The Trump administration has called on the United Nations to remove Francesca Albanese, the U.N. rapporteur on Palestinian rights, alleging “virulent antisemitism and support for terrorism,” according to a letter obtained by The Washington Free Beacon.

The letter, dated June 20 and addressed to U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres, also alleges that Albanese claims to be an “international lawyer” but is not licensed to practice law.

Albanese, an Italian national, regularly accuses Israel of genocide in Gaza and has said that the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas must be put in a” context of decades of oppression imposed on the Palestinians.”

The administration’s warning comes on the heels of a new report by Albanese titled “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide.”

In the report, Albanese recommends corporate entities “cease all business activities” linked with “human rights violations and international crimes against the Palestinian people,” and also calls on them to pay reparations to the Palestinian people.

“It shows how corporations have fueled and legitimised the destruction of Palestine. Genocide, it would seem, is profitable. This cannot continue, accountability must follow,” wrote Albanese in a post on X announcing the report Monday.

In the administration’’s letter, acting U.S. representative to the U.N. Dorothy Shea accused Albanese of waging “an unacceptable campaign of political and economic warfare against the American and worldwide economy.”

The World Jewish Congress also condemned Albanese’s new report, accusing her of promoting a “deeply biased narrative.”

“Ms. Albanese’s report is yet another example of her repeated misuse of her mandate to advance a political agenda rather than to uphold the universal principles of human rights,” said the WJC’s Executive Vice President Maram Stern in a statement.

Pro-Israel groups like U.N. Watch and NGO Monitor have regularly accused Albanese of anti-Israel and even antisemitic bias. In 2022, Albanese caught fire from top U.S. and Israeli diplomats who called out comments she made in 2014 in which she suggested that Europe was under the sway of the “Jewish lobby” and “guilt about the Holocaust.”

In February 2024, Albanese also received furious backlash when she said that victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel “were not killed because of their Judaism, but in response to Israel’s oppression.” Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. under President Biden, posted on X at the time that Albanese is “unfit for her role. The United Nations should not tolerate antisemitism from a UN-affiliated official hired to promote human rights.”

WASHINGTON — Zohran Mamdani turbocharged his upset victory in the New York mayoral Democratic primary by seemingly spending time with everyone in the city’s five boroughs.

Now pro-Israel Jewish progressives want some face time with the 33-year-old State Assembly member, who backs boycotting Israel and downplays Jewish concerns over the term “globalize the intifada,” now that he is one step closer to leading the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

In interviews, Jewish Democratic activists said Mamdani’s victory last month is not the national disaster for the century-long Jewish-Democratic alignment that Republicans are making it out to be — but it’s not good either. 

“If he’s going to be the mayor of New York, which is the largest Jewish population in any city in the world,” Halie Soifer, the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a group that campaigns for Democrats in the Jewish community, “he needs to understand that his defense of the phrase ‘globalize the intifada’ isn’t just concerning, it’s unacceptable.”

The prospect of candidates, including for federal office, emulating Mamdani’s Israel-critical postures is unsettling, according to pro-Israel insiders.

“Someone like Mamdani winning in the biggest city in America definitely has national implications,” said one major donor to Democrats who asked not to be identified in order to speak frankly.

A staffer for a Congressional Democrat said Mamdani’s victory complicated efforts by Democrats to raise the alarm in Jewish circles and beyond about the rise in harsh criticism of Israel among progressive politicians.

“There has been concern with amongst the established Jewish community and pro-Israel community with the left flank of the Democratic Party in terms of Israel for a while, and more mainstream, center-left Democrats have been trying to reassure them that there’s still a place for them in the party, and this just makes it the task that much more difficult,” said the staffer, who asked for anonymity to speak frankly. “I don’t think it’s like the end of the world, but it makes that task harder.”

The pro-Israel left tolerates and even indulges in a certain amount of criticism of Israel, especially of the unpopular prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the right-wing extremists in his coalition. But Mamdani’s positions and rhetoric — especially his defense of the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which critics of the phrase says endorses deadly attacks on Jews —  particularly irks Jewish progressives.

“It’s a consensus across the Democratic Party that something like ‘globalizing the intifada’ is deeply offensive, and it would behoove Mamdani to actually acknowledge that,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, the founder and president of J Street, a Jewish Middle East policy group that emphasizes a two-state outcome to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is often critical of the Israeli government..

“Those of us who lived through an Intifada don’t want to see it coming to a street near us, right?,” said Ben-Ami, who lived in Israel during the first 1987-1993 Intifada. “That’s not an attractive option.”

Mamdani has Jewish defenders, chief among them New York Comptroller Brad Lander, who also ran in the primary and who cross-endorsed with Mamdani. Lander describes himself as a Zionist who can work with Mamdani on confronting New York’s affordability crisis and against polarization.

“We are not going to let anyone divide Muslim New Yorkers and Jewish New Yorkers,” Lander said on primary night. “Our safety, our hopes and our freedoms are bound up together, don’t get it twisted.”

Some pro-Israel donors to the Democratic Party say their worries about Mamdani’s victory are  mitigated to a degree by its circumstances. Mamdani faced a deeply flawed rival in scandal-plagued former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and the democratic socialism he embraces barely resonates outside of New York City and a handful of other metropolitan centers.

Jennifer Laszlo Mizrahi, who founded the Israel Project media outreach group at the launch of the Second Intifada, and who has donated to multiple Democratic candidates over the years, said the party was in dire need of candidates more palatable than Cuomo.

