamdani’s decision to not attend the parade “a slap in the face to all Jewish New Yorkers.”
“Do us a favor, stay home,” he said. “We don’t need you. We don’t want you.”
Schneier also slammed Mamdani’s Nakba video as “propaganda,” echoing concerns from other Jewish leaders who said it excluded context about Jewish peoples’ displacement during the period.
The video, which appeared to be the first such recognition from a sitting New York City mayor, featured the story of a woman who was displaced at 9 years old, interspersed with text about the Nakba, as she described a feeling of missing home, saying “it’s the soft hills of Palestine that actually touched me.”
“I’ve lived in different places, and I’ve always been an outsider,” said the woman, Inea Bushnaq.
Supporters of Israel were outraged, saying the video should have acknowledged the mass displacement of Jews from Muslim-majority countries or the role that the mass slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust played in the drive to establish a Jewish state.
Mayors in New York City, which has America’s largest Jewish population, have long been visible supporters of Israel, often visiting the country.
Support for Israel among Americans has deeply eroded in recent years, though, a trend that accelerated amid the outcry over Israeli military action in Gaza..
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has remained steadfast in his pro-Palestinian advocacy.
He has said he believes Israel has a right to exist but not as a hierarchy that favors Jewish citizens. Simultaneously he has pledged to protect Jewish New Yorkers and highlighted the work of the city’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.
