Mamdani calls out Israel’s ‘genocide’ in Gaza on third anniversary of Oct. 7 terrorist attacks

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani acknowledged “the horrific war crimes” of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel on its third anniversary, but added that “the suffering did not begin nor end that day” while calling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide.”“On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss,” Mamdani said in the statement. “The suffering did not begin nor end that day. 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.”Mamdani, a socialist, has sharply criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s campaign in Gaza, while also railing against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s spending in U.S. politics throughout his 2025 mayoral campaign. As Jewish leaders and religious and cultural groups have questioned Mamdani’s anti-Israel rhetoric given the increasing rise of antisemitism in the U.S., Mamdani has maintained that he is critical of Netanyahu himself, not of the Israeli people. Mamdani said in July that his words against Netanyahu are “critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith or a religion or a background.”Mamdani also recently unveiled a city policy to combat antisemitism, just one week ahead of the third Oct. 7 anniversary. In response to the policy, the UJA-Federation of New York said in a joint statement with other Jewish groups that the plan “has a number of positive elements,” but maintained that “rhetoric that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel inevitably leads to the targeting of Jewish New Yorkers.”Mamdani’s previous statements on the Oct. 7 attack have been similar to his statement today, where he has expressed grief for the “people killed across Israel and Palestine” in the attack, while centering his criticism on Israel.In his statement on Wednesday, he said that Palestinian “suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing.”HOW OCT. 7 AND ISRAEL LOOM LARGE OVER 2028 DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL RACE“Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment,” Mamdani said on Wednesday.According to Mamdani’s public schedule, he will be attending a vigil in remembrance of the Oct. 7 attack at 7:00 p.m. on Wednesday. He will then meet with Palestinian New Yorkers at 9:00 p.m.