“Who boycotted Jews? The Third Reich!”
Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul basic in New York, was not being delicate. In a current interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Company at his workplace in Midtown East forward of Rosh Hashanah, Akunis likened Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s assist for the Israel boycott motion to techniques utilized by Nazi Germany, referred to as the mayor an “antisemite” and mentioned Mamdani bears direct duty for assaults on Jews and Jewish establishments in New York.
Akunis was discussing Mamdani’s Day One determination to revoke an government order issued by his predecessor, Eric Adams, in opposition to the motion to boycott, divest and sanction Israel when he invoked the Nazis. His feedback, variations of which he has deployed at numerous events in current weeks, mark an unusually stark escalation within the Israeli authorities’s criticism of New York’s mayor.
The consul basic’s more and more charged feedback have entered unprecedented territory in a metropolis the place mayors have traditionally had a heat relationship with Israel and its representatives in New York. Mamdani, an avowed anti-Zionist, has himself damaged that mould with harsh rhetoric about Israel.
As leaders of New York’s Jewish neighborhood navigate a tense relationship with Mamdani over Israel, critics from its progressive Zionist wing say the tenor of Akunis’ feedback isn’t serving to.
“I believe in a second the place persons are already feeling nervousness in regards to the rise of antisemitism, to check the nervousness persons are feeling and equate it with the historic actuality of the Holocaust and its speedy aftermath, doesn’t assist individuals right-size their concern,” mentioned Margo Hughes-Robinson, government director of the liberal advocacy group New York Jewish Agenda.
Hughes-Robinson referred to as Akunis’ Nazi Germany comparisons “unproductive” and “frankly offensive to the reminiscence of the Holocaust and to the victims and survivors.”
When requested about criticism of the comparability, Akunis clarified that he’s “not saying that we must always evaluate the horrors of the Holocaust to at the moment’s local weather.” However individuals “should take a look at historical past to know how antisemitism has risen,” he mentioned.
“For instance, Mamdani has referred to as AIPAC ‘monsters,’ utilizing the identical form of dehumanizing language that Hitler and the Nazis used to explain the Jewish individuals,” Akunis mentioned. “Highlighting these rhetorical similarities is essential to making sure that at the moment’s era understands the hazard of Mamdani’s language and why it should be stopped.”
Hughes-Robinson was one of many few rabbinical and Jewish organizational leaders who would reply on the file to the JTA’s request for ideas on the technique Akunis has adopted in countering Mamdani’s anti-Israel positions. Greater than a dozen declined to remark.
Whereas Mark Treyger, the present CEO of New York’s Jewish Group Relations Council didn’t reply to a request for touch upon the subject, his predecessor expressed sympathy for the problem dealing with Akunis.
“I don’t envy the place that he’s in,” mentioned Michael Miller, who was CEO of the JCRC for 35 years, till 2021. Miller mentioned that Akunis is in a tricky spot “having to wrestle with the fact of a mayor who doesn’t consider the nation that Ofir [Akunis] represents has legitimacy.”
Akunis is representing Israel at a time when the nation is led by its most right-wing authorities ever, when its worldwide standing is tanking and when pro-Palestinian progressives like Mamdani are ascendant. Akunis had an in depth relationship with Mamdani’s predecessor, Adams, who was a staunch supporter of Israel. However an anti-Zionist mayor would pose a problem to any Israeli diplomat, not only a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud social gathering, and never simply in 2026.
A former Israeli cupboard minister and Knesset member, Akunis was appointed to the consulate in 2024 by Netanyahu. Akunis has ratcheted up the depth of his Mamdani feedback on the identical time that the Likud — which Akunis belongs to — has made the New York Metropolis mayor a villain in its marketing campaign forward of Israel’s Oct. 27 elections.
“The mayor is busy inciting in opposition to and selling a boycott of the Jewish state,” Akunis mentioned throughout an occasion for younger Jewish neighborhood leaders final month. “His technique is the well-known antisemitic one: ‘It doesn’t matter what, blame the Jews.’ That is precisely the identical technique that was used a century in the past by the Third Reich.”
Akunis has not met with Mamdani, and says he wouldn’t achieve this till the mayor acknowledges Israel as a Jewish state; Mamdani has mentioned Israel has a proper to exist as a state “with equal rights for all,” and that he can not endorse states that privilege one “faith” over one other. (Many professional-Israel critics have famous that he has no such compunctions relating to Pakistan, whose independence day parade he attended whilst he skipped Israel’s.)
Like Akunis, Republican Metropolis Council member Inna Vernikov has been a staunch critic of the mayor. When requested about Akunis’ stark rhetoric, the Jewish lawmaker as an alternative spoke in regards to the mayor, saying that Mamdani promotes antisemitism “below the skinny veil of anti-Zionism.”
“How the general public defines or interprets these actions is as much as them, however Mamdani’s file is evident,” mentioned Vernikov.
The function of consul basic in New York is seen as considered one of Israel’s highest-profile diplomatic posts, given the metropolitan space’s focus of Jews and Jewish organizations. One member of Knesset not too long ago referred to as it “the true embassy of Israel to the Jews of America.”
The function has additionally been described variously by Akunis’ predecessors as constructing bridges between Israel and native officers in addition to with the Jewish neighborhood; sustaining assist for Israel past simply pro-Israel die-hards; and defending Israel in opposition to misinformation.
Akunis says his function is to stir individuals to “get up.”
