‘Shame on you’: Mamdani’s viral anti-Netanyahu video sparks fear among Jewish groups

A video New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani released late Tuesday night — in which the democratic socialist railed at length against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but confessed he couldn’t honor his campaign pledge to arrest him — triggered a wave of warnings from mainstream Jewish organizations that his singular focus on excoriating Israel from his official platforms places New Yorkers at risk.

“This isn’t just political theater. It’s a dangerous dereliction of duty,” Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt wrote on X, noting the spike in hate crimes targeting Jewish New Yorkers since the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. “He remains relentlessly obsessed with the world’s only Jewish state — even as Jewish New Yorkers face record levels of antisemitism and the city confronts urgent problems that demand his attention.”

Other groups including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Orthodox Union and American Jewish Committee contrasted the mayor’s pledges early in his administration to represent New Yorkers of all faiths and nationalities with his use of official city platforms to exclusively pillory Israel — with the OU calling it a “betrayal of his oath of office and his own commitment to protect all New Yorkers” and the AJC demanding he “stop putting a target on the back of the Jewish community.”