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Arab-Jewish stage actor Ari’el Stachel told MSNBC on Monday that Democratic New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani hasn’t done enough to push back on antisemitism from his base and in the city.
As an Arab Jew with an Israeli father, Stachel told MSNBC host Katy Tur that he now feels “uncomfortable” revealing his ethnicity in public. Though he agreed with Tur that Mamdani had not explicitly condoned antisemitism, Stachel believes that the democratic socialist candidate hasn’t properly condemned it yet.
“I think it hasn’t been enough, because I think that there’s a sense that there are people in his base who really are antisemitic,” Stachel said. “And I think that there’s been a sense that he hasn’t been as vehemently denouncing their statements.”
The Tony award-winning actor described a recent example of feeling scared to reveal his own background to a Palestinian woman at a bodega.
“Antisemitism has become so broad right now that if I’m the son of an Israeli father who is the son of a Yemeni immigrant, I still become a target in some ways,” he said.
Despite this, Stachel said he was open to working with Mamdani to create a coalition made up of multicultural Jews to help push back on antisemitism.
His comments came after he made an Instagram video last month, where he urged Mamdani to call out antisemitism specifically and denounce it.
“What’s frightening is this, in some circles, antisemitism isn’t recognized as hate,” Stachel said in the video. “It’s framed as justice. Attacks against Jews aren’t condemned. They are celebrated, seen as a righteous response to a government miles away, which makes it all the more dangerous. It’s disguised as virtue. And I know you don’t want to lead a city where people feel like that.”
He continued, “So I have a request: name antisemitism clearly. Not in footnotes, not with caveats, not lumped in with the many other very valid and real hate crimes in our city, but named as its own pain and its own danger. And I want you to have the courage to denounce explicitly any of your supporters who are blatantly antisemitic, because we cannot live in a New York that is like that.”
Mamdani has faced accusations of antisemitism throughout his campaign. In several instances, he refused to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada” despite its violent connotations against Israelis and Jews worldwide.
He has also refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state and has instead argued it had a right to exist “as a state with equal rights.”
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