A network of anti-Israel donors—including academics who justified Hamas’s Oct. 7 terror attacks—has funneled thousands into New York socialist Zohran Mamdani’s campaign for mayor, raising serious concerns about the ideological core behind his candidacy.
Mamdani, 33, has openly refused to support Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, backs the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and vowed to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he visits New York City. His rhetoric turned even more dangerous when he declined to condemn “globalize the intifada,” instead calling it “a desperate desire for equality.” He even equated the term to Jewish resistance against Nazi Germany.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum rebuked him sharply: “Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors.”
Columbia faculty donors—many of whom praised or excused the Oct. 7 terror attacks—are deeply embedded in Mamdani’s campaign. Mahmood Mamdani, his father and a professor at Columbia, called for “the dismantling of the Jewish state” and hailed what he described as the “Third Intifadah.”
This radical donor base reflects the extremism behind Mamdani’s mayoral aspirations. His supporters have not only undermined historical truth but endorsed violence cloaked in academic respectability. As the Holocaust Museum put it: “All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history.” Mamdani refuses—and that silence speaks volumes.
