Zohran Mamdani says AIPAC has been supportive of a ‘status quo for immorality’ in Palestine, wider region.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani has doubled down on his criticism of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) after being asked whether calling the pro-Israel lobbying group “monsters” could be dangerous.

Mamdani last week denounced the pro-Israel lobby’s spending in a New York primary election race, saying AIPAC spends “millions in dark money”, leading to criticism from some Jewish leaders.

“When I am speaking about AIPAC, I’m speaking about an organisation that has been supportive of the status quo, that has fought any attempt to actually deliver safety to people, not just in Palestine, but frankly, through much of the region, and it is a status quo for immorality,” Mamdani said on Monday at City Hall.

The mayor noted that more than 1,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israeli forces since a US-brokered “ceasefire” was agreed last October to halt Israel’s genocidal war.

“And when it comes to the way in which they defend the status quo, oftentimes they defend it through direct contributions, as we are seeing right now in New York 13,” said Mamdani, New York City’s first Muslim mayor.

The mayor is facing criticism over the comments at a rally in Vermont last week in which he criticised AIPAC, which has spent heavily to support pro-Israel candidates in this year’s congressional primaries in the US.

“They move millions in dark money to accomplish a single goal: To preserve their power so that they can turn us against one another instead of our leaders turning towards the moral change we all know to be necessary. In the wealthiest city, in the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we need not live in fear of monsters any longer,” he told the rally.

New Jersey Representative Josh Gottheimer accused Mamdani of “laundering antisemitism”.

“Swap “AIPAC” for “Jews” and it’s the oldest antisemitic conspiracy theory in the books. That’s not criticizing a lobby. That’s laundering antisemitism from your podium as Mayor of a city with more than a million Jews. This bullshit is dangerous,” he wrote on X.

The criticism comes as a new slate of candidates is testing the Democratic Party’s political direction in New York’s primary elections. The results will determine which challengers the party nominates to run in the midterm elections in November.

Candidates’ stances towards Israel have become a major flashpoint in the races.

Longtime incumbent Adriano Espaillat, who has held his office since 2017, has won praise from AIPAC, while Mamdani-backed candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier has been criticised for attending a pro-Palestine protest a day after Hamas attacked southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Chevalier has said she attended the rally in anticipation of Israel’s response against Palestinian civilians.

Federal Election Commission filings show that AIPAC’s super PAC, United Democracy Project, made two contributions last month totalling more than $600,000 to BOLD America, which has been funding advertisements in support of candidate Espaillat in New York’s 13th District.