New York Jewish Community Defends Palestine, Zohran Mamdani Skips Israel Day Parade

Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and several right-wing Israeli politicians were met with chants of ‘war criminal’ from pro-Palestinian Jewish community members at the annual Israel Day Parade in New York City, United States. The parade took place on Fifth Avenue in New York against the backdrop of the ongoing war in Gaza and what critics describe as genocide against Palestinians. Responding to the criticism, Smotrich maintained that Israel and the global Jewish community share an inseparable bond. ‘The State of Israel is the home of the entire Jewish nation. The security of Jews worldwide depends on the strength and security of the State of Israel. There is no better place to live than in Israel,’ he said, as quoted by Al Jazeera on Monday (15/6).

Meanwhile, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not attend the annual parade commemorating Israel on Sunday (14/6). He broke with a decades-old political tradition observed by previous New York mayors due to his support for the rights of the Palestinian people. Although it has been renamed over the years, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for mayors, governors, and other political leaders seeking to win over the flag-waving crowds gathered on Fifth Avenue to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948. That was not the case for Mamdani. Two weeks prior, the mayor’s office released a video commemorating the Nakba, the Arabic word for ‘catastrophe’ used to describe the expulsion of approximately 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War that followed Israel’s establishment. ‘I said during the campaign that I would not attend the parade, and I have made my views on the Israeli government very clear,’ Mamdani stated at a press conference some time ago.