Mamdani’s ‘New’ Antisemitism Plan is Adams’ with the Israel Pages Torn Out

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Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled what he calls “the nation’s first-ever municipal Strategy to Combat Antisemitism” on Tuesday. It is the plan he revoked on his first day in office, reprinted with every page that touches Israel torn out. That is the whole review. The rest is commentary.

The document gives itself away in its verbs. The task force has been “reconvened.” The security working group was “relaunched.” The antisemitism office was “reestablish[ed].” Every “re” is a concession, and each one has a source the strategy declines to name. Eric Adams appears in its 33 pages exactly zero times.

The source is not hard to find. Section 13 of Mamdani’s own Executive Order 2 substantially reproduces Adams’ Executive Order 51, down to the membership of the interagency task force. Section 21 of the same order concedes that provisions which “substantially repromulgate” revoked orders “shall be construed to be continuations.” His own lawyers wrote the citation he left out.

The rest is inherited too. The plan to expand Title VI staffing in public schools was already in Chapter V of the Adams blueprint published Dec. 30. The training the strategy showcases launched in April 2022.

What he did not copy is the point. Adams’ founding order directed the office to “monitor court cases” and to “liaise with the New York City Law Department on appropriate cases to bring or join.” Mamdani’s version keeps the surrounding text and drops that sentence. In the new strategy, the Law Department appears once, in the acknowledgments, and “litigation” appears once, in the legal disclaimer, inside a sentence ensuring nothing in the document can be used in one. He kept the office and cut the explicit instruction to work with city lawyers on cases to bring or join.

Then the definition. Adams adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism. Mamdani rescinded it Jan. 1, after his campaign promised he would instead “approach antisemitism in line with the Biden Administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism.” His strategy now quotes a paragraph from Biden’s document to explain why New York needs no definition at all. The very next paragraph of Biden’s document, on the same page, calls IHRA “the most prominent” definition, “which the United States has embraced.” The strategy invokes Biden’s authority while omitting his endorsement of the definition Mamdani revoked.

Biden’s strategy also says that “when Israel is singled out because of anti-Jewish hatred, that is antisemitism.” That sentence did not survive the trip from Pennsylvania Avenue to City Hall.

The need for clarity surfaced in April. At a City Council hearing, Councilman Eric Dinowitz asked the NYPD’s deputy commissioner for legal matters whether “Kill the Zionists” graffiti on a kosher restaurant would be charged as a hate crime. The answer: “it’s going to depend” on the investigation, and on whether the motive was “pure political motivation.” And “Kill the Jews” on the same wall? “That’s a hate crime right there.” As Dinowitz put it, “Zionist” is “used as a proxy for ‘Jew.’” The exchange shows exactly why a city strategy needs to address when political labels become proxies for Jewish identity.

Now search the strategy for the words that describe what actually happened to Jewish New Yorkers after Oct. 7. “Intifada”: zero. “Hamas”: zero. “Campus,” “encampment,” “BDS,” “anti-Zionism”: zero. “Protest” appears twice, both in a footnote to the crime statistics, and the footnote defends the protesters.  

Adams’ Executive Order 60 directed city contracting officials and mayoral pension trustees against discriminatory targeting of Israel, Israelis and associated entities. Mamdani revoked it on day one. The new strategy says nothing about procurement or pensions. He removed the safeguard, then omitted the subject.

The money follows the same logic. The headline “$26 million” is a general increase for the city’s hate-crimes office, which serves every community. The strategy specifies $1 million in physical-security grants, shared among vulnerable nonprofits, including synagogues. That is under 4 percent of the headline, for a community that Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch says absorbed 330 hate crimes last year, 57 percent of the city’s total, from a tenth of its population.  

To be clear, some of what the strategy continues is worth continuing. But the reason it has no definition, no protest section and no word on the economic targeting of Israel is that each would describe the mayor. There is no definition because the City's own witness could not say whether “kill the Zionists” targeted on a kosher restaurant was a hate crime. It cannot address protests because the Mayor vetoed the school-access bill. It cannot address anti-Israel propaganda or discriminatory economic targeting because the Mayor endorses both. A strategy against antisemitism that cannot say “anti-Zionism” was written around its author.

Mamdani could strengthen this strategy immediately: restore the IHRA order and the procurement safeguards, restore the express litigation mandate, and fund the physical protections the earlier blueprint proposed. Those would be concrete reasons for applause. Instead, the administration offers inherited programs alongside omissions that track the mayor’s own political choices. New Yorkers are entitled to judge the package by the protections it delivers and the ones it does not.

For anyone applauding this man: raise your standards. Jewish safety cannot stop where the mayor’s ideology begins.

Mark Goldfeder is CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and a law professor at Touro Law School.