By: Chaya Abecassis

The transition of power in New York City is often a moment of grand promise, a ceremonial passage that gestures toward renewal while revealing, in its early appointments, the philosophical temper of an incoming administration. Yet the early weeks of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s tenure have been marked less by policy ambition than by a cascade of controversies that have forced the city’s political class into an uneasy reckoning with the moral and rhetorical boundaries of acceptable discourse.

As The Times of Israel reported on Saturday, the brief and ignominious appointment of Catherine Almonte Da Costa to a senior post in the mayor’s office became a flashpoint, igniting a broader debate over antisemitism, anti-Zionist rhetoric, and the normalization of extremism among mid-level political operatives who wield outsized influence over the machinery of municipal governance.

Da Costa’s resignation, tendered scarcely a day after her appointment in December, was precipitated by the resurfacing of social media posts from 2011 and 2012 in which she trafficked in crude antisemitic tropes, referring to “money hungry Jews,” mocking “rich Jewish peeps,” and derisively labeling a subway line serving a Jewish neighborhood as “the Jew train.”

The Times of Israel report detailed the speed with which the controversy unfolded: Da Costa apologized once the posts came to light, Mamdani accepted her resignation, and the mayor acknowledged that he would not have hired her had he been aware of the comments. He further pledged to overhaul the vetting procedures within his administration, a promise that suggested an awareness of the reputational and moral peril such appointments entail.

Yet, as The Times of Israel report observed, the Da Costa episode proved less an isolated lapse than the first crack in a façade that would soon reveal a more troubling pattern. Within days, the Anti-Defamation League disclosed that other appointees within Mamdani’s orbit had expressed views that, while often couched in the idiom of radical anti-Zionism, veered into overt antisemitism.

Statements unearthed from social media included endorsements of Palestinian “resistance,” praise for the Nation of Islam’s antisemitic leader Louis Farrakhan, and declarations that “Zionism is racism,” that Zionism constitutes a “genocidal ideology,” and even that “Zionists are worse than Nazis.” One appointee, serving as Mamdani’s Brooklyn borough director, went so far as to describe women who tore down posters of Israeli hostages as “heroes,” a gesture that, in the context of a global campaign to humanize abducted civilians, struck many observers as morally inverted.

The Times of Israel has chronicled how, in the wake of these revelations, some mayoral appointees quietly deleted their social media accounts before assuming office, a preemptive act that suggested an acute awareness of the archival power of digital footprints. Yet the strategy proved porous.

Controversies continued to surface, including, most recently, the exposure of incendiary posts by Kaif Gilani, a founder of the widely publicized “Hot Girls for Zohran” campaign. Jewish Insider reported that Gilani had shared content supportive of Hamas, minimized antisemitism, and propagated conspiratorial narratives implicating Israel in the September 11 attacks, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and the death of Jeffrey Epstein.

 

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According to the information provided in The Times of Israel report, Gilani’s posts were broadcast to an audience of roughly 60,000 followers, a testament to the scale at which such rhetoric can circulate unchecked until scrutinized by investigative reporting.

The revelations carried collateral consequences beyond Mamdani’s immediate political circle. Gilani was serving as the highest-paid consultant to congressional candidate Brad Lander when the posts emerged. Lander’s campaign disavowed the views, severed ties with Gilani, and condemned the statements. Yet the episode underscored a more systemic vulnerability: the ease with which individuals harboring extreme views can embed themselves within political operations, shaping messaging and mobilization strategies without the rigorous scrutiny typically applied to elected officials.

The Times of Israel report emphasized that the “Hot Girls for Zohran” initiative, while formally independent of Mamdani’s campaign, enjoyed widespread media attention and celebrity endorsements, blurring the line between volunteer activism and official political infrastructure.

What emerges from this accumulation of incidents, as The Times of Israel report framed it, is a portrait of a political ecosystem in which hardline anti-Zionist rhetoric has been normalized among a cohort of mid-level operatives whose roles include drafting policy proposals, conducting community outreach, and making hiring decisions.

