Zohran Mamdani has become the first Muslim mayor of New York City, the financial centre of the United States, after an extraordinary election in which the young Democratic candidate defeated Andrew Cuomo, the former New York governor of eleven years. Cuomo ran as an independent, drawing wide backing from the city’s business lobbies, along with open political support from President Donald Trump despite the public clashes that previously erupted between the two men, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This was not the only exceptional feature of the race. For the first time, New York elected a Muslim mayor. More than two million people voted out of 4.7 million registered voters, a turnout unseen since 1969.
Mamdani’s campaign was labelled by many as radical left. He pledged higher taxes on the city’s wealthiest residents to fund services for the middle and working classes, notably making public buses free and faster, given that one in five New Yorkers struggles to afford constantly rising fares.
He also promised to freeze rents in flats that swallow a large share of workers’ incomes and to raise the minimum wage gradually to 30 dollars per hour by 2030. The current minimum in New York City is just 16.50 dollars, a low figure by any reasonable cost-of-living metric, as the Economic Policy Institute notes.
In addition, Mamdani vowed to establish city-run shops to secure food access for residents and to provide comprehensive childcare. Immediately after his victory he declared that the result was a mandate to practise a new kind of politics and deliver the change voters sought.
Zohran Mamdani and the Queue of the Discontented
It is no surprise that Mamdani’s victory unsettled those who profit from the status quo. According to Reuters, the most anxious are the city’s wealthy and corporate leaders. His tax proposals spurred predictions of an exodus of high earners and major firms, a scenario that critics say could undercut his own programme by depriving the city of revenue from the very people he aims to tax. New York’s governor, Kathy Hochul, who aligns with a more centrist wing of the Democratic Party on economic policy, may also obstruct his plans.
One of Mamdani’s core campaign slogans was New York for everyone, not only for the rich, and Economic dignity for all. At a rally on 13 October he said billionaires such as Bill Ackman and Ronald Lauder spent millions to stop him, viewing him as an existential threat.
Mamdani responded: I will admit something. They are right. We are an existential threat to billionaires who think their money can buy our democracy. As Time magazine put it, Mamdani defeated an army of billionaires when he won the New York mayoralty on Tuesday.
Beyond rattling the wealthy, his win deeply irked President Donald Trump. Mamdani addressed him directly after the victory: I know you are watching. Turn up the volume.
Trump, for his part, said the mayor-elect uses angry rhetoric and must show greater respect to Washington if he wants to succeed. He accused Mamdani of a communist agenda, claimed the United States had lost part of its sovereignty in New York, and alleged the election was conducted unfairly.
More broadly, the communist label became a recurring line in Trump’s attacks. He even threatened to cut federal funding to the city, apart from a minimal baseline, to dissuade voters from choosing Mamdani.
In this light, Mamdani’s win, described by Senator Bernie Sanders as one of the greatest political upsets in modern American history and as proof that Mamdani has already become a leader within the Democratic Party, is not an ordinary victory. It reflects deep shifts in American politics whose echoes may reach beyond the United States.
The result signals the return of left-leaning politicians to placing the economy and the poor at the top of the agenda. In recent years, much of Western left discourse became absorbed in debates over sexual freedoms and identity, while neglecting the larger crises faced by the least advantaged. That neglect widened the gap between left rhetoric and the public.
It also suggests that in a city the size of New York, voters may be yearning for a discourse different from the resurgent right that has grown stronger in recent years in the United States and across the West.
Finally, the victory may indicate that Western publics increasingly diverge from elite opinion on Palestine and the Israeli occupation. Mamdani’s support for Palestine and his opposition to the occupation would have been disqualifying in past years. This time, it became one of the key reasons for his success in a city that hosts the largest Jewish community in the world outside Israel.
As the Times of Israel wrote, backing Israel was long considered a condition for winning in America, yet Mamdani overturned that conventional wisdom by building a coalition outside the mainstream Jewish bloc and channelling Democratic anger toward Israel over the Gaza war. His success rattled the occupation state, just as it angered President Donald Trump and New York’s affluent class.
The Angry Zionists
It is therefore unsurprising that Israeli statements and media reactions after Mamdani’s victory were marked by agitation across the spectrum.
The Jerusalem Post reported that Israeli politicians from multiple parties expressed deep concern. Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, said that electing a leftist, anti-Israel candidate would not deter them, adding that the Jewish community in New York and across the United States deserves safety and respect, and that Israel would strengthen ties with community leaders to ensure their security and welfare.
Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel called the result extremely troubling given Mamdani’s record of rhetoric against Israel and Jews, claiming New York’s Jewish community deserves leaders who protect them rather than target them. Far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir said the election would be an eternal disgrace, arguing that antisemitism had defeated common sense and labelling Mamdani a Hamas supporter, an Israel hater, and openly antisemitic.
