NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani skips annual parade celebrating Israel
[June 01, 2026]
By ANTHONY IZAGUIRRE
NEW YORK (AP) — 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 of Palestinian rights.
Though 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. 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
“seamlessly and peacefully.”
The city’s police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, did attend
the parade.
“It is the mayor’s decision not to march, and it is my decision to march
proudly,” she had said Thursday as she stood alongside Mamdani at police
headquarters.
The mayor's absence, though long expected, has given fresh fuel to
opponents who view his criticism of the Israeli government as
antisemitic.
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 to not attend the parade “a slap in the face
to all Jewish New Yorkers.”
“Do us a favor, stay home,” he said. “We don’t need you. We don’t want
you.”
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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Spectators wave flags during the Israel Day Parade, Sunday, May 31,
2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Emil T. Lippe)
The video, which appeared to be the first such recognition from a
sitting New York City mayor, featured the story of a woman who was
displaced at 9 years old, interspersed with text about the Nakba, as
she described a feeling of missing home, saying “it’s the soft hills
of Palestine that actually touched me.”
“I’ve lived in different places, and I’ve always been an outsider,”
said the woman, Inea Bushnaq.
Supporters of Israel were outraged, saying the video should have
acknowledged the mass displacement of Jews from Muslim-majority
countries or the role that the mass slaughter of Jews in the
Holocaust played in the drive to establish a Jewish state.
Mayors in New York City, which has America’s largest Jewish
population, have long been visible supporters of Israel, often
visiting the country.
Support for Israel among Americans has deeply eroded in recent
years, though, a trend that accelerated amid the outcry over Israeli
military action in Gaza..
Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, has remained steadfast in
his pro-Palestinian advocacy.
He has said he believes Israel has a right to exist but not as a
hierarchy that favors Jewish citizens. Simultaneously he has pledged
to protect Jewish New Yorkers and highlighted the work of the city’s
Office to Combat Antisemitism.
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