“We need to do a much better job in nurturing young talent that is really smart and helping them understand issues and convincing them to run,” she said of pro-Israel Democrats, noting how Emily’s List cultivated feminist candidates at the local and state level.  “It is very hard to get good people to run, because it’s such a toxic environment, and the sacrifice is just so huge.”

Ben-Ami urged Democrats to emulate Mamdani’s campaign style, which included savvy social media videos of the candidate meeting with New Yorkers of all stripes in every borough of the city.  

“It’s very direct to camera, switching the narrative, at times, doing a lot more interviewing and listening to people on the street, making that your message, rather than 30-second ads that are highly produced and repeated over and over again,” he said. “It’s just a much more native and intuitive way of communicating with anybody under 40.”

Mamdani’s victory, at least for now, is more the exception than the rule, say Jewish Democrats, who pointed to primary victories over members of the “Squad,” the small faction among Democrats that is hypercritical of Israel.

“We’ve seen the moderates or center left folks win in Democratic primaries, like last year in Michigan, like this year in New Jersey, the extreme candidates who ran on Israel lost,” said Ira Forman, a longtime director of the National Jewish Democratic Committee, the JDCA’s predecessor. 

He referred to a primary victory last year by incumbent Democratic Rep. Shri Thanedar in Michigan, and Mikie Sherrill’s recent win in the New Jersey gubernatorial primary, where her second-place rival was deeply critical of Israel. Incumbents Jamaal Bowman in New York and Cori Bush in Missouri, both harsh critics of Israel, also went down to defeat to pro-Israel moderates in primaries last year.

National pro-Israel groups are staying out of the general election, according to spokespeople for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, J Street, the JDCA and Democratic Majoriity for Israel. 

That’s in part because major pro-Israel political donors in New York are considering how best to keep Mamdani from winning the general election in November — chief among them hedge funder Bill Ackman.

“I don’t think national people are going to be putting money into it,” said the pro-Israel Democratic donor who asked not to be identified. “There’s enough New York money to go around.”

Soifer said JDCA is seeking a meeting with Mamdani. “It’s a moral obligation that he ensure that all New Yorkers feel safe and secure and considering how many Jews are in New York, he’s going to have to change the way he speaks about this issue,” she said, referring to Israel and particularly his history with the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

Days before his primary win on June 24, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada” in a podcast interview with The Bulwark, calling it “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” He later said he wouldn’t use such language.

On Sunday in a post-primary victory interview on “Meet the Press,” Mamdani refused three times to condemn the phrase — but instead of defending it, he couched his refusal in a reluctance to “police” language, and said he “heard” the fears of Jewish New Yorkers who revile the phrase.

Mamdani did not make the Palestinian issue front and center while campaigning — indeed, when asked about it he often pivoted to his favored issue, affordability in the country’s most expensive city. 

And yet, unlike a number of other progressive Democrats who, once elected, have emerged in recent years on the national stage as strident Israel critics, Mamdani did not try to obscure or downplay his identification with the Palestinian cause during his campaign. He stood by past statements backing the boycott Israel movement and his pledge to arrest Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should the Israeli prime minister, accused of war crimes by the International Criminal Court, visit the city while he is mayor.

He has also sought to address outrage arising out of his statement a day after Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, massacring close to 1,200 people.

His Oct. 8 statement mourned the loss of Israeli and Palestinian lives, although Israel had barely launched its retaliation, and lacerated Israeli leaders for declaring war, without mentioning the Hamas attack that launched the war — or even naming Hamas.

He has moved away from that one-sidedness since then. In the weeks before the primary election and in an appearance on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on election eve, Mamdani called Hamas’ attack a “war crime.”

The Democratic pro-Israel donor said Mamdani’s shifts indicate a possible willingness to pivot, comparing him to Michigan’s Thanedar, who was sharply critical of Israel when he was first elected in 2022, but who shifted to a pro-Israel posture after the Oct. 7 attacks. An effort was underway, the donor said, to get Democratic leaders to weigh in. 

Those appeals appeared to pay off on Sunday when New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, demanded clarity from Mamdani on “globalize the intifada” in an appearance on ABC’s “This Week.”

“Globalizing the intifada, by way of example, is not an acceptable phrasing,” Jeffries said. “He’s going to have to clarify his position on that as he moves forward.”

On Tuesday, a spokesperson for  Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Jewish Democrat who welcomed Mamdani’s victory without specifically calling out his views on Israel, told Jewish Insider, 

“Sen. Schumer condemns the phrase ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and believes it should not be used because it has such dangerous implications.” 

While calling out rhetoric they think is dangerous and unhelpful, few of the mainstream liberal supporters of Israel, unlike a number of Republcans, are willing to call Mamdani antisemitic. In New York, however, some local pols weren’t so reticent. “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, said in a statement on the eve of the primary. 

Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, who worked in communications for a number of prominent New York Democrats — including former Mayor Bill de Blasio, who endorsed Mamdani — said it was critical to lower the temperature by sticking to the facts.  

“The piece that feels most important to name is the urgency of leaders recognizing how rhetoric like ’globalize the intifada’ is now directly and increasingly fueling violence against Jews,” she said. “That’s different in some of the conversations that are happening that are suggesting Mamdani himself has said certain things, or otherwise twisting the reality.”

Soifer of the JDCA said it was incumbent on Jewish Democrats to also make clear that the attacks on Mamdani’s faith as a Muslim were also intolerable.

“It’s important to note that we’re no strangers to hate, and we see some hate being directed at him as well,” she said.

