Mamdani’s condemnation of Hamas is a step in the right direction

I consider the fact that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the antisemitic rhetoric used by demonstrators outside a Queens synagogue this past Thursday to be far more significant than quibbling over the timeliness of his response.

Reacting to shouts of “Say it loud, say it clear, we support Hamas here,” Mamdani declared that “Chants in support of a terrorist organisation have no place in our city.”

Mamdani’s unambiguous characterisation of Hamas as a “terrorist organisation” is in and of itself a positive development. I write this as someone who opposed Mamdani’s candidacy, both in last June’s primary, which he won, and in the general election, which he also won.

I remain appalled by his implacable, seemingly pathological hostility toward the State of Israel. New Yorkers who consider ourselves Zionists — including those of us who, like myself, oppose many of the policies and actions of the Netanyahu government and support the Palestinians’ human and civil rights, including the right to eventual self-determination — have ample reason to be concerned.

The fact is that the mayor of the city with the largest Jewish population in the world does not believe in his heart of hearts that the Jewish people are entitled to a national homeland every bit as much as the Irish, the Italians, the Canadians, or, close to home, the Ugandans.

I am quite sure that Mamdani supports the national rights of Ugandans since he is, after all, a dual citizen of Uganda and the United States. However, I do not recall him ever voicing any public criticisms of the Ugandan government’s decidedly “negative” human rights record.

The U.S. State Department’s 2024 Country Report on Human Rights Practices with respect to Uganda includes “credible reports of: arbitrary or unlawful killings; disappearances; torture or cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment; arbitrary arrest or detention; transnational repression against individuals in another country; unlawful recruitment or use of children in armed conflict by nonstate armed groups; serious restrictions on freedom of expression and media freedom, including violence or threats of violence against journalists, and censorship; and significant presence of any of the worst forms of child labor.” To the best of my knowledge, none of this has caused Mamdani to question Uganda’s legitimacy as a nation.

Somehow, Mamdani has been far more vocal in his criticism of Israel, which, after all, is a functioning democracy, than he has of not only Uganda but of authoritarian regimes engaged in blatant human rights violations such as, say, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Maduro’s Venezuela, just to name a few. Go figure.

Still, I am inclined to give Mamdani the benefit of the doubt when it comes to his handling of antisemitism writ large. I hope others are as well. I, for one, am less concerned by his revocation of his predecessor’s executive order adopting the definition of antisemitism promulgated in 2016 by the multi-national International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) than I am encouraged by his retention of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

As it happens, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a huge fan of the IHRA definition. Or, to be more precise, I am not comfortable with the codification, not to say petrifaction, of that definition’s working examples into immutable, legally enforceable categories.

The crux of the controversy over the IHRA definition is that its accompanying working examples include instances where criticism of Israel can mask antisemitic animus, such as “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel” or “denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.”

Never mind that the definition affirmatively notes that “criticism of Israel similar to that levelled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.” Never mind further that the IHRA definition’s accompanying illustrative examples are just that: examples. Because it embraces certain types of criticisms of or attacks on Israel as antisemitic per se, as it were, its critics, including presumably Mamdani, repudiate it as an impermissible attempt to stifle dissent.

More to the point, the IHRA definition was never meant to be, and should not be regarded as, sacrosanct revelation. Robert Williams and Mark Weitzman, both past chairs of IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, have emphasized that “While the examples are not a rigid taxonomy allowing for the identification of every type of antisemitism, they are an internationally accepted baseline that can allow us to shine a light on places where antisemitism might exist.”

As someone who teaches about antisemitism in the courts and in jurisprudence to both Cornell law students and that university’s undergraduates, I worry that the vacuum created by Mamdani’s scuttling of the IHRA definition for New York City will embolden antisemites and anti-Zionists in ways he most probably neither anticipated nor intended. Accordingly, if he meant it when he said on his first day in office that “protecting Jewish New Yorkers is going to be a focus of my administration,” then it is incumbent for his Office to Combat Antisemitism to come up with and publicize viable and enforceable parameters to provide such protection.

My personal recommendation, for what it’s worth, is twofold. First, I hope that the examples accompanying the IHRA definition will still be used as persuasive but subject to rational critical examination and certainly not as exhaustive guidelines in considering whether an action or statement is antisemitic, subject at all times to a reasonableness and common sense test. I would expect the Mamdani administration to also make reference to an alternate definition of antisemitism set forth in a white paper known as the Nexus Document.

Second, I urge all concerned to bear in mind the words of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart who wrote in his famous concurrence in the case of Jacobellis v. Ohio with respect to hard-core pornography — something every bit as distasteful and as lacking in social value as antisemitism — that while he couldn’t define it — hard core pornography, that is — “I know it when I see it.”

By condemning Thursday’s pro-Hamas rhetoric as he did, it would appear that Mamdani is not just capable of recognising but willing to confront antisemitism when he sees it. While not a panacea by any means, this is certainly a step in the right direction that should be welcomed as such rather than criticised.

Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School and lecturer-in-law at Columbia Law School. He is the author of the forthcoming Burning Psalms: Confronting Adonai after Auschwitz (Ben Yehuda Press, 2025).