Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani reacts after winning the 2025 New York City Mayoral race, at an election night rally in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, Nov. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

In December 2024, months before winning City Hall, Zohran Mamdani declared that, as mayor, New York would arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he ever entered the city. Last week, after a legal review (one that anyone familiar with the city’s charter could have skipped), Mamdani acknowledged what was always true: New York City has no authority to execute the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant.

Mamdani’s statement could have ended with that admission. Instead, the mayor kept his disdain for Israel in the spotlight and declared that Netanyahu was “not welcome in New York City,” urged the federal government to honor the ICC warrant, and, when a reporter asked what frustrated New Yorkers should do during Netanyahu’s expected visit in September, answered that “protest is something that we will always respect,” leaving it “to New Yorkers themselves.”

Israel’s UN ambassador, Danny Danon, told the mayor: “You were elected to serve New Yorkers, not Hamas’ propaganda. Do your job!” The Simon Wiesenthal Center called the episode “a profound misuse of the office entrusted to him by all New Yorkers.” Both are fair critiques, and both point to a simple truth: the mayor of New York does not get to decide who is welcome in the city – no mayor owns the city; a mayor serves it.

New York is home to the United Nations. Under the 1947 Headquarters Agreement, the United States is bound by treaty to admit foreign delegations, and the city has hosted leaders far more odious than any current visitor (Khrushchev, Castro, and Arafat all addressed the UN here) without its mayors pretending to hold a veto over the guest list.

It is worth remembering that the mayor’s actual job is simpler: keep New York safe enough that diplomacy can proceed under the protection of the law. That isn’t hospitality at all—it is simply the mayor’s institutional responsibility, one the city has carried out for nearly eighty years.

Now it is true that every mayor is entitled to his political opinions, and to the same First Amendment rights as any citizen. But holding that office fundamentally changes the nature of political speech. Zohran Mamdani the private citizen may find Mr. Netanyahu’s presence repugnant, but Mayor Mamdani has a different job.

A mayor should defend the constitutional right to peaceful protest. Declaring a foreign leader unwelcome one night and gesturing toward protest the next morning—without a meaningful word about keeping those demonstrations lawful and every community safe—doesn’t cure the problem. It accentuates and promotes it.

Why This Matters to Jewish New Yorkers

The mayor’s words matter for another reason, especially to Jewish New Yorkers. On Thursday of that same week – the day after Mamdani gestured toward protest – a 50-year-old Jewish man was stabbed on the Upper West Side near 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue, half a block from a Jewish community center, minutes after a 57-year-old Asian man was stabbed near Central Park West. Witnesses say the attacker yelled “Allahu Akbar” during both assaults, and the NYPD is evaluating the stabbings as possible hate crimes. Both victims are expected to survive, thank God.

To his credit, Mayor Mamdani responded quickly, writing that “these hateful and despicable attacks have no place in our city.” He is right, and no one seriously claims his words directly caused Thursday’s violence, but he is setting the tone.

The Manhattan attacks remind us of the city Jewish New Yorkers inhabit – home to the largest Jewish community of any city in the diaspora, which since the October 7 massacre has watched demonstrations slide from criticism of a government into menace toward a people.

Mr. Mamdani said last week that Jewish New Yorkers should be “cherished,” “celebrated,” and “safe” in their city. Those are welcome words, but safety doesn’t come from adjectives and declarations. It comes from conduct – from a mayor who understands that when the city’s chief executive brands a foreign leader unwelcome and then invites New Yorkers to respond as they see fit, some will hear a very particular message: that hate is sanctioned behavior.

 What We Do Next

So what does all of this mean for Jewish New Yorkers and, more importantly, what should we do next?

One of the oldest lessons of diaspora Jewish life is that Jews and the Jewish community have never flourished simply because rulers or the state happened to like us. Far too many moments in history have taught us how quickly governments change, political coalitions shift, and today’s assurances become tomorrow’s disappointments. Jewish life has endured where the rule of law proved stronger than the preferences of those in power.

When an elected official begins speaking as though belonging depends on his approval, he overtly changes the relationship between citizens and government. Rights begin to sound like permissions and it is our job to notice that shift early and to say so plainly.