Though he was elected to represent Astoria, Queens in New York’s State Assembly, Zohran Mamdani — who last week pulled off a stunning upset in New York City’s mayoral primary — has called the Palestinian cause “central to my identity,” both in and out of politics.

Mamdani consistently and proudly associates with the pro-Palestinian movement in high-profile settings across New York City. Take Saturday night, for instance, when he took the stage with Mahmoud Khalil, the pro-Palestinian protest leader who was detained by the Trump administration, at comedian Ramy Youssef’s show at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side.

So it’s no surprise that as Mamdani aims to become mayor of New York — the city with the largest Jewish population in the world — that Jewish New Yorkers are closely scrutinizing what he has said about Jews, Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.

Below is a round-up of what Mamdani has said on a range of Israel and Jewish-related topics in a variety of interviews that have made headlines.

Israel’s right to exist

During the long mayoral primary campaign, Mamdani repeatedly said that Israel has a right to exist. But he usually qualifies that statement by adding that Israel is flaunting its responsibilities under international law, based on its treatment of Palestinians.

He has also been asked if Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish state. As he stated at a town hall in May with the UJA-Federation of New York, co-moderated by the New York Jewish Week’s Lisa Keys: It should exist “with equal rights for all.”

He later said on a local Fox channel’s morning show: “I’m not comfortable supporting any state that has a hierarchy of citizenship on the basis of religion or anything else.”

The boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel

As he said at the UJA-Federation town hall, he supports the BDS movement, which lobbies for an economic and cultural boycott of Israel. Pro-Israel groups have fought a decades-long battle to marginalize the movement, which its critics say seeks the eradication of Israel as a Jewish state.

“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence. And I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” he said.

Academic boycott of Israeli universities

While a student at Bowdoin College — where he co-founded the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter — Mamdani agreed with the American Studies Association’s boycott of Israeli academic institutions in 2014.

“Israeli universities are both actively and passively complicit in the crimes of both the Israeli military and the Israeli government in all its settler-colonial forms,” Mamdani wrote in an op-ed in the school’s student newspaper, published in 2014, the year he graduated. “Israeli universities give priority admission to soldiers, discriminate against Palestinian students, and have developed remote-controlled bulldozers for the Israeli Army’s home demolitions.”

He added that the boycott “is decidedly not aimed at individual persons.”

“In other words, a professor from the University of Tel Aviv can still present research at an ASA conference, provided that he or she does so as an individual scholar and not expressly as a representative of Israeli academic institutions or of the Israeli government,” Mamdani wrote.

Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza

Mamdani’s first statement about the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023, which he issued the day after, expressed mourning for “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.”

He added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “declaration of war” will “undoubtedly lead to more violence and suffering…The path toward a just and lasting peace can only begin by ending the occupation and dismantling apartheid.”

Since then, Mamdani has consistently referred to Israel’s retaliatory actions in Gaza as a “genocide” — a word he had used to describe previous Israeli military conflicts, long before Oct. 7. (More on that below.) He has also said that the United States, through its support of Israel, is “subsidizing a genocide.” Israel denies it is carrying out a genocide.

At a rally in Times Square on Oct. 8, 2023, some local members of the Democratic Socialists of America — of which Mamdani is a member — celebrated Hamas, who killed close to 1,200 Israelis and abducted hundreds more on Oct. 7. Mamdani condemned the rally on Oct. 10, telling Politico: “My support for Palestinian liberation should never be confused for a celebration of the loss of civilian life. I condemn the killing of civilians and rhetoric at a rally seeking to make light of such deaths.”

Attacks on Jews in Washington, D.C. and Colorado

Mamdani also condemned the shooting outside of the Capital Jewish Museum in May that killed two staffers working at the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C.

“My thoughts are with the victims and their families—as well as all those who must contend with the appalling rise in antisemitic violence,” he wrote in a statement on X.

He also condemned the firebombing of an event in Boulder for Israeli hostages, and he again commented on it on Monday, after the death of a woman injured in the incident — including in his statement a phrase often used by Jews after the death of a loved one.

“I am heartbroken by the news from Colorado where Karen Diamond, a victim of the vicious attack earlier this month, has passed away,” he wrote on X. “May Karen’s memory be a blessing and a reminder that we must constantly work to eradicate hatred and violence.”

Tackling antisemitism

On the campaign trail, Mamdani has stated that he wants to work to combat hate crimes across New York City, including those on Jews.

Just before the primary, he appeared on “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” alongside Brad Lander, a Jewish progressive who finished third in the ranked-choice primary; the two had cross-endorsed each other in the race. In the appearance, Mamdani claimed that the city is experiencing a “crisis of antisemitism” and said that he would like to create a Department of Community Safety that would focus on anti-hate programming.

“Antisemitism is not simply something that we should talk about — it’s something that we have to tackle,” he said on the show. “We have to make clear there’s no room for it in this city, in this country.”

In the UJA-Federation town hall, Mamdani also said that he would be “proud” to appoint a senior adviser to tackle antisemitism in New York.

The phrase “Globalize the intifada”

Mamdani has in multiple interviews declined to condemn the term “globalize the intifada,” a phrase used by many in the pro-Palestinian movement on college campuses and beyond. The word “intifada” directly translates to “shaking off,” but most Jews associate it with two violent Palestinian uprisings, which led to several terrorist attacks across Israel from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.

When asked about the phrase earlier this month, Mamdani said “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand strongly rebuked Mamdani on the topic. (Notably, Jewish pro-Israel politicians such as Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Jerry Nadler have both praised Mamdani since his primary win.)

