New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not attend an annual parade honoring Israel on Sunday, breaking with a decades-long political custom because of his support for Palestinian rights. Although it has gone by different names over the years, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for mayors, governors, and other political leaders eager to win over the throngs of flag-waving revelers who congregate on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. Not so for Mamdani, the AP reports. Two weeks ago, the mayor's office released a video commemorating the Nakba, an Arabic word for "catastrophe" that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel's establishment.
"I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn't be attending the parade, and I've made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear," Mamdani said at a news conference Thursday. But he also promised a robust police presence to make sure it went off peacefully. The city's police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, did attend the parade. Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding senior rabbi of the Hampton Synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which advocates for better relationships between Jews and Muslims, called Mamdani's decision "a slap in the face to all Jewish New Yorkers." Schneier also slammed Mamdani's Nakba video as propaganda, echoing concerns from other Jewish leaders who said it excluded context about Jewish peoples' displacement during the period.
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