The Jewish community has begun to do just that already and going forward, the Jewish community should assert its presence and avoid panic.

Certainly, the instinct to panic and worry is understandable. You wonder whether it’s worth wearing the kippah or maybe the mezuzah on your apartment door suddenly feels more conspicuous than it did a week ago. Perhaps you decide not to say anything about Israel at work. If those thoughts have crossed your mind, you are hardly alone. But intimidation succeeds only when it persuades people to disappear; the right response to that kind of uncertainty isn’t withdrawal but real investment – in families, synagogues, schools, neighborhoods, and civic institutions.

So the advice I give my students and families when they ask is simple: engage. Go to synagogue. If you’ve drifted away, come back. Spend time in Jewish cultural, civic, or religious institutions. Send your children to Jewish schools and camps if you can. Support your federation, your day school, the organizations that make Jewish life possible from bookstores to markets. Invite friends and neighbors for Shabbat.

In other words, show up. None of those things is symbolic; they are how communities stay communities and remain strong. The attack on the Upper West Side happened half a block from a JCC; do not avoid Jewish institutions, fill them.

We must remember that Jewish continuity has never depended upon politicians. American Jews didn’t simply find a home in New York, they helped build it and the evidence is everywhere. The city’s hospitals, universities, charities, neighborhoods, businesses, and civic life all bear proud Jewish fingerprints and that history matters because it reminds us that Jews are not guests in this city; they – like so many others – are long term members and anchors. And truth is that Jewish continuity has depended upon Jews who kept building Jewish life regardless of the political weather. That is what l’dor v’dor has always meant – not simply handing down traditions, but handing down institutions, obligations, and the confidence to live openly as Jews.

Confidence, though, cannot slide into complacency. Jewish organizations should rightly press City Hall to move beyond reassuring language and offer concrete commitments before the General Assembly convenes. Questions must be asked and answered: what additional security will surround synagogues and Jewish schools? How will the NYPD distinguish constitutionally protected protest from intimidation? Will those who block entrances, harass worshippers, or commit hate crimes be arrested and prosecuted? Last week’s stabbings make those questions urgent rather than theoretical. And we should judge the mayor by his answers and his follow-through, not by his adjectives and platitudes.

So much of America’s strength lies in what happens between the individual and the state: community boards and congregations, neighborhood associations and Little League, PTAs and precinct councils – the places where people know one another before they disagree with one another. American Jewish life has always drawn strength from that engagement, and this is the moment to deepen those relationships, not abandon them. Coalition building cannot be an afterthought now, it must be a priority and the Jewish community has the infrastructure to do this well.

As a professor of political science, I know that it is tempting and the easy path to look almost entirely to politics for reassurance, and politics certainly matters. But Jewish and secular history reveals that relying too much on political leaders is a mistake. No election has ever been enough to sustain Jewish life; strong communities have always mattered more.

What No Mayor Can Decide

The city’s legal review reminded Mayor Mamdani of what he cannot do: he has no authority to arrest Benjamin Netanyahu. His office should remind him of something equally fundamental: he has no authority to decide who belongs in New York. No mayor has that power.

There is one final irony. New York became New York because generations of people arrived from somewhere else and built something together and Jews were among them. That city belongs equally to the Jewish family walking to synagogue in Midwood, the immigrant opening a business in Queens, the Muslim family celebrating Eid in Brooklyn, the diplomat arriving at the United Nations, and every other person entitled to the equal protection of the laws. That is the promise the mayor swore to uphold, and Jewish New Yorkers should insist that he keep it.

But after that, the work belongs to us. Build stronger Jewish institutions and raise confident Jewish children. Show up in the civic life of this city and participate visibly, generously, and often.

Incidentally, history has seen this argument before. In 1654 Peter Stuyvesant tried to prevent twenty-three Jewish refugees from settling in New Amsterdam. He was overruled by his own superiors in Amsterdam, the Jews stayed, and the city they helped build eventually became home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel. It wasn’t Stuyvesant’s decision then and it isn’t the mayor’s now.

Samuel J. Abrams is a professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.