On Sunday, he clarified that the term is “not language that I use,” but still declined to disavow it.

“The language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights,” Mamdani said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Mamdani used similar language in an interview with The Bulwark posted on June 17. That led Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, to write in a post on X, “Globalize the Intifada is an explicit call for violence. Globalize the Intifada celebrates and glorifies savagery and terror.”

The Holocaust 

While Mamdani has commemorated the Holocaust on social media, he took heat for declining to sign onto a resolution memorializing the genocide in the state assembly in May.

“He absolutely supports the Holocaust Memorial Day resolution,” campaign spokesperson Andrew Epstein said at the time. “He had to narrow down the capacity” during a busy campaign season, Epstein added.

Mamdani said in the UJA-Federation town hall that would like to see more Holocaust education in New York City schools.

Hasan Piker interview

In April, Mamdani sat for a three-hour interview with popular Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, who has repeatedly called Orthodox Jews “inbred,” compared Israelis to the Ku Klux Klan, and defended Hamas’ attack on the Nova music festival, in which the Palestinian militants killed hundreds of Israelis and committed widespread sexual assault. On one of his shows, Piker told off a listener who condemned the massacre, saying “Bloodthirsty violent pig dog, suck my d***.”

A number of progressive politicians, including Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Ro Khanna of California, have also appeared with Piker. When asked about Piker, Mamdani said, “I am willing to speak to each and every person about this campaign.”

Uncivilized.media interview

This week, a video of Mamdani speaking in Queens in 2023 went viral, thanks in part to Texas Rep. Brandon Gill, who criticized Mamdani for eating food with his hands in the video. “If you refuse to adopt Western customs, go back to the Third World,” Gill wrote on X on Sunday.

Similar videos attacking Mamdani led one Jewish group, the Nexus Project, to object that many of Mamdani’s critics are “trafficking in Islamophobia, racism, and xenophobia, and distorting our broader political discourse.”

In the video, Mamdani sheds more light on his views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The son of two India-born parents — filmmaker Mira Nair and and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani — the candidate spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before migrating to the U.S. at the age of 7.

“Specifically growing up in South Africa post-apartheid, it felt as if one of the most natural things to wear around my body was a keffiyeh,” he says, referencing the scarf that Palestinians have long worn and which has since become a symbol of resistance to Israel.

In the interview, Mamdani calls discussing Palestinian issues “entirely taboo” in U.S. politics and criticizes PEPs — politicians who he says are “progressive except for Palestine.”

He also says that he believes the U.S. has put Palestinian lives “in jeopardy” for “decades.”

Arresting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

“As mayor, New York City would arrest Benjamin Netanyahu,” Mamdani said to former MSNBC host Mehdi Hasan in December. “This is a city that our values are in line with international law.”

Earlier this month, he said the same thing at B’nai Jeshurun, a large synagogue in Manhattan.

“My answer is the same whether we are speaking about Vladimir Putin or Netanyahu,” he said. “I think that this should be a city that is in compliance with international law.”

The International Criminal Court, headquartered in The Hague, issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu — along with former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and Hamas commander Mohammed Deif — in November, accusing him of war crimes. Given that the United States is not a party to the ICC, it would be highly unlikely that the mayor of New York would be able to arrest Netanyahu.

The Holy Land Five

Before his political career, Mamdani released rap songs under the monikers Young Cardamom and, later, Mr. Cardamom.

In one 2017 song, “Salam,” he praised the “Holy Land Five” — the heads of a former Islamic charity organization founded in the U.S. who were convicted of aiding Hamas. In 2001, the U.S. government designated the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development a terrorist organization and seized its assets; some have argued that the trial was based on “hearsay” evidence.

“My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up,” Mamdani raps in the track.

The “Not On Our Dime!” act

The Holy Land Five story concerned foreign funding of players in the Middle East conflict. Mamdani may have drawn a lesson from the case: He is the lead sponsor of the “Not On Our Dime!: Ending New York funding of Israeli settler violence act,” which he proposed in the New York State Assembly in May 2023. Its stated goal is to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity.”

Sixty-six lawmakers, a majority of the Democratic state caucus, signed onto a letter condemning the proposal. “Its purpose is to attack Jewish organizations that have wide ranging missions from feeding the poor to providing emergency medical care for victims of terrorism to clothing orphans,” the letter read.

As Politico reported, Mamdani highlighted the act in campaign pamphlets during the primary campaign.

Minority Leader Chuck Shumer and several other Senate Democrats condemned the pro-Palestinian slogan “globalize the intifada” in response to a controversy surrounding NY mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani’s interpretation of the phrase.

In statements to Jewish Insider, Sens. Schumer, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Jacky Rosen of Nevada offered statements saying “Globalize the intifada” is a call to violence or, in Fetterman’s case, “deeply troubling.”

A spokesperson for Schumer, who had previously offered brief praise for Mamdani, condemned the phrase when asked about Mamdani’s statements that the phrase is “grounded in a belief in universal human rights.”

“Sen. Schumer condemns the phrase ‘Globalize the Intifada’ and believes it should not be used because it has such dangerous implications. As Senator Schumer said after the death of Karen Diamond, the attack in Boulder continues to serve as a grave reminder of the deadly consequences of the rise in antisemitism,” a spokesperson for Schumer told Jewish Insider, referencing the 82-year-old victim of the firebombing attack at a Boulder, Colorado demonstration for Israeli hostages who died from her wounds.

The spokesman said Schumer planned to meet with Mamdani, who on Tuesday was declared the winner of the Democratic primary and as a result is the heavy favorite in November’s general election.

