Zohran Mamdani Faces Criticism Over Hamas Ties
Left 50%
Center 0%
Right 50%
1 left · 0 center · 1 right
What happened
On October 7, 2026, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended a candlelight vigil in Union Square commemorating the roughly 1,200 Israelis killed in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack. Protesters at the memorial directed chants at him, including “long live Hamas,” “700,000 dead. Mamdani, your hands are red!,” and “Zohran, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?” After the vigil, Mamdani dined at a Palestinian restaurant near Columbia University. In October 2023, a week after the Hamas attack, Mamdani led a street protest with a megaphone accusing Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of complicity in Palestinian “genocide,” and he has said that when “the boots of the NYPD are on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” A city antisemitism task force has routed $6.4 million to Partners Against the Hate (PATH), which has ties to the Arab American Association of New York and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Omitted — what each side leaves out
Unpacked
The two sides do not agree on what Mamdani's appearance at the memorial means. Right-leaning coverage says he is not at odds with Hamas supporters and describes him standing silent and blank-faced while they disrupted a candlelight service for Israeli victims. That coverage reports a city antisemitism task force sending $6.4 million to a group with CAIR ties. Left-leaning coverage does not report that grant or the scene at the vigil, so right-leaning coverage is simply more complete on the alleged ties. The New York Times instead presents a mayor who "fails his duty" to Jewish New Yorkers.
Left-leaning coverage calls the episode a "moral obscenity." Right-leaning coverage calls the crowd "Hamasniks."
What, if anything, did Mamdani say at the memorial when protestors began chanting in support of Hamas?
Bottom line
Neither side quotes Mamdani condemning Hamas at the Union Square memorial. Only the Daily Wire reports a $6.4 million city grant to a CAIR-linked group.
The receipts — 3 facts one side's coverage lacks
- After the vigil Mamdani dined at Ayat Hinds Hall, a Palestinian restaurant near Columbia University
- Mamdani said that when the boots of the NYPD are on your neck, it has been laced by the IDF
- New York's mayor is described as serving one million Jewish New Yorkers
The Left View
The New York Times, in a piece titled “Zohran Mamdani’s Moral Obscenity,” does not defend the mayor. It characterizes his conduct as a “moral obscenity” and states that “a mayor for one million Jewish New Yorkers fails his duty.”
The Right View
Stephen Kent, writing in The Daily Wire, argues that Mamdani “Isn’t At Odds With The Hamasniks” and that treating the Union Square scene as Mamdani under siege is “the wrong take.” Kent writes that Mamdani “wants to be behind the bullhorn again with his masked friends” and is playing “the role of American politician who does candlelight vigils for terror victims until he can go home.” He presents the 2023 Gillibrand protest, the NYPD-IDF remark, PATH’s ties to groups whose “anti-Israel” posture he says matches “the passions of the Hamasniks,” and the post-vigil dinner as a signal “to the jackals that he’s on their team.” Kent compares Mamdani to Scar from The Lion King, “a beneficiary of America’s largess” who is “forever in league with the hyenas who want to burn it all down,” and calls the mayor’s expression at the vigil “the look of extreme patience.”
Our Take (balanced)
The New York Times’s strongest argument is civic and moral: as mayor for one million Jewish New Yorkers, Mamdani had a duty on the October 7 anniversary that he failed, amounting to a “moral obscenity.” The Daily Wire’s strongest argument is about alignment rather than mere lapse: the 2023 megaphone protest one week after the massacre, the NYPD-IDF quote, funding routed to groups with anti-Israel ties, and the dinner after the vigil are offered as evidence he remains with the movement that disrupted a Jewish memorial. The central unresolved tension is whether the controversy is a mayor’s failure of duty and solidarity toward Jewish New Yorkers, or whether his public role is a performance overlaying continued political kinship with those chanting “long live Hamas.”
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