Mamdani Flipped the Oct. 7 Narrative — and Made Israel the Villain

There was one sentence in Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s October 7 statement that almost everyone could agree with.

He called Hamas’ attack “horrific war crimes.”

Then the message changed direction.

Mamdani said the suffering continued through what he called the Israeli government’s “ongoing genocide in Gaza,” accused Israel of occupation and apartheid, and said American weapons shipments made the federal government complicit in war crimes.

Those are extraordinarily serious accusations.

And the timing is why the statement immediately generated criticism, including from Jewish organizations and other Democratic officials.

Before Rewriting October 7, Remember What Actually Happened

October 7 was not an ordinary battlefield exchange.

Hamas-led armed groups crossed into southern Israel and attacked homes, communities, roads and the Nova music festival.

Approximately 1,200 people were killed and 251 were taken hostage.

Human Rights Watch concluded after examining hundreds of videos, photographs and witness accounts that killing civilians and taking hostages were central objectives of the attack, not accidental consequences of fighting.

Its investigation documented deliberate killings, hostage-taking, mutilation and mistreatment of bodies, sexual and gender-based violence and other war crimes and crimes against humanity.

A United Nations investigation separately found reasonable grounds to believe rape and gang rape occurred at multiple locations during the attack and found credible information that hostages were also subjected to sexual violence.

Those facts matter.

There Is a Difference Between a Massacre and a War

That does not mean Palestinian civilian deaths should be dismissed.

Tens of thousands of Palestinians subsequently died during the Gaza war, homes were destroyed and enormous numbers of civilians were displaced. Those deaths deserve scrutiny, and allegations concerning individual Israeli operations should be investigated.

But there is an important distinction that political rhetoric frequently erases.

Deliberately entering civilian communities with a plan to murder and abduct civilians is not the same act as civilian deaths occurring during military operations against an armed enemy.

International law still requires distinction, proportionality and precautions. An evacuation warning does not automatically make an attack lawful.

Israel did issue major evacuation orders before some operations. During the initial northern Gaza evacuation, Hamas officials told residents not to follow Israeli instructions, while the United Nations simultaneously warned that moving more than one million people so quickly could itself create a humanitarian catastrophe.

The complete story is complicated.

Pretending October 7 itself was complicated is not.

Hamas Was Not Simply “Palestine”

Another distinction matters.

Hamas controlled Gaza, but it was not synonymous with every Palestinian civilian or with the Palestinian Authority governing parts of the West Bank.

And Hamas was not operating alone financially.

The U.S. Treasury says Iran provided Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad with hundreds of millions of dollars, weapons and operational training. The State Department has said there was no evidence Iran knew the October 7 plan in advance, but Iran’s longstanding material and financial support helped give Hamas the capability to execute it.

October 7 then helped ignite a much broader regional confrontation involving Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran and eventually direct clashes involving Israel, Iran and the United States.

That context belongs in this conversation too.

A Mayor’s Words Matter

Mamdani has every right to criticize Israel.

New Yorkers have every right to debate Gaza, Netanyahu, American military assistance and Palestinian suffering.

But October 7 is also a date attached to murdered families, kidnapped children, raped women, burned communities and hostages who disappeared into Gaza.

That is why the controversy over Mamdani’s statement reaches beyond one mayor or one political party.

Leaders choose not only what they say.

They choose when they say it.

And on a day created by the deliberate slaughter and kidnapping of civilians, shifting the center of the message from the victims to an indictment of Israel inevitably changes what that day is being asked to mean.

New Yorkers can decide for themselves whether that was appropriate.

But they should make that decision knowing the entire story of what happened on October 7—not a rewritten version of it.