The recently ousted executive director of New York City Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism told the Washington Free Beacon on Thursday that he believes Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) replaced him with a left-wing activist because he is a "proud Jew" who doesn't fit in with the new mayor's agenda. That activist, Phylisa Wisdom, has slammed Israel's defensive operations against Hamas as "state-sanctioned violence" and once tweeted about how she "totally missed Yom Kippur."
"I'm a proud Jew who wears my kippah on my head and is proud of my heritage and the ancient Jewish relationship with the land of Israel," Rabbi Moshe Davis, whom Mamdani replaced on Wednesday, said in response to a question about why Mamdani let him go. "Maybe that wasn't the right vibe for them."
Mamdani appointed Wisdom, the leader of the left-wing group New York Jewish Agenda, to run the office in a move that Davis—who worked in the department for more than three years before becoming its executive director in May 2025—said has little to do with his record, which he said "speaks for itself."
"As I laid out in my 2025 [Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism] report, fighting anti-Semitism means defining the problem and combating it in its modern form," Davis told the Free Beacon. "That includes confronting BDS, not allowing protesters to target the Jewish community, and creating the infrastructure to keep Jewish New Yorkers safe."
Davis referred to the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks to end commercial relationships with companies that do business in Israel. In 2020, the movement's spokesman said that BDS's goal is to bring about the end of the Jewish state. Davis's comments come after Mamdani scrapped an executive order from former mayor Eric Adams that implemented the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's definition of anti-Semitism, which states that denying the Jewish people the right to self-determination—as BDS does—is discriminatory.
Mamdani's decision followed a campaign in which he refused to condemn slogans like "globalize the intifada," instead telling a group of New York CEOs that he stands by "the idea" of the phrase; 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. After his election, when protesters gathered outside a synagogue to hurl 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.
After winning the mayoralty, Mamdani appointed several anti-Israel and anti-Semitic advisers to his transition team and cabinet. As the Free Beacon reported last week, Mamdani hired Waleed Shahid, an anti-Israel activist who blamed Israel for Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attack and defended slogans calling for the elimination of the Jewish state in since-deleted posts on X. Mamdani's initial pick for 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 his transition team, Hassaan Chaudhary, used the word "Jew" as a slur and praised former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying that Israel is a "cancer which will be eliminated very soon."
Wisdom, the new leader of the Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism, has also expressed anti-Israel views. During the 2021 mayoral race, when Israel came under a barrage of Hamas rocket fire, Wisdom replied to then-mayoral candidate Andrew Yang's statement of solidarity with the Jewish state.
"As an American Jew and a New Yorker, I am floored by this tweet (although never surprised)," she wrote. "NYC deserves a mayor who will stand up for Palestinians in the face of state-sanctioned violence."
Wisdom once posted about how she "totally missed Yom Kippur," asking, "What kind of Jew flakes on YOM KIPPUR[?]"
New York Jewish Agenda, which Wisdom led for nearly three years before joining Mamdani's administration, lists "addressing the migrant crisis in a fair and just manner[,] fighting antisemitism effectively while emphasizing nuance and pushing back on its weaponization, criminal justice reform, protecting our immigrant neighbors in the face of ongoing threats, and more," as its focus.
Davis told the Free Beacon that, though he hopes Wisdom will succeed in her new role, he is "concerned about this appointment."
"The Mayor's Office to Combat Antisemitism was built to be operational, not symbolic," he continued. "It requires government experience, strong agency relationships, and trust across the Jewish community to function effectively from day one."
Davis noted that his dismissal and Wisdom's appointment come at a time when New York City's Jewish community is "understandably on edge." Anti-Semitic violence rose by 182 percent in this January compared with January of last year, even as rates of crimes like murders and shootings have decreased. Just last week, a man rammed his car into the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn. A day earlier, a man who allegedly yelled, "F— the Jews," attacked a rabbi in Queens on his way to synagogue. At the outset of Mamdani's term, activists protested outside a synagogue with chants of "we support Hamas" and "globalize the intifada," an event promoted by a Muslim group with extensive ties to the mayor.
"Just the other day, a kid in school threatened to 'kill all the Jews,'" Davis told the Free Beacon. "It's bad. And the problem won't go away if you just dance around it or just try to fight it with nice videos and statements. We need to put robust measures in place to make sure Jewish New Yorkers are safe."