The recent focus on “Globalize the intifada” came after Mamdani, a vocal critic of Israel, declined to condemn the phrase. In an interview with The Bulwark, he said he believed the phrase spoke to “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” and said “intifada” was similar in meaning to the word “uprising” used to describe the Jewish revolt against the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto.

On Sunday, Mamdani again refused to condemn the phrase, although he told NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” that “that’s not language that I use.”

“The language that I use and the language that I will continue to use to lead this city is that which speaks clearly to my intent, which is an intent grounded in a belief in universal human rights,” continued Mamdani.

In his statement, Blumenthal stipulated that he was not familiar with Mamdani’s stance.

“I don’t know what [Mamdani’s] position is on it, but I certainly think that the call to spread the intifada is the kind of incitement that can lead to extremist violence,” said Blumenthal.

Rosen referenced the two violent intifadas, one beginning in 1987 and the other in 2000, when Palestinian suicide bombers unleashed attacks in Israel and rioters clashed with Israeli security. In total, over 1,100 Israelis and more than 6,000 Palestinians died during the intifadas.

“At a time when antisemitism is rising at alarming rates in the U.S., leaders of both parties have an obligation to stand up, speak clearly, and unequivocally condemn hatred and bigotry in every form,” Rosen said in her statement.

“The intifadas were periods marked by unspeakable violence and terror against innocent Israelis, and it should not be a difficult decision for anyone to condemn the antisemitic call to globalize these violent attacks. Our words matter — and in moments like this, silence is not an option,” she continued.

“I’m not a member of the Jewish community or a NYC voter. Personally, I would never use or defend this deeply troubling phrase,” Fetterman said.

Last week, New York Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand called on Mamdani to denounce the phrase. New York Democratic Rep. Ritchie Torres called the slogan “deeply offensive” and said that “every elected official, without exception, should condemn it.” during an interview on CNN Monday.

Ben & Jerry’s parent company Unilever is cutting off millions in funding to the ice cream company’s charitable foundation after a probe begun in part due to the company’s donations to pro-Palestinian organizations, according to Semafor.

Unilever, ahead of plans to spin off Ben & Jerry’s along with its other ice cream brands, says the ice cream maker was impeding an audit of the foundation, which funds hundreds of left-leaning groups.

Peter ter Kulve, who runs Unilever’s ice cream business, told Ben & Jerry’s executives in an email seen by Semafor that the foundation’s trustees “have continued to resist basic oversight” and allegedly refused to provide audit documents.

“It represents a marked departure from the norms of charitable organizations, for whom transparency is typically a bedrock operating principle,” ter Kulve wrote.

The Ben & Jerry’s foundation distributed more than $5 million of Unilever’s money in 2022, according to Semafor. The audit focused in part on its grants to pro-Palestinian groups, including the Oakland Institute, a California-based nonprofit whose founder is a trustee of the Ben and Jerry’s Foundation.

The company, founded but no longer owned by two progressive Jews, has long wed the ice cream business to its left-wing politics. The cut to Ben & Jerry’s charitable donations marks the latest in a saga of tensions between the ice cream company and Unilever which escalated in 2021 when Ben & Jerry’s announced that it would stop selling its desserts in “Occupied Palestinian Territory.” Last month, the board of Ben & Jerry’s called Israel’s war in Gaza a “genocide” in a statement.

In April, Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen attempted to gather investors for a potential buy-back of the company ahead of its spin-off, but Unilever rebuffed Cohen’s efforts, saying that it would not sell Ben & Jerry’s as a stand-alone business.

The dispute over the ice cream company’s progressive stances ended up in Manhattan federal court in March when Ben & Jerry’s accused Unilever of axing its CEO Dave Stever over the brand’s social activism.

Members of the British punk band Bob Vylan have had their U.S. visas revoked by the State Department after leading thousands of concert-goers in chanting “Death, death to the IDF” last weekend at the Glastonbury music festival in England.

The announcement by the State Department comes as the punk rock duo was slated to go on a North American tour beginning in late October, with 18 U.S. venues set to host the band. 

But with their visas now rescinded, the tour is in jeopardy.

“The @StateDept has revoked the US visas for the members of the Bob Vylan band in light of their hateful tirade at Glastonbury, including leading the crowd in death chants,” wrote Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau in a post on X. “Foreigners who glorify violence and hatred are not welcome visitors to our country.”

Bob Vylan has faced both backlash and praise following their anti-Israel chants at the Glastonbury festival, and their performance is now being reviewed by British police. The group defended their performance on social media, writing that “whatever sanctions we receive will be a distraction.”

“We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs of any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine,” the band wrote in a post on X. 

“We are being targeted for speaking up. We are not the first, we will not be the last. And if you care for the sanctity of human life and freedom of speech, we urge you to speak up, too,” the post continued.

The British broadcaster BBC is also catching fire for live streaming Bob Vylan’s set, writing in a statement Monday that it should have pulled the livestream during the band’s performance, adding that the BBC “respects freedom of expression but stands firmly against incitement to violence.”

The United Kingdom’s chief rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, lambasted the airing of the band’s performance, writing in a post on X that “toxic Jew-hatred is a threat to our entire society.”

“This is a time of national shame. The airing of vile Jew-hatred at Glastonbury and the BBC’s belated and mishandled response, brings confidence in our national broadcaster’s ability to treat antisemitism seriously to a new low,” Mirvis wrote.

