W2W Statement on MOCA “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism”

This statement is published on behalf of World to Win. World to Win (W2W) is a coalition of NYC-DSA members fighting to connect our long-term vision for democratic socialism to the day-to-day struggle for freedom and dignity at our workplaces, apartment buildings, the ballot box, and the streets. Learn more about our platform and points of unity at www.w2w.nyc.

On September 29, 2026, Mayor Mamdani’s administration announced a “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism.” Framed as a benign attempt to combat antisemitism, the document relies on  faulty and discriminatory reporting compiled by explicitly Zionist organizations to justify further empowering the NYPD, directly financing Zionist institutions, and repeating right-wing and Zionist narratives of “crime and safety.” New Yorkers voted in overwhelming numbers for a mayor who spoke out against genocide and affirmed the importance of safety for all, from New York to Palestine. Mayor Mamdani’s plan betrays the hopes of those New Yorkers.

The “Strategy to Combat Antisemitism” is authored by the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism (MOCA), an office established under Eric Adams, and modeled after the Biden administration’s U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism—the same administration that originally enabled, armed, and accelerated Israel’s genocide on Gaza. The document refuses to define “antisemitism” and cites reporting from Zionist organizations including the UJA-Federation of New York and the American Jewish Committee. Both of these organizations equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, rely exclusively on self-reporting, and do not specify their criteria for an “antisemitic hate crime,” meaning that their statistics are almost certainly artificially inflated and count pro-Palestine speech as a “hate crime.” It is in Zionists’ interest to stoke fears of eternal, always-escalating antisemitism in order to justify the idea that Jewish safety requires a “homeland” in occupied Palestine. 

These organizations are not neutral reporters but active contributors to Israel’s genocide. UJA has sent $78 million dollars directly to Israel, including the funding of settler movements and illegal settlements in the West Bank such as Nefesh B'Nefesh, a target of the Pal-Awda campaign against stolen Palestinian land sales. The AJC actively advocates for increased US military aid to Israel, opposes the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, and provides “resources” to universities and other institutions that encourage genocide denial. In relying on politically motivated and deceptive statistics, Mamdani’s strategy contributes to a moral panic manufactured to justify the Zionist imperial project and does so at the expense of the actual safety of Arab and Muslim New Yorkers.

Zionist institutions weaponize anxiety over antisemitism as a cudgel for political repression, which the state enforces through crushing street protests, surveilling and detaining protestors, and abducting Palestinian activists. The municipal codification and enforcement of these cynical accusations only makes  the terrain more dangerous for pro-Palestine organizers by further empowering the NYPD to brutalize protestors. 

Mamdani’s plan explicitly commits MOCA to an expanded partnership with the NYPD, which is led by billionaire heiress and career Zionist Jessica Tisch. Tisch has overseen the criminalization and targeting of pro-Palestine activists speaking out against genocide and, under her leadership, training for the NYPD, including antisemitism training conducted in Israel, has characterized the keffiyeh and the watermelon as antisemitic symbols. This partnership places the power to determine what is antisemitic and what is not in the hands of the very imperialist and carceral institutions that have unceasingly brutalized, arrested, and imprisoned Arab and Muslim New Yorkers and those struggling for Palestinian liberation.

It further commits funding to nonprofit organizations with financial ties to Israeli settlements. One of the nonprofits that will receive grants as a part of the over $6.4 million in funding is the Jewish Community Relations Council, who are partnered with organizations such as the ADL and groups such as the Jewish National Fund, which directly finance the Zionist occupation. JCRC sent a delegation of CUNY college presidents to Israel and the occupied West Bank to meet with Israeli President Isaac Herzog in 2022, targeted a talk by a child psychiatrist discussing Palestinian trauma as “antisemitic,” and recently successfully lobbied for a student to be punished for merely wearing a shirt with a map of Palestine on it. 

As part of its educational program, MOCA will partner with NYCPS and OPHC to increase school trips to the Museum of Jewish Heritage (MJH). The MJH has a history of hosting Zionists (including a former Mossad director), has issued statements in support of the Zionist entity in the wake of the genocide on Gaza, and has officially adopted the IHRA definition of antisemitism. The museum’s “Educator Antisemitism Resource” states that “Anti-Zionism is antisemitism.” The Zionist ideological framework of the program merits serious scrutiny regarding the nature of the “education” that children who visit the museum through MOCA will receive. 

The ostensible impartiality of the Mayor’s policy—ommitting overt references to Zionism while attempting to appeal to the local institutions most invested in Zionist violence—fails to be neutral in practice. It is not neutral to fund organizations tied to illegal land sales and the occupation economy. It is not neutral to repeat statistics that conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism. It is not neutral to allow the NYPD to repress protest in the name of “protection.” 

This plan, and MOCA itself, reproduce the dangerous exceptionalization of antisemitism. Despite the ongoing genocide and displacement of Palestinians, the targeting of Muslims and Arabs at home and abroad, and the punishment of dissenting New Yorkers (including termination from jobs, expulsion from universities, and assaults and arrests by the NYPD), there is no task force or education plan to prevent the systemic violence faced by Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab New Yorkers and their allies.

As the genocide rages on, we must be uncompromising in our principles and solidarity with the Palestinian people. As members of the Democratic Socialists of America, we reaffirm our commitment to fighting for Palestinian liberation; an end to Israeli settler violence and ongoing genocide on Gaza; Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) on Israel; and true safety for all New Yorkers.