NEW YORK CITY — 33-year-old democratic socialist and outspoken pro-Palestine advocate Zohran Mamdani has won the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. If elected, he would become the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Mamdani was born in Uganda to parents of Indian heritage and moved to the US as a young child. His mother is the award-winning film director Mira Nair, and his Ugandan-born father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a professor at Columbia University.
Here is important things to know about New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee:
Israel’s Occupation of Palestine and Gaza Genocide
Mamdani has long been a vocal critic of the Israeli occupation government and its treatment of Palestinians. In 2023, he introduced a bill to end the tax-exempt status of New York charities with ties to Israeli settlements that violate international human rights law.
He has sharply criticised Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and has voiced support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.
He has also said he believes that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, should be arrested if he visited New York City.
Mamdani also refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada”. Palestinians and their supporters have called the phrase a rallying cry for liberation.
In an interview with The Bulwark, Mamdani said he believed the phrase spoke to “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” He said the US Holocaust Museum used a similar Arabic term for “uprising” to describe the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising against the Nazis.
First Muslim Mayor
If elected in the fall, Mamdani would be New York’s first Muslim mayor, and his campaign excited the city’s roughly one million Muslims. The candidate regularly visited mosques and made his faith a centerpiece of his campaign.
He used one of his first campaign videos to talk about the city’s affordability crisis by breaking down the rising cost of a meal from a halal food cart, and later filmed himself breaking the Ramadan fast on the subway by devouring a giant burrito. The focus on his background also became a way for Mamdani to highlight the multicultural nature of his coalition and of the city he hoped to run.
“We know that to stand in public as a Muslim is also to sacrifice the safety that we can sometimes find in the shadows,” Mamdani said this spring.
Nihad Awad, the national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, wrote in Arabic on X that Mamdani’s win on Tuesday was “a victory for Palestine and justice” and called for protection for him and his family.
Antisemitism
Mamdani has also stated that there is no room for antisemitism in New York City, adding that if he were elected, he would increase funding to combat hate crimes. He has consistently drawn a distinction between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.
However, Mamdani has faced criticism for his stance against Israel and his support for Palestine.
Mamdani has received the endorsement of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, a pro-Palestinian Jewish group.
At the same time, leaders of organizations such as the American Jewish Committee, the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, and the Far Rockaway Jewish Alliance labeled him antisemitic for his stance.
“When someone spends years relentlessly targeting the world’s only Jewish state through legislation, boycotts and protests — while remaining silent on the abuses of regimes like Iran, China or Russia —it’s not principled criticism, it’s antisemitism, plain and simple,” Sam Berger, a Democratic Jewish state lawmaker from Queens, claimed in a statement.
“His rhetoric, accusing Israel of ‘genocide’ and ‘apartheid,’ is not only inflammatory and false, it’s part of a broader campaign to delegitimize Jewish self-determination.” — QNN
