Against the backdrop of deadly antisemitic attacks in Australia, the U.K., Colorado, Washington, D.C., Israel and beyond, Jews continue to be disproportionate targets of hate crimes in New York City. As Mayor Eric Adams explained shortly before leaving office, “Jewish New Yorkers were facing — and still continue to experience — a surge of harassment, threats, and violence.”
It is clearly a time to strengthen protections and increase understanding of this deadly hatred. CAMERA is dismayed, then, that in America’s biggest city and home to the nation’s largest Jewish population, City Hall and The New York Times have done the precise opposite.
One of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first moves after taking office was to take aim at executive orders tackling anti-Jewish and anti-Israel discrimination. The city’s recognition of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism – the gold standard definition that helps the public understand antisemitism as it is experienced by Jews today – was annulled on day one of the Mamdani administration. So was an executive order reinforcing prohibitions against boycotting or divesting from Israel and Israeli citizens.
Rather than holding City Hall accountable, The New York Times effectively threw its weight behind Mamdani’s moves. Its story on the revocations misleads readers with a headline that stripped “antisemitism” from the IHRA definition of antisemitism, casting the Executive Order instead as one that merely “backed Israel.” The article, too, repeatedly characterizes the EO as an “Israel-related” order.
Even when the authors did acknowledge that the order was about antisemitism, they nudge readers to Mamdani’s position by characterizing the widely adopted IHRA definition as “contentious” and by suggesting, falsely, that the definition conflates criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews.
CAMERA stands with those troubled by Mayor Mamdani’s revocation of protections important to the New York Jewish community. We further call on the New York Times to fulfil its role as a check on power. Rather than providing needed scrutiny of Mamdani’s moves, the paper has effectively endorsed the mayor’s dismantling of civil rights safeguards through biased framing and misrepresentation of Jewish communal concerns.