Mamdani’s OK Corral

As an unreconstructed Islamist and Hamas apologist, New York City’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, is no stranger to violence. You may not see him vandalize a synagogue, scuffle with the police, or fire a gun and kill a Jew (Zionist or non-Zionist, it matters not). But that doesn’t mean he isn’t silently cheering on the mass of Jew-haters who do.

The calling card of his people is always in his back pocket. Don’t be fooled by his Cheshire Cat smile. He is as Janus-faced and antisemitic as he seems.

Don’t be fooled by Mamdani’s Cheshire Cat smile. He is as Janus-faced and antisemitic as he seems.

We are reaching a powder keg moment in the Five Boroughs—a period never before imagined in a city so widely identified with its Jewish population. The recently deceased Jesse Jackson did not refer to New York City, derisively, as “Hymie Town” for nothing. The New York Jew was the quintessential American cosmopolitan—along with a shmear of old-world chutzpah.

But the red-green alliance of Islamists and progressives are endangering the lives of Jewish New Yorkers. And they have placed themselves in direct opposition to Jews—politically. Freedom of speech. Religious pluralism. National security. Crime control. Meritocracy. America’s alliance with Israel. Combatting antisemitism.

These are all foundational to Jewish-Americans. Mamdani and cohorts have little interest in those priorities, however—Israel and antisemitism, especially.

To appease his base and put Jews in their place, Mamdani appears to be provoking a fight. Not a political spat but an actual fight—an OK Corral stand-off between Muslims and their “progressive” useful idiots, and New York Jews brushing up on Krav Maga. It has reached a tipping point. Only a psychopathic Manchurian Mayor like Mamdani would lead his city on such a doomed collision course.

Democratic Socialist mayors like him have already turned blue cities into the Wild, Wild West. Mamdani may still harbor designs to defund the police. But that doesn’t mean he’s gun shy. As a candidate he refused to repudiate the slogan “Globalize the Intifada!” He knew full well what it meant and how much its repetition emboldened Islamists to attack Jews and feel self-righteous in doing so.

He avoided controversy by stating that he would never use the phrase himself. That meant he didn’t feel obligated to warn others not to light such fuses. So much for exercising moral leadership in a skittishly pluralistic city.

Just how close are we to pistols at dawn?

Just how close are we to pistols at dawn?

The FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force just foiled a terrorist plot targeting a New York City synagogue. Are terrorists watching from a distance and determining that Mamdani has declared open hunting season on Jews?

Protecting Jews is not a priority for this mayor. He deliberately surrounds himself with the most nominal, anti-Israel Jews he can find. (There is no shortage in New York.) Presently an anti-Zionist rabbi serves as his faith liaison.

He won’t be taking part in this year’s annual Celebrate Israel Parade—the first mayor to boycott the event in the over 60-year history of this ritual. That’s consistent with Mamdani’s repeal of the IHRA definition of antisemitism—which includes libels and double standards against the Jewish state. He has championed the BDS movement from his student days at Bowdoin. Repeatedly he has referred to Israel’s just war in Gaza as “genocide.” Back when he was a state assemblyman, the future mayor refused to sign a resolution marking Holocaust Memorial Day.

Mamdani’s antisemitic predisposition has been in rehearsal for years.

He celebrated Jewish Heritage Month at Gracie Mansion with a cast of Jews who spend their days in obsequious self-flagellation, like congressional candidate Brad Lander, who recently groveled to Muslims in a mosque, not realizing that the imam followed him by condemning infidels to death in Arabic. The mayor had actually invited some card-carrying Jews. But they chose to stay home on account of a video the mayor released on Nakba Day. The message grossly distorted Israel’s founding and ignored Palestinian complicity in their own suffering.

Mamdani’s administration has overseen an epidemic of swastika graffiti plastered all over Brooklyn and Queens—without much success in arresting the culprits. A flag bearing a swastika found its way to the top of a building in Washington Square Park.

The evidence of these hate crimes points to Islamists and not actual Nazis. Could that be the reason behind the slow walking of these investigations?

Twice the Park East Synagogue in Manhattan has been the site of threatening pogroms outside its doors. In November 2025, masked demonstrators urged the crowd to intimidate the Jews sitting inside. “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events. We need to make them scared!”

Ironically, the congregants were attending a presentation about immigrating to Israel. Scaring them in Manhattan would only hasten their departure. Isn’t the objective of such thugs to deplete Israel’s population, and not add to it?

This month another protest was held outside the synagogue. This one involved tussling with police and gleefully supporting terrorist groups.

Fortunately, City Council Speaker, Julie Menin, midwifed legislation that now creates buffer zones to barricade congregants from pro-Hamas activists. The measure overwhelmingly passed, but, naturally, without Mamdani’s support.

The heavily Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park was besieged with a pro-Hamas march in February 2025. Agitators waved Palestinian and Hezbollah flags, and serenaded the neighborhood with “Zionists go to hell,” “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” and “How many kids did you kill today?”

These devout Orthodox Jews were quite sure that the answer was: “Not one.”

Jihadists were taking a joyride through their neighborhood while Mayor Mamdani was eating popcorn and watching from the cheap seats.

New York City’s Jews have endured more than 3,000 protests since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre in Israel. By now they’ve heard and seen it all.

One demonstration in Brooklyn got more heated, the rhetoric outright antisemitic without any Gaza pretense at all. A Muslim woman shouted, “Fucking Jewish pricks!” Another Muslim female: “You fucking rapist cunts! You fucking pedophiles! You fucking Epstein pieces of shit!”

Not exactly ladies who lunch.

How much more can the community take? Is the mayor hoping to make the lives of Jewish New Yorkers so miserable, they’ll get up and leave for Florida—like the well publicized departure of billionaires, some of whom are Jews?

If the mayor is looking to instigate a riot, he’s getting close. Many of the Jews in Midwood, Brooklyn, the scene of the most recent protest, traded insults with the Islamists. A Jewish girl was thrown against a car. An elderly man got pushed to the ground after lurching for the mask of one of the demonstrators. “It’s a free country,” he later said. “He has the right to protest but not to hide himself.”

He’s right. Beginning in 1845, New York had an anti-mask law that was repealed in 2020 due to the pandemic. It specifically outlawed groups gathering in public and wearing masks—except on Halloween. Such a law strips away the anonymity, leaving agitators naked and unlikely to join the crowd after all.

Meanwhile, New York Jews are about to bring the fight directly to the mayor’s address. On Tuesday night, thousands are expected to congregate outside Gracie Mansion—a most elegant OK Corral. They’ll be carrying signs—undoubtedly without vulgarity. Many will hoist Israeli flags, which will either tease the mayor out, or cause him acute indigestion while he’s having his dinner.