“I’m a giant admirer [of the United States], however I’m nervous as a result of I can see in entrance of our eyes the massive change on this metropolis, however not solely right here — throughout,” Akunis mentioned, noting a shift additionally in “the political events” of the nation, and particularly in New York. He mentioned that the American individuals and defenders of Western Civilization “should get up earlier than will probably be too late,” and that “these individuals will power the Sharia legal guidelines on you rather than the American Structure.”
Republican politicians are main efforts to make Sharia — Muslim spiritual regulation — a political subject. They cost that Muslims are searching for to impose their legal guidelines and customs in American courts, a declare that many liberals have rejected and referred to as out for an absence of supporting proof.
Akunis stepped into the function in February 2024 at a delicate second, as American Jews grappled with surging antisemitism and anti-Israel activism following the Oct. 7 assault and months into the warfare in Gaza, and because the Biden administration clashed with the Netanyahu authorities over the battle.
Now, with hate crimes in opposition to Jews in New York Metropolis up 8.5% from final 12 months, Akunis has blamed that development on Mamdani’s management. Most not too long ago, he doubled down on his accusation that Mamdani was “straight accountable” for the Central Synagogue assault final month, during which a person punched a congregant and headbutted a safety guard, regardless of the assailant’s quite a few anti-Mamdani social media posts.
“It’s an environment. The environment is damaging,” Akunis informed JTA, noting that Mamdani is continuously “spreading lies in regards to the State of Israel and our troopers.”
To dispel that environment, Akunis mentioned, Mamdani must “flip down the temperature” and focus much less on worldwide points. “He must do his job, be the mayor of New York. He’s not the president of the US,” Akunis mentioned.
Hughes-Robinson of New York Jewish Agenda agreed that the temperature must be lowered, however mentioned that that responsibility falls on Akunis and different officers in addition to Mamdani.
“I might hope our public management takes severely the necessity to not be inflammatory,” she mentioned. She included Akunis’ statements and a extensively circulated video by Mamdani that slammed Netanyahu as examples of “political points-scoring” that solely ratchet up the strain.
However Akunis additionally has his supporters inside the Jewish neighborhood. The correct-wing Zionist Group of America, which relies in New York and helps the present Israeli authorities, wrote in a press release that it agrees with Akunis’ “sturdy condemnation of Mamdani’s relentless Jew-hatred” and agreed that the mayor is accountable for the rise in hate crimes.
“Mamdani’s egregious public anti-Jewish bigotry has certainly impressed and promoted the elevated assaults on Jews,” mentioned the ZOA’s nationwide president, Morton Klein.
Nonetheless, Akunis wouldn’t go as far as to say that Israelis aren’t protected in New York Metropolis. “Prior to now it was a lot better,” he mentioned, however the metropolis shouldn’t be in a “scenario that Israelis can not go to this place.”
He added, “I can’t say that Israelis can not come to go to this metropolis, as a result of I believe the preferred line between Israel and different locations exterior Israel is to New York.”
J.J. Goldberg, former editor in chief of the Ahead and a longtime resident of the Higher West Facet, believes Akunis could also be angling for a brand new political function at residence as soon as his time is up as consul basic.
“He’s nonetheless obtained a future in his thoughts, and so he’s obtained to face out as a defender of Israel in Likud phrases, which implies an assault at each alternative,” Goldberg mentioned. He added that there’s an “open alternative for him to get some headlines in Israel by attacking Mamdani.”
Akunis mentioned that he had not seen the current Likud marketing campaign billboard that features Mamdani amongst Israel’s enemies and couldn’t touch upon it. (“They need Netanyahu to lose. Don’t allow them to win,” reads the billboard, that includes photos of Mamdani alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and Hezbollah Secretary Basic Naim Qassem.)
“However about the primary thought,” he mentioned, ”if somebody is saying that he hates Israel — like Erdogan, like Khamenei, and sadly like Mayor Mamdani — I want to face in opposition to them.”
He additionally mentioned he couldn’t remark particularly on ultra-nationalist Israeli ministers reminiscent of Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose visits to New York Metropolis have sparked controversy. On the identical time, Akunis mentioned that individuals “must respect the need of the individuals in Israel, and the need of the individuals again then, on the finish of 2022, was to vote for Bezalel Smotrich to the Knesset.”
Goldberg contrasted Akunis’ extra hardline method within the metropolis to that of Dani Dayan, a earlier consul basic whose right-wing views and expertise as a settler chief set him other than the majority of New York’s liberal-leaning Jewish inhabitants. However whereas many anticipated that Dayan’s relationship with liberal Jews could be strained, his time period was marked as an alternative by relative amity.
“He understood the place the hole is between him and everyone else, and walked round it, and was tolerant of people that disagreed with him,” Goldberg mentioned of Dayan.
Dayan’s successor, Asaf Zamir, was appointed in 2021 whereas Netanyahu was briefly out of energy, and later resigned in 2023 in protest over Netanyahu’s judicial reform push. Zamir mentioned in 2022 that he needed to “broaden the tent” by participating with those that “generally have criticism of Israel, so long as we agree on the fundamental traces of Zionism.”
Based on Nancy Kaufman, New York Jewish Agenda’s board chair and former CEO of the Nationwide Council of Jewish Girls, Akunis has not met with NYJA management, whereas Dayan met with NCJW and Zamir met with NYJA (the group was based after Dayan’s time period had ended).
“He’s not focused on what we’ve to say within the progressive neighborhood, and I believe that’s unlucky,” Kaufman mentioned.
Akunis, in the meantime, says he received’t meet with “any group that promotes blood libels in opposition to Israel or the Jewish individuals,” however that in any other case his door is open.
“I’ll meet with whoever needs to fulfill me and listen to my opinion, and the official coverage of the Israeli authorities,” he mentioned.
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