“It should trouble all decent people that now, one need only couch their outright incitement to violence and hatred as edgy political commentary, for ordinary people to not only fail to see it for what it is, but also to cheer it, chant it and celebrate it. Toxic Jew-hatred is a threat to our entire society,” Mirvis continued.

BERLIN — A Danish citizen of Afghani descent has been arrested in Denmark on suspicion of helping Iran plan attacks on Jewish targets in Berlin.

The suspect, identified only as Ali S., is accused of spying on Jewish institutions and individuals in the German capital for Iranian intelligence services in preparation for further actions, including attacks, the German Federal Prosecutor in Karlsruhe said Tuesday.

The man was arrested in Aarhus, Denmark’s second-largest city, last Thursday. He is now expected to be extradited to Germany, where a federal investigative judge will determine whether he will remain in custody.   

The suspect is alleged to have received his assignment this year to collect information in Berlin about Jewish sites and specific individuals.

According to the magazine Der Spiegel, German authorities believe a special unit of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has issued orders to prepare attacks in Berlin. The suspect reportedly had photographed several buildings in June, including the headquarters of the German-Israel Society, a secular organization with branches across the country, and another building where the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany reportedly visits on occasion.

Swift reactions came from the heads of both organizations.

Central Council chair Josef Schuster told Spiegel magazine that the arrest was a “wake up call to those who continue to downplay the hatred and annihilationist ideology of the mullah regime toward Israel and Jews around the world.”

Iran’s plans “show the terrorist nature of this regime,” Green Party politician Volker Beck,  president of the German-Israeli Society, said.

Iran has long been suspected of carrying out espionage on Jews and Jewish sites in Germany. In late 2017, Germany’s foreign ministry formally admonished the Iranian government over the case of a Pakistani-born student sentenced to more than four years in prison here for spying on former German parliament member Reinhold Robbe, who had headed the German Israeli Society through 2015.

More recently, several prominent Jewish individuals in Germany have received police protection based on intelligence about Iranian lists of potential targets. For security reasons, the individuals did not wish to reveal their names. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Donald Trump at the White House Monday as the president makes renewed calls for Israel to come to a ceasefire agreement with Hamas.

“MAKE THE DEAL IN GAZA. GET THE HOSTAGES BACK!!! DJT,” wrote Trump in a post on Truth Social Sunday night.

The visit, which was confirmed anonymously by two U.S. administration officials to the Associated Press, comes over a week after Trump helped broker a ceasefire between Israel and Iran following a 12-day conflict that saw a barrage of Israeli and U.S. attacks on Iran’s nuclear program.

On Friday, Trump told reporters that “we think within the next week we’re going to get a ceasefire” in Gaza, but didn’t offer any further explanation. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt echoed the sentiment on Monday, saying that a ceasefire in Gaza was a top priority for the president.

“It’s heartbreaking to see the images that have come out from both Israel and Gaza throughout this war, and the president wants to see it end,” Leavitt said. “He wants to save lives.”

Netanyahu also appeared to prioritize the release of the remaining 50 Israeli hostages in Gaza following the ceasefire with Iran.

“We fought bravely against Iran — and achieved a great victory. This victory opens up an opportunity for a dramatic expansion of the peace agreements,” Netanyahu said in a statement Thursday.

“Alongside the release of our hostages and the defeat of Hamas, there is a window of opportunity here that must not be missed. Not even a single day should be wasted,” he added.

The Jerusalem District Court also cancelled hearings scheduled this week for Netanyahu’s corruption trial, accepting a request by the Israeli leader over classified diplomatic and security grounds. The cancellation of the hearing comes days after Trump blasted the trial as a “ridiculous witch hunt.”

The planned visit by Netanyahu will follow a visit by Israeli Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer this week for talks with the White House on a potential Gaza ceasefire, Iran and other matters, according to the Associated Press.

It also comes as Israel has faced heightened scrutiny over the killings of Gazans at its aid distribution sites. Last week, Haaretz reported that Israeli soldiers said that they were ordered to shoot at unarmed Gazans seeking aid, although Netanyahu denied the allegations.

On Monday, dozens of people were killed across the Gaza Strip, including at least 11 in the area of a Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution center, according to the Times of Israel.

Also on Monday, the Trump administration approved a new $510 million arms sale to Israel to resupply its military with bomb guidance kits for precision munitions.

Twenty-four members of the Jewish community in Tehran and Shiraz remain in prison as of Sunday after being arrested along with hundreds of others in a sweeping government crackdown in Iran that began as fighting ended with Israel.

The arrests took in 35 Jews originally, according to a report put out Saturday by HRANA, the Human Rights Activist News Agency, an affiliate of the Human Rights in Iran NGO. Mass arrests began early in the morning of June 23, according to the report. Eleven Jews have been released since the original arrests, according to a former senior Iranian communal leader, who would speak only on condition of anonymity due to concerns for his contacts in Iran..

The charges filed against those being held — having contact with Israel  — have the potential to ensnare many members of the Jewish community, he said. Iranian officials have been hunting alleged collaborators with Israel following Israel’s recent attacks on Iran and the United States’ bombing of the country’s most fortified nuclear facility.  

The former Iranian communal leader, who remains in close touch with the community, said Iranian authorities are checking the cell phones of those they arrest, looking for records of any calls to the Jewish state.

 “Most Iranian Jews have family in Israel,” explained the former high-ranking communal leader, who today lives in Los Angeles. “That’s why they call” the country. During the military conflict earlier this month, as each side targeted the other side’s cities with missiles and drones, many Iranian Jews reached out to check on the safety of their relatives.

