New York — New York City Mayor Zahran Mamdani will not attend the annual parade honoring Israel on Sunday, breaking with a decades-old political norm due to his support for Palestinian rights.
Although it has been called 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 crowds of flag-waving revelers who gather 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 anniversary The NakbaIt is an Arabic word meaning “disaster” and is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that followed the creation of Israel.
“I said during the election campaign that I would not attend the parade, and I made my views on the Israeli government very clear,” Mamdani said at a press conference on Thursday.
But he also promised a strong police presence to make sure the matter went “smoothly and peacefully.”
“Although I will not be attending, our management has been preparing for weeks to ensure the show is safe for all participants,” he said.
City Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, told reporters she would attend.
“It is the mayor’s decision not to participate in the march, and it is my decision to march proudly,” she said, standing next to Mamdani at police headquarters.
The mayor’s absence, though long expected, has given new fuel to opponents who view his criticism of the Israeli government as anti-Semitic.
Rabbi Mark Schneier, founding senior rabbi of Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Racial Understanding, which advocates for better relations between Jews and Muslims, called Mamdani’s decision not to attend the show “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 criticized Mamdani’s Nakba video as “propaganda,” echoing the concerns of other Jewish leaders who said it left out the context of the displacement of Jewish people during that period.
The video, which appears to be the first such confession from a New York City mayor, shows the story of a woman who was displaced when she was nine years old, and is interspersed with text about the Nakba, in which she describes her feeling of missing home, saying: “It was the soft hills of Palestine that really moved me.”
“I’ve lived in different places, and I’ve always been a stranger,” said the woman, Enia Bouchnak.
Israel supporters were outraged, saying the video should have acknowledged the mass exodus of Jews from Muslim-majority countries or the role the mass slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust played in the quest for a Jewish state.
Mayors in New York City, which has the largest Jewish population in the United States, have long been vocal supporters of Israel, often visiting the country.
Support for Israel among Americans has Deeply eroded But in recent years, this trend has accelerated amid the uproar over Israeli military action in Gaza.
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has remained steadfast in his advocacy for the Palestinians.
He said he believes Israel has a right to exist but not as a hierarchy that favors Jewish citizens. At the same time, he pledged to protect New York’s Jewish residents and highlighted the work of the city’s office to combat anti-Semitism.