New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced a crowd of angry protesters on Wednesday night. The event was a vigil for the victims of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks. Fox News reported that the mayor stood in the crowd while demonstrators shouted insults at him. The scene turned chaotic as the group tried to drown out the speakers with drums.
The Chants Against The Mayor
Protesters marched from City Hall to Union Square to voice their anger. According to RedState, the crowd chanted specific slogans directly at the mayor. One chant asked, “Zohran, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?” Another group yelled, “700,000 dead. Mamdani, your hands are red!” The demonstrators also called him a traitor. They shouted, “Traitor, traitor, come on out! You sold all your people out!”
Some protesters claimed to know the mayor from his past work. One person announced, “I used to intern for Zohran Mamdani. He was never working for the people.” The group also targeted his identity politics. They chanted, “We don’t care about where you’re from. You cannot talk about being Muslim anymore. You cannot weaponize being brown anymore. Identity politics can only get you so far.” The New York Post noted that some agitators wore keffiyehs and waved Hamas flags.
What The Mayor Said And Did
Mamdani held a candle during the vigil despite the disruption. He remained stone-faced while the protesters surrounded the smaller vigil crowd. In a separate statement, he condemned the Hamas attack as a “horrific war crime.” However, he also described Israel’s military operation as a genocide. “The suffering did not begin nor end that day,” he wrote. He stated that the suffering persisted via an ongoing genocide in Gaza in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians. This statement drew the ire of the crowd.
The vigil was organized by Israelis for Peace to honor victims. Tamar Glazerman, a co-founder, called the night “a difficult night.” She told The New York Post that the verbal attacks were “very violent.” She added that the only thing that mattered was the name of the group. “Not a word that we said had mattered,” she said.
Demands And Disruptions
The protesters had specific demands for the mayor and the city. They wanted him to stop real-estate events marketing properties in Israeli settlements. They called these properties “stolen” Palestinian land. The crowd chanted, “Mayor Mamdani, take a stand. Stop the sale of stolen land.”They also called for the Board of Trustees of the City University of New York to be abolished. They criticized the board for ignoring demands to divest from Israel.
Police responded to the large protest with their Strategic Response Group. The RedState report noted that the group had to manage the situation. The mayor stood alongside former City comptroller Brad Lander during the memorial. The third anniversary of the attacks on Israel was marked by the event. More than 1,000 people were killed on that day three years ago, including 49 Americans.
