More than one million Jews live in New York City. No community has done more to shape the city’s culture, commerce, intellectual life, and political identity than Jewish Americans.
Jewish immigrants and their descendants helped build modern New York. They transformed Broadway and American music through legends like George Gershwin and Irving Berlin. They built the garment industry that made New York a global fashion capital. They helped create modern comic book culture through figures like Stan Lee. Jewish delicatessens, bagels, and lox became woven into the cultural DNA of the city itself. Even the iconic “I ❤️ NY” logo was created by Milton Glaser, the son of Hungarian Jewish immigrants raised in the Bronx.
Jewish New Yorkers also helped define the city’s conscience. Lillian Wald revolutionized public health and social work. Jewish labor organizers fought for worker protections that became national standards. City College opened doors for generations of immigrant families shut out elsewhere. Jewish intellectuals, lawyers, activists, and judges like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, helped shape the liberal civic culture New York proudly celebrates to this day.
Yet despite all Jewish Americans have contributed to New York City, Jews are now increasingly treated as acceptable targets for intimidation, harassment, and violence in the very city they helped build.
Between 2024 and 2026, antisemitic incidents in New York City surged to historic highs. Orthodox Jews have been assaulted on streets and subways. Jewish students have faced intimidation and harassment in schools and dormitories. Synagogues and Jewish homes have been vandalized with swastikas and hateful graffiti. Organized threats against Jewish institutions have become increasingly common. In many Jewish neighborhoods, especially visibly Orthodox communities, fear and anxiety are no longer abstract concerns - they are daily realities.
And the problem is no longer confined to fringe extremists.
What has become especially disturbing is the normalization of openly aggressive anti-Jewish activism under the banner of the “anti-Zionism” hate movement. Again and again, obsessive anti-Israel demonstrations in New York have crossed far beyond legitimate political protest into intimidation campaigns targeting Jewish institutions, Jewish neighborhoods, and Jewish civilians.
On May 11, 2026, a heavily masked antisemitic anti-Israel mob descended on Young Israel of Midwood in Brooklyn during a real estate event. Demonstrators marched through surrounding Jewish neighborhoods while a masked assailant violently attacked a young Jewish girl, yanking her by the hair and nearly throwing her into a car. Just days earlier, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side shouting “Death to the IDF” and “Israel should not exist,” while clashes with police hospitalized an NYPD officer.
This should offend every American, regardless of religion or politics. Imagine the national outrage if masked mobs surrounded mosques, Black churches, or LGBTQ community centers while chanting for the destruction of their people and physically assaulting even their children. There would be immediate condemnation from every level of government and media. Yet when Jews are targeted, many politicians and activists suddenly discover endless nuance and hesitation.
That double standard is exactly why so many Jewish New Yorkers feel abandoned by City Hall.
Mayor Mamdani has cultivated a political and personal identity rooted in anti-Israel activism, and Jewish New Yorkers are already seeing the consequences. One of his first acts in office was revoking executive orders issued under Mayor Eric Adams that protected the Jewish community, including adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism and restricting city participation in BDS-related discrimination initiatives.
Then, in April, Mamdani vetoed bipartisan legislation that would have directed the NYPD to establish security plans and buffer zones around protests near schools. Similar legislation protecting houses of worship only survived because the City Council passed it with a veto-proof majority.
At every stage, the message to Jewish New Yorkers has been unmistakable: your safety is not a priority.
Worse still, much of the media continues sanitizing and mainstreaming this extremism. Commentators eagerly celebrate Mamdani’s “progressive” image while minimizing or ignoring the regressive hostility toward mainstream Jewish communities embedded within his words and deeds and the very anti-Israel movement he champions. Violent incidents targeting Jews are too often framed as unfortunate side effects of activism rather than recognized for what they are: antisemitic intimidation and hate crimes.
Many of these so-called “protests” have involved masked demonstrators blocking streets, surrounding synagogues, refusing lawful police orders, threatening Jewish civilians, and targeting Jewish institutions for harassment. Yet enforcement has been weak, hesitant, or politically constrained.
New York once understood the dangers posed by masked intimidation campaigns. The state maintained anti-mask laws for generations, in part to combat terror tactics associated with groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Those laws were repealed during COVID. Since then, masked political intimidation has flourished across the city.
New York’s current laws prohibiting masked criminal conduct should be aggressively enforced, and lawmakers should seriously revisit broader anti-mask protections where organized intimidation and violence are occurring. No civilized society should tolerate masked mobs terrorizing religious or other communities in the streets.
New York City has the largest Jewish population outside Israel. If Jews cannot safely and openly live as Jews in New York City - the city they helped build, enrich, and define - then America’s promises about fighting antisemitism are meaningless slogans.
This is not about politics. It is about whether Jews are entitled to the same safety, dignity, and protection routinely demanded for every other minority community in America.
Right now, too many New York leaders are failing that test, starting with Mayor Mamdani.
Michele Hanash is the Director of Policy and Women’s Programs at the Ayaan Hirsi Ali Foundation.
