NYC mayor sets up Office to Combat Antisemitism

Its duties will include monitoring what city agencies say and do on the subject and advise the municipal law department on potential hate crime cases.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced the establishment of an Office to Combat Antisemitism on Tuesday.

“The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism will be the first of its kind in a major city across the nation and will tackle antisemitism in all of its forms,” Adams said at a press conference.

The need was pressing, he said, noting that 10% of the population are Jewish New Yorkers, “yet over 51% of the hate crimes are [against] Jewish New Yorkers.”

According to the New York Police Department, the numbers are even higher for the first third of 2025, standing at 62%.

The office will “send a very clear message that in this city, antisemitism cannot live, and most importantly, it cannot grow,” he said.

Specifically, the interagency task force that the office will establish will have oversight powers to ensure that “city-funded entities and city agencies do not permit different forms of antisemitism,” he said.

“We have to proactively monitor what is leaving our agencies. We cannot be the feeder of hate,” he explained.

The office will also advise the municipal law department on potential hate crime cases and keep an eye on the courts’ prosecution of alleged offenders. This could potentially help combat the antisemitism especially displayed in New York’s universities since the Hamas terror organization sparked war with Israel 19 months ago by invading and slaughtering 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals.

Adams specifically pointed to the hateful rhetoric heard on local campuses during dozens of anti-Israel protests over the past year and a half, which could cross the line into antisemitism.

“If you’re saying, ‘Eradicate Israel, destroy Israel,’ I mean, who lives in Israel?” Adams said. “If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, call it a duck.”

Many Jewish students have also complained about threats, harassment, and even physical abuse they have suffered as a result of schools not enforcing their own rules of student conduct on campus.

The mayor’s liaison to the Jewish community, Moshe Davis, was appointed to head the office.

“This office will be a sledgehammer, deliberate, coordinated and unapologetic,” Davis told the assembled journalists, and will “address antisemitism at every level of city life.”

Jewish organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York that have consistently called out antisemitism and pressed the city to do more against the phenomenon, and Hasidic groups, whose community members have often been assaulted on the city streets, sent representatives to stand by the mayor’s side as he made the announcement and applauded the move.

Others were more critical, calling Adams’ move a political stunt to shore up his chances for re-election in the fall, as he is currently trailing badly in the polls.

“It’s insulting. It’s pathetic,” said Dov Hikind, a former longtime Brooklyn assemblyman and founder of Americans Against Antisemitism. “Where has he been? Jew hatred was bad three years ago, and it’s 10 times worse after Oct. 7, 2023. He didn’t know?”

“He’s creating a task force in the bottom of the ninth inning,” he said, alluding to the last chance of a home team to win in baseball,” Hikind said. “There’s no question he’s pandering” to the Jewish community.