Mamdani defends criticism of AIPAC after being accused of antisemitism

By Katherine Koretski, CNN

(CNN) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Monday defended his remarks last week sharply denouncing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee after prominent Jewish leaders accused him of antisemitism.

“When I am speaking about AIPAC, I’m speaking about an organization that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people, not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region, and it is a status quo for immorality,” Mamdani said during a press conference at City Hall, pointing to Israeli operations in Gaza. “And when it comes to the way in which they defend the status quo, oftentimes they defend it through direct contributions, as we are seeing right now in New York.”

The mayor, a prominent critic of Israel’s government, is facing pushback after Jewish leaders argued that he went too far in his recent condemnation of the pro-Israel lobby’s spending in a New York House primary.

As Mamdani rallied with a slate of progressive challengers he has endorsed on Thursday, he described“monsters” that he said include “those who fund television ads that blanket the airwaves with misleading and bad faith attacks” against his three endorsed candidates. Mamdani then ripped into AIPAC, which has spent millions to boost pro-Israel candidates in congressional primaries this year, often by running ads that reference domestic issues rather than foreign policy.

“They move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal, to preserve their power, so that they can turn us against one another, instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary,” Mamdani said.

According to Federal Election Commission filings, AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, made two political contributions last month totaling over $600,000 to BOLD America, which has been funding ads in support of Rep. Adriano Espaillat – whom Mamdani-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier is challenging in New York’s 13th District.

CNN has reached out to AIPAC for comment.

In the following days, the leaders of the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee condemned Mamdani’s remarks, accusing Mamdani of using antisemitic tropes and warning of the dangers of such language coming from the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population outside Israel.

“Mayor Mamdani, referring to fellow New Yorkers as ‘monsters’ is outrageous and dangerous, and the impact of your words extends far beyond politics,” said Ted Deutch, the AJC’s CEO, in a post on X.

New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Jewish Democrat, echoed those concerns on Sunday evening.

“Swap ‘AIPAC’ for ‘Jews’ and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books,” Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer, said in a post on X. “That’s not criticizing a lobby. That’s laundering antisemitism from your podium as Mayor of a city with more than a million Jews. This bullshit is dangerous.”

Mamdani stood by his remarks on Monday, noting the increasing death toll in Gaza despite a fragile, US-brokered ceasefire. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Health, Israeli strikes have killed more than 1,000 people in Gaza since the ceasefire went into effect in mid-October.

“I think that it is important that when we ask ourselves how such death and destruction is happening overseas, we also name those who allow it to take place,” he told reporters.

When pressed on his use of the term “monsters,” Mamdani said he was quoting Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the Italian Communist Party, as he condemned super PAC spending in several New York races.

“I used the term to describe all those who are preventing the birth of a new world, not solely AIPAC, but frankly super PACs at large, who are spending millions of dollars in deceptive and misleading ads that are blanketing airwaves, not just in the case of Darializa Avila Chevalier, but also we see that kind of PAC spending when it comes to oppose Brad Lander, who’s running for Congress, as well as Claire Valdez, as well as a number of other races,” the mayor said.

“And I also use the term to describe a politics that, for far too long, has asked working people to lower their expectations,” he continued. “My use of the term is a broad use that speaks to the untenable nature of a status quo that is quite literally starving people in the city, all in the name of sustaining something that we simply cannot defend any longer.”

Lander has made Rep. Dan Goldman’s past support from AIPAC a key part of his campaign against the two-term incumbent, who declined to endorse Mamdani in either the primary or general election of last year’s mayoral race because he was concerned about the now-mayor’s stance on antisemitism.

Avila Chevalier, meanwhile, has faced criticism for attending a pro-Palestinian rally the day after Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attack on Israel – where militants killed 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostages.

Political leaders widely condemned the rally in the aftermath of the attack and Lander said earlier this month that he canceled his membership with the Democratic Socialists of America for promoting it.

Accused by Espaillat of attending the rally to “celebrate the death of innocent people in Israel right after the attack,” Avila Chevalier pushed back at a debate earlier this month.

“I would never celebrate the death of any human being,” she said. “I was there at that rally on October 8 because I remembered what happened in 2014 and I knew that the reaction would be an outsize reaction that would cause the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people. And that is what I was there to protest.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

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