“They are completely prohibited from any connection to Israel,” he said. But such communications were quietly tolerated over the years given the reality of Jewish family connections. In the wake of the war with Israel, the authorities are now drastically tightening their policies. Under the new rules, he said, “They can accuse anyone of being a spy for Israel.”

The arrests of the Jews, who reportedly include several rabbis, appear to be part of a crackdown in which more than 700 people have been taken in since June 13, when Israel initiated its attacks on Iran. Jerusalem described the attacks as an effort to stop Tehran’s development of a nuclear program building toward  Iranian nuclear weapons capabilities. 

Tehran denies this. But Israel views Iran, which has vowed to destroy the Jewish state, as an existential threat.

Minorities are especially concerned over the detentions. Last Wednesday, Iran announced that it had executed three men from Iran’s ethnic Kurdish population who were convicted of aiding Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, in the 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist.

The sweep comes as Israeli authorities themselves have boasted about the deep penetration into Iran their intelligence agencies achieved as part of Israel’s planning for its  attack. In mid-June Mossad even released footage purporting to show agents within Iran laying the groundwork for air strikes.

But Israel has no known record of recruiting assets from within Iran’s closely monitored Jewish community, which today numbers somewhere around 10,000 people. The community, which stood at over 80,000 before the 1979 Revolution that brought Iran’s Islamic regime to power, has generally remained free to practice their religion and organize themselves communally, including maintenance of their own schools and social welfare institutions. They remain free to emigrate, though taking their assets out with them can be a problem.

Those who remain live with various forms of legal discrimination that sharia, or Islamic religious law, imposes on all non-Muslims in Iran, and social discrimination that prohibits their rising above certain levels in government or military positions. But a 1979 fatwa, or religious ruling, issued by Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founding leader, forbade physical attacks on the community. Under Iran’s constitution they are also accorded an official representative in Iran’s parliament.

Nevertheless, in 1999, 13 members of the Shiraz Jewish community were arrested on charges of spying for Israel. Most of them were haredi Orthodox, which set them apart to some extent, from the mainstream of the community. Evidence used against the accused, who included local merchants, teachers and rabbis, included allegations of contacts the group had with people in Israel. 

An intense international campaign on their behalf included the United States, France and Russia, whose governments challenged the fairness of their trials. Local Jewish leaders in Iran also protested their innocence. Ten of the 13 were convicted and sentenced to up to 13 years in prison. But they were eventually all freed early, in stages, with the last prisoners released in 2003.

“Really, it was very bad,” the former senior Iranian communal leader now in Los Angeles said, voicing hope the community would not face the same situation again.

It was a Jewish politician, Bernie Sanders, whose surprisingly strong showing in the 2016 presidential primaries brought the Democratic Socialists of America to prominence. Although not a member of the group, Sanders identifies as a “democratic socialist.” The DSA endorsed him, and his candidacy inspired a surge in membership.

Nine years later, the DSA has endorsed another rising progressive star, and this time he is a member: Zohran Mamdani, a member of DSA’s New York chapter, who last week pulled off a stunning upset in the Democratic primary for New York City mayor. 

Mamdani’s victory was hailed by those who share DSA’s progressive domestic platform, characterized by a strong social safety net, support for the working class and significant government involvement in the economy.

At the same time, it sent shockwaves among the pro-Israel leadership and mainstream, who view the DSA’s positions on Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as anathema. The DSA platform accuses Israel of apartheid, colonialism  and military occupation, while pledging solidarity with the Palestinian cause. The group considers the Gaza war a genocide; supports BDS, the movement to boycott Israel, and calls for an end to American aid to Israel. 

The platform does not endorse any particular formula for resolving the conflict but says any political solution must be grounded in the right of Palestinian refugees to return, an outcome Israel contends would spell the end of its existence as a Jewish state.

Zamdani won while fully embracing the DSA’s policies on Israel, for which he faced blistering accusations of antisemitism. 

So what is the DSA and does it actually stand on Israel? Read on for a description of how its position has hardened over time, and the Israel-related controversies it has weathered to reach its current popularity.

A fading friendship

Calling itself the largest socialist organization in the country, the DSA claims to have more than 80,000 dues-paying members, with chapters in every state, and promises to represent the interests of the working class.

Although the DSA’s own political platform calls for “the abolition of capitalism and the creation of a democratically run economy that provides for people’s needs,” political candidates backed by the DSA generally don’t advocate the overthrow of the American government or seek to abolish capitalism. They focus on enacting changes that would make the United States resemble Scandinavian democracies. 

Mamdani has himself said that he has “many critiques of capitalism.” 

On June 27 he told CNN, quoting Martin Luther King, “In the words of Dr. King decades ago, he said, ‘Call it democracy or call it democratic socialism; there must be a better distribution of wealth for all of God’s children in this country.’”

DSA was not always the home of some of Israel’s staunchest critics, nor a harbor for those calling to boycott the country. In fact, many of the people who helped found the group in 1982 were sympathetic to Zionism, and some even considered themselves friends of Israel.

“[Michael] Harrington was a deep believer in Israel,” DSA co-founder Jo-Ann Mort once wrote of the group’s most prominent early leader. According to Mort, Harrington, who died in 1989, was a friend of Shimon Peres, the late Israeli prime minister, and for a time shared with Peres a skepticism about the cause of Palestinian statehood.

“It’s unlikely that he would have felt at home, were he alive, in the organization he founded,” Mort wrote in Fathom.

