Democratic Socialists urge Mamdani to implement sweeping anti-Israel agenda

Plan calls for BDS policies, CUNY divestment and ending “repression of demonstrations.”

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s mayor-elect, has received a long list of anti-Israel measures that his party wants him to enact as soon as he takes office in January, according to a report last week on the website Just the News.

Mamdani, who headed both the Democratic Party and the Democratic Socialists of America tickets in the elections, has openly identified as being anti-Israel, in line with the DSA’s ideology, although he maintained that this did not mean he is antisemitic. He has promised to protect New York’s Jews just as he would ensure the safety all minorities in the city.

He had already promised during his campaign that he would obey the warrant issued last November by the International Criminal Court and arrest Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on war crimes charges if he set foot in the city.

The planning document of the DSA’s New York chapter widened to include arresting all “active IDF soldiers for war crimes” while adding many other demands, most of which fall under the rubric of BDS – the boycott, divest and sanctions movement against Israel that Mamdani has publicly supported for years.

The demands include economic measures such as ending city contracts with companies that do business with Israel, withdrawing city funds from banks that lend money to or do business in the Jewish state, and removing the non-profit status of charities that raise funds for the IDF.

In the education sphere, the DSA wants Mamdani to divest the 26 colleges of the City University of New York (CUNY) system from Israeli-linked investments and reinstate any professors who have been “wrongly fired” for their pro-Palestinian activism.

To date, while the CUNY chancellor faced a congressional hearing in July over the handling of numerous antisemitism complaints on campus, only four Brooklyn College adjunct faculty members were dismissed earlier this year, with no specific reason publicly announced by the administration.

Their faculty union had condemned these as “retaliatory firings” for the teachers’ “lawful political expression” against Israeli policies “and advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

Israeli products should not be sold in the city-run grocery stores Mamdani has promised to establish in order to lower food prices, and real-estate agents promoting the purchase of Israeli properties should be investigated for “hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank,” the document added.

In a nod to the many anti-Israel protests that have taken place in the city over the two years of the Israel-Hamas war, during which a few hundred people were arrested for violent acts or resisting police, the DSA demanded that Mamdani “end repression of demonstrators and the SRG.”

The SRG is the NY Police Department’s Strategic Response Group, which is often deployed when large demonstrations are expected to back up regular officers in case civil disorder ensues.

New York State Assemblyman Kalman Yeger, an Orthodox Jewish Democrat, was outraged by news of the planning document.

“With every municipal issue facing New York City’s government, the DSA doesn’t care about the state of our schools, streets, parks, subways, city budget or anything else. They care about Israel — Israel and only Israel,” he said.

“Well at least the DSA mask is off,” he said. “This was never about affordability, free buses or anything else. This was always about Jew hatred.”

anti-Israel activismBDSCUNYDemocratic Socialists of AmericaZohran Mamdani