New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani arrives onstage at a Brooklyn rally in May 2025. (Madison Swart and Hans Lucas via AFP/Getty Images)
(JTA) — Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old Democratic Socialist mounting a strong campaign in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary, has consistently declined to say he would visit Israel if elected, setting the stage for a 75-year-old tradition to potentially come to an end.
On Sunday night, at a mayoral forum organized by an array of progressive Jewish groups held at an Upper West Side synagogue, Mamdani added a new detail to his demurrals.
Responding to a question about whether he would visit Israel, he said he thought his past support for boycotting Israel would render him inadmissible. The Israeli parliament approved a travel ban on non-citizens who support the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement in 2017 and strengthened that ban in February, subsequently barring elected officials from France and the European Parliament under the statute.
“I’m not even sure if I would be allowed to enter into Israel, because I think that there’s legislation that prohibits the entry of anyone who supports that legislation,” Mamdani said. “So it is both a question for me, but also were the answer to be different, I think the result would be the same.”
Mamdani has previously called for boycotting Israel but has been evasive on the campaign trail when asked whether he would seek to have the city join the boycott. During the forum Sunday, he explained his past support for BDS but did not clearly answer a direct question about whether he would continue to support the boycott if he were elected mayor.
“I am someone for whom at the core of my politics is the belief in non-violence, and having seen the efficacy of non-violent movements in creating compliance with international law, specifically with South Africa, that’s what brought me to support BDS,” he said.
The candidate Mamdani is trailing, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, issued an executive order in 2016 barring New York state agencies and departments from investing in organizations that boycott Israel.
Every mayor elected since Israel’s founding in 1948 has visited, in a nod to New York’s major Jewish community, the largest outside of Israel. The current mayor, Eric Adams, visited shortly before Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack and met with both government officials and anti-government protesters. Adams is running for reelection as an independent.
Other candidates at the Sunday night forum, organized by the New York Jewish Agenda and held at Congregation B’nai Jeshurun, said they would aim to visit Israel if they are elected.
Mamdani said, as he has before, that he does not believe visiting Israel is crucial to being able to represent the roughly 1 million Jews who would be his constituents if he is elected. His positions on Israel have earned him vociferous opposition from some in the Jewish community, even as his progressive policy platform has also generated support from other Jewish New Yorkers.
“And what I’ve said is that one need not visit Israel to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers,” Mamdani said. “I believe that to stand up for Jewish New Yorkers means that you actually meet Jewish New Yorkers wherever they may be, be it at their synagogues and temples or their homes or on the subway platform or at a park, wherever it may be.”
