Zohran Mamdani Isn’t At Odds With The Hamasniks

“Remember that you are an actor in a play — for this is your business, to play admirably the role assigned you,” said Epictetus, the Greek-born slave and philosopher of antiquity. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani knows his role and plays it to the fullest, but every so often, you can see when he’s not loving it.

Such was the case on October 7, standing at a candlelight vigil in Union Square for the 1,200 Israeli victims of Hamas in their infamous terror attack. Amidst a choir of boos and taunts from pro-Hamas protestors — again, at a memorial service for Israeli Jews — Mamdani stared blankly into the throng, who were now directing their ire at him.

The chants varied from “700,000 dead. Mamdani, your hands are red!” to “Zohran, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?” to “long live Hamas” to “f*ck Brad Lander,” and Mamdani appeared to disassociate while it happened.

It’s hard to ignore. But the wrong take on this scene is that Mamdani felt somehow set upon or under siege. He was fine.

The Mamdani vs. Protestors thing is being misread. He doesn’t feel beset upon; he’s not annoyed or besieged. He wants to be behind the bullhorn again with his masked friends, and he’s just trying to play the role of American politician who does candlelight vigils for terror victims until he can go home. He knows why the Hamasniks are doing this.

— Stephen Kent (@StephenKentX) October 8, 2026

Greg Price posted on X, “tfw the monster you created turns on you,” but Mamdani doesn’t feel turned on, and he sees no monsters. Now situated at the peak of political power in New York City, this is a man protected by the NYPD in settings such as this, who said, “When the boots of the NYPD are on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.”

In his newfound role, Mamdani must sit on the receiving end of the bullhorn and slurs. It was October 20, 2023, a mere week after the initial attack by Hamas, when Mamdani led agitators on the street with a megaphone to smear Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) as complicit in Palestinian “genocide.” The Israelis had not even finished counting the dead, let alone launched their offensive on Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

October 7 should be sacred.

It is a day to remember the innocent lives taken by Hamas butchers, the hostages ripped from their families and held captive for months on end, and the deadliest attack on the Jewish people since the Holocaust.

Yet even today, @NYCMayor cannot put aside his ideological obsession with Israel long enough to simply let Jews mourn.

At a time of rising antisemitism, words matter, and rhetoric has real-world consequences.

There are 364 other days for politics. Today, remember the victims. Condemn Hamas. Stand with the Jewish community.

It should not be difficult.

— Andrew Cuomo (@andrewcuomo) October 7, 2026

He doesn’t resent the pro-Hamas crowd insulting him. The office of the mayor must be opposed until Israel ceases to exist — only then would the NYPD and New York be “free” from the clutches of “Zionist” paymasters abroad. This is the movement Mayor Mamdani leads, and at a memorial for dead Jews, his role is to keep a very straight face.

In the United States, when terrorists slaughter Jews abroad in their homes and on the streets, you can expect vigils in places like New York City, where roughly 20% of American Jews reside. It has the largest Jewish population in the nation. Even for Mamdani, political pressure to feign horror is a real thing — and you can be sure that his financial backers and allies wanted him next to former City Comptroller Brad Lander the week after announcing a “task force” to combat antisemitism in New York.

That task force, naturally, routes $6.4 million to the city’s Partners Against the Hate (PATH), a morally ambiguous entity with ties to the Arab American Association of New York (AAANY) and Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

If you wonder why that matters, it’s because those groups’ “anti-Israel” posture is just as much about “Israel” as the passions of the Hamasniks disrupting the October 7 vigil with chants of “f*ck Brad Lander.”

What did Brad Lander do, exactly? Nothing new. He’s just very Jewish. This isn’t hard to understand if you disabuse yourself of the messaging tactic wherein “Zionist” and “Jew” are distinct.

Mayor Mamdani concluded his slog through October 7 by dining at a Palestinian restaurant near Columbia University, Ayat Hinds Hall — enshrined into the anti-Israel canon by a song of the same name by… you guessed it… Macklemore. Sometimes politicians beg you to connect the dots and understand who they are, and while Mamdani toughed it out at the vigil, his team worked out how to signal to the jackals that he’s on their team.

I once wrote for the Washington Examiner about the resemblance between Zohran Mamdani and Scar from Disney’s “The Lion King.” Mamdani is a lion because he is wealthy and a beneficiary of America’s largess and an immigration system that catered to him — but he’s forever in league with the hyenas who want to burn it all down, fill their bellies, and satiate ancient resentments.

On somber days such as 9/11 and October 7, American politicians inevitably must perform the duty of channeling public sadness and model reverence for the loss of innocent life. Mamdani, surrounded by the hyenas he’d rather stand beside, doesn’t feel the pain of betrayal. That stone-cold, disgruntled facial expression is simply the look of extreme patience. What he’s waiting for — we’ll soon find out.

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Stephen Kent is the co-creator of GeekyStoics on YouTube and a conservative columnist. Follow him on X @StephenKentX.