Mamdani doubles down on anti-Israel Oct 7 statement after backlash
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani doubled down on his October 7 statement accusing Israel of carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza on Thursday.Mamdani made the statement while speaking to...
By Fox News · Fox News
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani doubled down on his October 7 statement accusing Israel of carrying out a "genocide" in Gaza on Thursday. Mamdani made the statement while speaking to the press at an unrelated event on Thursday. Reporters asked him about anger in the Jewish community over his statement on the third anniversary of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks that briefly recognized that day's atrocities before accusing Israel of carrying out genocide against Palestinians. "Do you believe you made any missteps that inflamed tensions in this very difficult moment for a lot of New Yorkers?" a reporter asked. ISRAEL AMB TORCHES MAMDANI OCT 7 POST: 'LIKE TURNING SEPTEMBER 11 INTO A DAY OF MOURNING FOR AL-QAEDA' "I believe that there must be room to mourn every single life," Mamdani responded. "There must be room to mourn the lives of the more than 1,100 that Hamas killed three years ago; there must be room to mourn the 74,000 Palestinians that the Israeli government has killed since." "There must be room to reckon with the ways in which so many New Yorkers' lives have been shattered," he continued, noting that the vigil he attended highlighted testimonies from those killed "either on the day or the genocide since." WEAPONIZING THE CHARGE OF GENOCIDE FUELS AN INCREASINGLY DANGEROUS ANTISEMITISM Mamdani went on to accuse the Israeli government of using the October 7 massacre as "a justification for a genocide." The mayor also repeatedly declined to say that he would change anything about the statements he made on Wednesday, either in his formal statement or during his attendance at the October 7 vigil . He also justified his greater emphasis on Palestinian deaths, arguing that "this is something that is ongoing, as opposed to something that simply happened three years ago." In his statement on Wednesday, Mamdani condemned Hamas’ attack as a "horrific war crime" while also characterizing Israel’s subsequent military operation as a genocide. NETANYAHU ACCUSES MAMDANI OF '…