New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) has hired an anti-Israel activist who blamed Israel for Oct. 7 and defended slogans calling for the elimination of the Jewish state in since-deleted posts on X. He will serve as Mamdani's deputy communications director for economic justice.
Waleed Shahid—who advised far-left politicians like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) and former congressman Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) before joining Mamdani’s administration—called Hamas’s attack "a byproduct of Israel’s violent policies of occupation and the second-class status of Palestinians" on Oct. 7, the Jerusalem Post reported.
Soon after, he defended Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s (D., Mich.) use of the phrase, "From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free" in the weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack.
Shahid wrote the post just before the House of Representatives censured Tlaib for using the slogan, which is commonly heard among supporters of terrorist groups like Hamas and which calls for the replacement of Israel with a Palestinian state between the two bodies of water.
Shahid also falsely accused Israel of bombing Al-Ahli Arab Hospital in Gaza after the Jewish state published evidence showing that the blast at the medical facility was caused by a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket rather than the Israel Defense Forces.
He called for a "ceasefire" between Israel and Hamas before Israel launched its major Gaza operation and condemned Israeli "atrocities" against Gazans less than two weeks after Oct. 7. He also described Israel as "a state that systematically deprives Palestinians of basic rights and a state of their own" in another deleted post on X.
Mamdani’s move to hire Shahid comes after the mayor appointed several anti-Israel and anti-Semitic advisers to his cabinet and transition team. His director of appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa, resigned after old social media posts—including one in which she bemoaned "Money hungry Jews"—came to light. A top adviser on Mamdani’s transition team, Hassaan Chaudhary, used the word "Jew" as a slur and praised former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying Israel is a "cancer which will be eliminated very soon."
The mayor’s history of radical anti-Israel rhetoric drew concern from the city’s Jewish population both before and after his election. In November, protesters gathered outside a synagogue, hurling anti-Semitic slurs and calls for violence. Mamdani’s spokeswoman wrote in a statement that "sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law" because the synagogue hosted a group that helps Jews move to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Mamdani refused to condemn slogans like "globalize the intifada," instead telling a group of New York CEOs that he stands by "the idea." He has also pledged to arrest Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he visit New York and campaigned with a radical Islamist cleric who once urged "jihad" against the city.
During his time in the New York State Assembly, Mamdani sponsored legislation that would have barred New York-based charities from working with Israel and declined to support Holocaust remembrance measures.
Shahid, who has falsely accused Israel of committing genocide, advised the "Uncommitted" movement against former president Joe Biden’s and former vice president Kamala Harris’s 2024 presidential campaigns. He first came to prominence as a spokesman for Justice Democrats, a far-left organization that helped elevate the likes of Ocasio-Cortez and the "Squad" to the halls of Congress.
"We’re part of the organization that helped recruit Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and pushed her to run in the first place," he said during an MSNBC appearance in October 2019. "And we have a whole squad that is being built in Congress—people like Rashida Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, Ro Khanna, even Sen. [Ed] Markey, Ilhan Omar, Rep. [Pramila] Jayapal."
Neither Shahid nor Mamdani responded to requests for comment by press time.