Former minister Avigdor Lieberman, head of Yisrael Beiteinu, echoed the tone. He said New York had elected a racist Islamist who supports Hamas and attacks Israel while blaming the West for the world’s crises.
He went further, calling Mamdani a symbol of silent jihad and urging New York’s Jews to emigrate to their true homeland in Israel. Knesset member Ohad Tal, who chairs the US-Israel relations caucus, said New York had chosen an Islamic, communist, antisemitic leader.
Coverage in the Hebrew press carried the same note. A Haaretz opinion column mocked Israeli media for treating Mamdani as an existential threat and described a wave of panic after a campaign ad aired in Arabic, the language of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, as the piece wryly observed.
Barack Obama’s endorsement of Mamdani triggered another media reflex. On Israel’s Channel 12, a non-government station, talk shows began pointedly referring to him as Barack Hussein Obama, stressing Hussein for its Islamic resonance, according to Haaretz. A Times of Israel opinion column added that Mamdani left no doubt that his support for Palestinians and his rejection of Israel’s definition as a Jewish state form the core of his identity and political aim.
All of this came despite Mamdani’s stated intention to work with Jewish leaders in New York, whether public officials, rabbis, or civil society figures. He pledged to protect, honour, and value Jewish New Yorkers, promising to raise budgets for anti-hate crime programmes by 800 percent.
Why Israel Is Afraid
Mamdani does not hide who he is or what he stands for, and that clarity is part of his impact. In his view, the United States is the principal partner in Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and Palestine is a central moral test. One can no longer be progressive on everything except Palestine, as he has put it.
His outspoken commitment to Palestine began at university. As the New York Times recounted, his friends say his passion was unmistakable. He founded a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine on campus. He embraced Palestinian symbols, from wearing the keffiyeh to placing a sticker on his laptop reading End Israeli Apartheid. Brian Bornniell, the professor supervising his capstone project linking Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s social contract theory with the anti-racist philosopher Frantz Fanon, recalls that Mamdani persistently raised questions about the necessity of violence in anti-colonial struggle, particularly in the Palestinian context against Israeli occupation.
In May 2023, as a member of the New York State Assembly, Mamdani introduced the Not On Our Dime bill to end state-level funding for Israeli settler violence by preventing nonprofit organisations from engaging in unauthorised support for settlement activity. In 2025 he also announced that, if elected mayor, he would dissolve the Office for the Enhancement of US-Israel Economic Relations created by his predecessor Eric Adams.
Since October 2023, Mamdani has stated plainly that Israel launched a genocidal war on Gaza and that people of conscience must demand an end to US military funding for Israel. Among his boldest positions is the repeated declaration that he would seek the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York, aligning the city’s values with international law.
He also rejects the idea of Israel as a Jewish state that enshrines a hierarchy privileging one religion over others. He says he can only accept it as a citizen-based polity that grants equal rights to all.
Yet Israel’s fury is not only about Mamdani’s moral clarity on Palestine. The mayoralty does not presently empower him to reshape US foreign policy. The alarm is about the future. His victory signals a trend line that worries the occupation state.
Politics Today notes that by winning despite the millions poured in by pro-Zionist billionaires to block him, Mamdani dealt a defeat to Israel as well. It shows a profound, unprecedented shift coursing through the American public since Israel’s war on Gaza began. Americans, especially the young, increasingly hold negative views of the occupation state. Many American Christians are leaving churches or rebuking clergy who instruct them to defend Israel. A growing share of the public now asks, without fear, why the United States backs a state that commits horrific violations and what America gains from that alliance.
Mamdani’s election crystallises this shift. The New York Times observes that New Yorkers have moved closer to Mamdani’s position on Israel, even though it was far outside the US mainstream before the latest war.
A Quinnipiac poll in early October found that 41 percent of likely New York City voters said Mamdani’s views on Israel were closest to theirs, compared with 26 percent who aligned with his opponent. The Associated Press captured the moment succinctly: support for Israel used to be mandatory for anyone seeking office in New York until Zohran Mamdani arrived.
Israel’s deep anxiety is about what comes next. The ability of a candidate who openly supports Palestine and scorns the occupation to win in the most important US city of Israel’s closest ally suggests a profound transformation in Western public opinion. What was unthinkable before Al-Aqsa Flood and Israel’s genocidal war has become reality. In the years ahead, Western politicians may think twice before offering unqualified support for Israel.
This is the core of Israel’s fear regarding Mamdani’s victory, along with its political implications, foremost among them the worry that the US Democratic Party could become hostile to Israel in the coming years.
