Washington Examiner columnist Joe Concha blasted New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s statement on the anniversary of the Oct. 7, 2023 terrorist attacks against Israel by Hamas, calling it “insulting.”
“This was intentionally insulting,” Concha said Saturday on Fox Business’s Kudlow. “Quite frankly disgusting … this statement was designed to gaslight the Jewish community.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacked Israeli communities, including those at a music festival, near Gaza. The terrorist group killed more than 1,000 people and abducted hundreds of hostages. Mamdani’s statement began with acknowledging the attacks on the three-year anniversary before discussing Israel’s reaction to the attack, calling it a “genocide” in Gaza:
“This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them—all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.”
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Concha bashed the statement, saying it was “a nod” that Mamdani cared more about the “anti-Semitic far left” than Jews in New York.
“Never once do we see the word Jew or Jews in his statement, nor do we see the word hostage, and this wasn’t just an ‘oops’ omission — this was all by design,” Concha said. “He’s absolutely trying to say something here, and Jewish New Yorkers continue to be the target of hate crimes.”