BROOKLYN — NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Kwame Mamdani posted a video of himself attending a Satmar Kuf Alef Kislev celebration in Brooklyn on Wednesday night, marking the 81st anniversary of Satmar Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe.
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In the video shared on X, Mamdani is seen entering the crowded Williamsburg hall, greeting leaders from both Satmar factions — the Aronim and the Zalman groups — and speaking briefly with community figures before joining portions of the ceremony. The clip shows him offering warm gestures to the rebbes as he moves through the reception line.
Mamdani captioned the post with a reflection on the significance of the night: “Last night marked Kuf Alef Kislev, the 81st anniversary of the Satmar Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. His rescue and later founding of the Williamsburg Hasidic community helped shape the future of our city. These celebrations recognize that history and the remarkable rebirth that followed. I was so grateful to join and greet the rebbes.”
The annual celebration commemorates the rescue that allowed the Rebbe to later establish a major Hasidic center in New York, today numbering tens of thousands of members.
Mamdani’s appearance and public posting come as he continues outreach to Jewish communities across the city ahead of taking office, highlighting his engagement with diverse religious and cultural groups.
Last night marked Kuf Alef Kislev, the 81st anniversary of the Satmar Rebbe Joel Teitelbaum’s escape from Nazi-occupied Europe. His rescue and later founding of the Williamsburg Hasidic community helped shape the future of our city. These celebrations recognize that history and… pic.twitter.com/eoD4xK2dWb
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) December 11, 2025
When chazal were unsure if the חסידה was a Kosher bird or not, they watched to see who it hung out with. When they saw that it was friendly with non- kosher birds, they determined that it too was
non-Kosher.
Draw your own conclusions.
Wait a second! I thought that it’s Chanukah! I guess I was wrong; it’s Purim!
Satmar celebrating a man who would make them dhimmi.
As nauseating as it gets!
Vomit
What Satmar will do for money
Chilull Hashem to the highest degree
Mamzeri supports Hamas. Satmar supports Mamzeri. Their mutual hatred of Israel is disgusting.
What I find disgusting is that VIN deleted about 35 comments that thought Satmar did the right thing by having Momdani at the event. He is going to be the Mayor what do you gain by snubbing him now?
Satmar. Home of the Natura karta
Does he know they’re celebrating the Zionist Kastner train?
Even a rattlesnake will ‘wag its tail’ before it strikes.
Satmar lets the snake in at their own risk.
I suggest that everyone read the 11/25/25 Mishpacha magazine interview with Satmar askan Rabbi Moshe Indig regarding his interactions with Mamdani and compare that to his interactions with Cuomo, the man that so many believed to be the savior of Jews in NYC. It is truly eye-opening.
Kaf – not Kuf !
mishpacha(dot)com/the-kingmaker-from-williamsburg/
Socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani once voiced his “love” for the five leaders of a notorious nonprofit convicted of funneling more than $12 million to the terror group Hamas.
The former C-list rapper-turned-far-left-pol praised the heads of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development – known as the “Holy Land Five”– in a shocking 2017 rap track uncovered by the antisemitism-fighting group Canary Mission, and made public in a one-minute video segment released Friday.
“My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up,” Mamdani – who performed under the stage name Mr. Cardamom – says in a song called “Salaam” which the Queens assemblyman has said is about growing up Muslim in New York.
“Mamdani sent his ‘love’ to convicted Hamas funders,” the Canary Mission said. “Let that sink in.”
Thank you Satmar!
Thanks for staying above the fray & work with what we have, after all Moshiach is not here yet and yes even in America we are galut!
And we should work with whoever it is that is in office, that what we did for the last 70 years and we should keep on doing it. Not like today’s social media crowd!
Keep up the work!
“He believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation,” Mamdani spokesperson Dora Pekec said, “and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.”
Yolish Teutelbaum was an am ha aretz. Everyone knows that. But we’re alive today, he’d be 100% Zionist
The next 2000 years of Jewish history will happen almost exclusively inside Israel and won’t look anything like the last 2000 years.
New York Jewish Week — 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 — Jewish New Yorkers are closely scrutinizing what he has said about Jews, Israel and the conflict in the Middle East.
Below is a roundup 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 flouting its responsibilities under international law, based on its treatment of Palestinians.
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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 BDS movement against Israel
As he said at the UJA-Federation town hall, Mamdani 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.
A BDS supporter at an anti-Israel protest in New York City, October 14, 2022. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
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 [sic] 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.
October 7 and the war in Gaza
Mamdani’s first statement about the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel, which he issued the next day, expressed mourning for “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours.”
Mamdani added that 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 October 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.
Illustrative: Anti-Israel demonstrators protest Israel’s existence in New York City, October 8, 2023, following the October 7 Hamas atrocities and before Israel launched a military operation in the Gaza Strip. (Luke Tress/Times of Israel)
At a rally in Times Square on October 8, 2023, some local members of the Democratic Socialists of America — of which Mamdani is a member — celebrated the Hamas terror group, which led the slaughter of some 1,200 Israelis, most of them civilians, and abducted hundreds more on October 7. Mamdani condemned the rally on October 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, DC, 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, DC.
“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.”
Mohamed Sabry Soliman (right), the suspect who allegedly attacked pro-Israel activists (left) in Boulder, Colorado on June 1, 2025. (Screen capture/X, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law)
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 many deadly 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.)
Anti-Israel protesters on the steps of Low Memorial Library at Columbia University, January 19, 2024. (Courtesy CJAA)
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 he would like to see more Holocaust education in New York City schools.
Illustrative: Hasan Piker speaks onstage during Politicon 2018 on October 20, 2018, in Los Angeles, California. (Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Politicon/AFP)
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’s massacre at the Supernova music festival during the October 7, 2023, onslaught, in which Palestinian terrorists 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.”
Uncivilised.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, an interview with activist network Uncivilised.media, Mamdani sheds more light on his views of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The son of two India-born parents — filmmaker Mira Nair and Columbia University professor Mahmood Mamdani — the candidate spent his early years in Uganda and South Africa before migrating to the US 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 US politics and criticizes PEPs — politicians who he says are “progressive except for Palestine.”
He also says that he believes the US has put Palestinian lives “in jeopardy” for “decades.”
Illustrative: A demonstrator holds up a placard with Prime Minister Netanyahu behind bars and Italian for, ‘Criminal against humanity, let’s arrest him now,’ at an anti-Israel rally in Rome on November 30, 2024. (Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)
Arresting 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 US who were convicted of aiding Hamas. In 2001, the US 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.
Mandani + Satmar
Everyone that gets upset about this this – Do the following like I did —–
Think and consider Satmar as nothing more than Muslims and you will see your anger will abate.
They are really in essence just one group. They deserve each other. So why shouldn’t a group of Muslims not help out another Muslim who hates Israel?.
do not trust Mamdani. I warn you. rabbi
IY’H he will be a great mayor for ALL new yorkers, I wish him the best of luck!