Mayor Mamdani leads a city where Jews face more hate crimes than any other group. Jewish New Yorkers can tell him why: anti-Israel rhetoric leads to violence against the Jewish community. The question is whether he will let them define the hate that is directed at them.
When Black Americans fought for civil rights, it was Black leaders who defined what racist discrimination looked like and felt like. Their experience shaped our national understanding of civil rights, and the Jewish community stood shoulder-to-shoulder with them, from Selma to the Senate. The people who told Black Americans they were wrong about racism, that they had illegitimate complaints about how they defined it, were racists themselves.
Today, as antisemitism surges across our city and country, the same principle applies. Yet Mamdani has rescinded the executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism and is preparing to replace it with an alternative definition. That is telling the Jewish community they’re wrong about the hate and violence directed at them.
The IHRA definition accounts for both the classic conspiracy theories that have fueled violence for centuries and contemporary hate that masquerades as activism but leads to the same terror. The definition includes examples that help identify when anti-Israel rhetoric crosses into antisemitism. Not to silence political speech, but to recognize the patterns of delegitimizing and dehumanization that precede violence against Jews.
Alternative definitions make a fatal error. One definition being discussed as a replacement, the Nexus Document, explicitly states that accusations of antisemitism should never be used to stop criticism of Israel. This sounds reasonable until you confront reality. The majority of anti-Jewish attacks over the past two years have been explicitly tied to Israel by the perpetrators themselves.
When extremists kill Jews, they don’t ask them about their views of the Israeli government. When children bully their Jewish classmates, they call them baby killers. By deliberately carving out protection for anti-Israel rhetoric from scrutiny, these alternative definitions enable the very violence they claim to oppose.
This isn’t about what people are allowed to say. It’s about what the Jewish community recognizes as targeting them for violence.
In New York City, the threat is measurable. New York is home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel. Jews comprise nearly 60% of hate crime victims in our city despite being just 11% of the population. These crimes don’t emerge from nowhere. The sharp rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes directly correlates with the outburst of anti-Israel hatred that occurred after Oct. 7, 2023. This follows predictable patterns of delegitimizing Jews, denying them the right to self-determination, and singling out Israel for treatment applied to no other nation. And it leads to hate crimes against Jews in New York, regardless of their politics.
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism was established to address this crisis. Under the previous administration, we implemented the IHRA definition and worked across 35 city agencies to educate employees on recognizing and responding to antisemitic incidents. We trained public safety personnel to understand where this hate comes from and how to address it. This work was possible because we had a clear, shared understanding of what we were combating.
You cannot protect a community when you reject their own assessment of what endangers them.
Mamdani faces a clear choice: listen to the Jewish community about the hate they face, or tell them they’re wrong. History will judge those who repeat the mistakes of the past.
Davis was the inaugural executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism under Mayor Eric Adams.
