US pro-Israel group to set up monitor for New York mayor-elect

The pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has sparked anger over its plan to establish a “Mamdani Monitor”, according to the Middle East Eye and agencies on November 6th.

Zohran Mamdani was elected as New York City’s first Muslim mayor, beating both Independent Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Silwa.

The ADL, which has long faced accusations of anti-Arab racism, released a press release on November 5th, which said, “Mayor-Elect Mamdani has promoted antisemitic narratives, associated with individuals who have a history of antisemitism, and demonstrated intense animosity toward the Jewish state that is counter to the views of the overwhelming majority of Jewish New Yorkers.”

The statement came from the ADL’s CEO and national director, Jonathan Greenblatt, who added: “We are deeply concerned that those individuals and principles will influence his administration at a time when we are tracking a brazen surge of harassment, vandalism and violence targeting Jewish residents and institutions in recent years.”

A self-proclaimed democratic socialist, vocal supporter of Palestine and South Asian Muslim, Mamdani’s campaign has been subjected to repeated Islamophobic attacks, including by Cuomo’s campaign.

The so-called “Mamdani Monitor” would track and monitor policies and personnel, and would serve as a “hyper-focused resource for New Yorkers to report antisemitic incidents in the city, including on the streets, in schools, [and] in their workplace.”

ADL-led surveillance would be used to feed information to the monitor, which records information about Mamdani’s policies and governance; the organisation said it would be bolstering its “research capabilities.”

Greenblatt has long sought to conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism; he was a lead figure in accusing Palestinian Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of antisemitism after she criticised Michigan’s attorney general, Dana Nessel, for pursuing charges against pro-Palestine protestors at the University of Michigan.

In a post on X that was later deleted, Greenblatt stated: “When your attorney general prosecutes people for violating the law, harassing Jews, and attacking police officers, it’s in the interest of public safety. When a congresswoman accuses the attorney general of prosecuting protestors simply because she’s Jewish, it’s bias.”

In 2024, Wikipedia editors voted to declare that the ADL was “generally unreliable” on issues related to antisemitism, adding the group to its list of banned sources.

According to the pro-Palestine Jewish Currents, the ADL weaponises its reputation as a civil rights group to shut down all criticism of Israel.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) denounced the ADL’s “Mamdani Monitor” plans, accusing the organisation of “singling out Mayor-Elect Mamdani [as] an act of hypocrisy and anti-Muslim bigotry.”

CAIR added: “We strongly condemn the ADL’s increasingly unhinged, desperate attacks on American Muslims.”

Middle East Eye and agencies, Jewish Currents and agencies, Maghrebi.org