These staffers, though seldom in the public eye, exercise considerable influence over the texture of governance. Their ideological commitments, refracted through the quotidian work of administration, shape not only the tenor of political discourse but the practical implementation of policy. The Times of Israel has noted that such operatives often escape the level of scrutiny directed at elected officials, rendering their social media histories and private convictions consequential precisely because they operate in the shadows of public accountability.

The phenomenon is not confined to the progressive left. The Times of Israel has also reported on the implosion of New York State’s Young Republicans organization after leaked group chats revealed members joking about gas chambers, praising Adolf Hitler, and deploying racist, antisemitic, and homophobic slurs.

The symmetry is grim: across the ideological spectrum, the erosion of rhetorical restraint has permitted extremist language to migrate from fringe spaces into the bloodstream of political organizing. This convergence suggests that the problem is not merely partisan but cultural, reflecting a broader coarsening of political norms in the age of digital virality.

Yet the asymmetries in response are telling. The Times of Israel report highlighted how Mamdani condemned Da Costa’s classical expressions of antisemitism—those invoking Jewish greed and caricature—while refraining from a similarly forceful denunciation of Gilani’s anti-Israel conspiracies. This selective moral clarity reflects a pattern evident in parts of the activist left: antisemitism is acknowledged when it conforms to recognizable tropes, but when hostility to Jews is refracted through the prism of anti-Zionism, it is often rebranded as legitimate political critique.

This rhetorical maneuver not only blurs the line between criticism of Israeli policy and demonization of Jewish identity, but also creates a permissive environment in which conspiratorial and dehumanizing narratives can flourish under the banner of political advocacy.

The response from within the activist milieu further illuminates this dynamic. A co-founder of the “Hot Girls for Zohran” campaign publicly defended Gilani and signaled that he would remain associated with the rebranded “Hot Girls Organize.” Meanwhile, the journalist who exposed Gilani’s posts reportedly received antisemitic death threats, a chilling reminder that the costs of challenging extremist rhetoric can be borne personally by those who bring it to light. The Times of Israel report underscored the corrosive implications of such intimidation, which not only threatens individual safety but erodes the conditions necessary for open, accountable discourse.

In contrast, the “old guard” of New York’s Democratic establishment, figures such as Governor Kathy Hochul, remain broadly aligned with mainstream Jewish sensibilities, affirming Jewish self-determination in Israel while often critiquing the policies of specific Israeli governments. The Times of Israel report has drawn this distinction to highlight an ideological rift within the party, one that mirrors national tensions between institutional liberalism and a more radical activist left.

Mamdani and many of his staffers, by contrast, are more closely aligned with the anti-Zionist currents of contemporary activism, a posture rendered legible through their digital footprints and public affiliations.

The cumulative effect of these episodes is a crisis of confidence in the moral stewardship of political institutions. The Times of Israel report framed the unfolding controversy as a test of whether New York’s political leadership can articulate and enforce boundaries against antisemitism and extremism without succumbing to the selective indignation that has characterized recent responses.

The challenge is not merely reputational but structural. Vetting processes can be tightened, social media accounts scrubbed, but the deeper question concerns the ideological climates within which such rhetoric is generated and tolerated.

As New York City navigates this fraught terrain, the city’s storied pluralism hangs in the balance. The measure of political maturity will lie not in the speed of resignations or the choreography of apologies, but in the willingness of leaders to confront the underlying currents that have rendered such controversies almost routine.

In a metropolis that has long prided itself on its diversity and its role as a refuge for Jewish life, the normalization of rhetoric that dehumanizes Jews under the guise of political critique represents not merely a scandal but a warning. The reckoning now underway in City Hall’s shadow will test whether New York’s political culture can reaffirm the ethical constraints that pluralism requires, or whether the centrifugal forces of ideological extremism will continue to erode the moral architecture of public service.