DSA’s position on Israel, if anything, stalled the momentum it gained after Sanders’ campaign and nearly discredited the DSA, as many of the politicians who had risen with the party’s backing publicly denounced its response to the Hamas-led massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7, 2023.

Mort, a consultant who has worked with a number of left-leaning Jewish organizations, relayed the history of the movement and Israel in a 2017 essay condemning DSA’s decision to endorse the BDS movement. She argued that democratic socialists should be advocating for peace between Israelis and Palestinians, rather than embracing a political program that would negate Israel’s right to exist.

Losing allies after Oct. 7

Less than two years ago, it seemed that the DSA’s hardline stance on Israel could become too big a liability for progressive politicians, relegating the group back to the political fringe of the pre-Bernie days.

“The Democratic Socialists of America is coming apart at the seams,” Politico wrote in a story about the group’s reckoning on Israel, four days after Hamas and other terrorist groups invaded Israel from Gaza, killing and kidnapping hundreds.

Two prominent progressives who had earned the DSA’s endorsement, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, then also a House representative, condemned a pro-Palestinian rally promoted by DSA, at which some attendees cheered the massacre of Israeli civilians on Oct. 7. Bowman had already nearly been expelled from the group over a trip he made to Israel and later let his membership lapse over disagreements with DSA about U.S. funding for Israeli defensive weapons.

Rep. Shri Thanedar of Michigan also cut ties with DSA at the time, citing the group’s refusal to unequivocally condemn terrorism as the reason for his departure.

On the West Coast, Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman, elected with DSA’s support, criticized the organization’s national statement on Hamas’ attack for overlooking the violence carried out by Hamas and for showing a lack of empathy toward Israelis.

And a few months later, in July 2024, DSA withdrew an endorsement from Ocasio-Cortez after she took part in a panel on antisemitism, which DSA claimed was aimed at conflating criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. 

New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, who is Jewish and was another progressive candidate on the Democratic mayoral primary ballot, revealed during his campaign that after the Oct. 7 attack he left the DSA, which he had joined in 1987, citing the group’s response.

Born to the DSA

Mamdani has echoed views on Israel and the Palestinians that are nearly identical to the DSA platform, which is not surprising given that he found his way to democratic socialism through pro-Palestinian activism. As a student at Bowdoin College, a liberal arts school in Maine, he helped found the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine.

After graduating, he thought that Palestine activism would be disqualifying in American politics — until he met Khader El-Yateem. Running for city council in New York in 2017, Palestinian-American El-Yateem was a DSA candidate and BDS supporter, and Mamdani went to work on his campaign.

“He was a socialist, he was pro-BDS, and he was running for local office. These are all things that I had been told could never exist simultaneously in a person,” Mamdani said in a 2021 interview with Jacobin magazine. “And their existence was not a cause for fear or anxiety among so many but, in fact, of inspiration.”

Mamdani also credits the rise of Bernie Sanders for his involvement in DSA organizing. Asked why he came to identify as a socialist, Mamdani started with the values instilled in him as a child — he’s the son of the well-known Indian-American filmmaker Mira Nair and Mahmood Mamdani, an Indian expatriate from Uganda and a prominent professor of postcolonial studies at Columbia University.

“But there was definitely a point at which I started to call myself a socialist, and that was Bernie’s 2016 campaign,” he told Jacobin. “Because I saw all of these beliefs and these values that I held so dear, espoused by a man who proudly called himself a socialist as a result of those beliefs.”

From long shot to frontrunner

Early in this year’s Democratic mayoral primary, Mamdani’s bid was seen as a long shot in part because his politics on Israel were historically disqualifying in a city with more Jewish residents than any other city in the world, including Israel’s largest city, Tel Aviv. 

As polling revealed that Mamdani was gaining ground, the race became a contest between him and his chief rival, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who made fighting antisemitism a central campaign promise. Cuomo attacked Mamdani over his views on Israel. Mamdani’s DSA-aligned positions also became fodder for criticism by many Jewish New Yorkers, who blamed the type of rhetoric he espoused for the reported rise in antisemitism in the city.

But rather than back down, Mamdani stood by the views for which he was criticized.

“My support for BDS is consistent with the core of my politics, which is nonviolence, and I think that it is a legitimate movement when you are seeking to find compliance with international law,” Mamdani said at a candidate forum hosted by the UJA-Federation of New York.

He has also declined, when repeatedly asked, to condemn the pro-Palestinian protest slogan “globalize the intifada,” which many see as a call for violence against Jews in the Diaspora.

He has promised to take the concerns of Jewish New Yorkers about safety seriously if he wins the general election and becomes mayor.

In its official statement welcoming Mamdani’s victory, the DSA did not mention his views on Israel, but rather focused on the candidate as “a representative of a working-class socialist movement.”

“These election results are a rejection of the Democratic Party political establishment and point to a widespread desire for an alternative to the status quo, and the need for the working-class political party DSA is building,” their statement read. 

Mort supported Lander, but now that Mamdani has won, she is backing him — and not only because he is the presumptive Democratic candidate. She is willing to look past his affiliation with the DSA because she believes he is not beholden to the group’s “doctrinaire” approach to politics. She also hopes Mamdani changes his position on BDS, if only because taking a position that alienates so many New Yorkers would make it harder for him to govern the city. 

“The more I have looked into the way Mamdani ran his campaign, the depth of the support and the sophistication of it, I just can’t help but be very impressed, and I would hope that that would carry over into the way he would govern,” Mort said in an interview. “He has started to reach out to people who are not in his inner circle. I think that’s a good sign.”