Zohran Mamdani, a New York City Democratic mayoral candidate, has faced intense backlash after accusing the Gaza-based resistance movement Hamas of committing “war crimes.”

In a statement marking the second anniversary of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on Tuesday, Mamdani, a Muslim American of Ugandan descent, said he mourns the Israelis killed on October 7, 2023.

He hastened to add that Israel responded with the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza.

Netizens slammed him for his “balancing act,” blaming the Palestinian resistance for committing “war crimes,” while ignoring the fact that it did not begin on October 7, but in 1948.

Ali Abunimah, a Palestinian-American journalist and editor of the Electronic Intifada website, rejected Mamdani’s framing of Palestinian resistance as a “horrific war crime,” and challenged the widely circulated bogus claim that Hamas killed 1,100 Israelis on October 7.

“Occupation soldiers aren’t ‘hostages.’ These facts matter,” Abunimah wrote. “@ZohranKMamdani can’t balance out these distortions and lies by also condemning ‘Israel’s’ crimes. He knows this but he’s made his choices.”

Palestinian-American activist Nerdeen Kiswani echoed Abunimah, arguing that Mamdani’s statement “hides behind the language of morality while reinforcing the same frameworks that dehumanize Palestinians.”

She condemned his decision to begin with Israeli suffering, saying it “erases the decades of siege, occupation, and systematic killing that led to that day.”

“At a time when Gaza is being erased, statements like this do not show courage. They show complicity,” wrote Kiswani, who is a prominent member of the Palestinian community in the US.

“By calling for ‘diplomacy, not war crimes,’ Zohran implies that both sides are equally guilty, softening the reality of a one-sided genocide into the language of ‘conflict.’ He refuses to name power, which is the easiest way to protect it.

“Invoking ‘universal human rights’ sounds principled, but it empties the struggle of its political meaning. Palestinians are not asking for abstract ideals. They are demanding freedom, return, and liberation from a settler state built on their destruction.”

US-based multimedia journalist Sana Saeed was equally honest and blunt in her assessment.

“To frame an instance of Palestinian violence, occurring within and in response to eight decades of occupation and life in an open-air prison, as equivalent to - or in the same moral register as - those eight decades and the past two years of the Israeli extermination campaign, is genocide apologia,” wrote Saeed, noting that his statement failed to mention Palestinians even once.

“Also, Israeli officials and media have admitted that Israel itself killed many Israelis that day - we just don’t have a confirmed number because no investigation into Israel’s official Oct 7 has been allowed. Thus, repeating what the Israelis have manufactured as the official story (which includes debunked mass rapes and debunked beheaded babies) functions as what then…”

Others pointed to the fact that resistance simply cannot be equated with colonialism, since the natural response to a settler-colonial entity’s genocide is resistance.

Hassan, a Lebanese Druze commentator, stated that “resistance against colonialism, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing is ALWAYS justified,” especially “not 2 years into a holocaust.”

Activist Pawel Wargan linked Mamdani’s stance to a larger critique of US social democracy, slamming him for “throwing the Palestinian national liberation movement under the bus” after previously denouncing leaders in Venezuela and Cuba.

“US social democracy is irreparably imperialist,” Wargan wrote.

Grayzone journalist Aaron Maté challenged the factual basis of Mamdani’s statement, noting that the Israeli military’s own Hannibal Directive led to the killings of Israeli settlers on October 7.

“Also, hundreds of the Israelis killed on Oct. 7th were soldiers enforcing the siege and imprisonment of the Gaza concentration camp,” he said.

“Zohran’s laudable opposition to Israeli genocide is not served by adopting, or failing to challenge, some of the propaganda used to wage it.”

Toronto-based journalist Carolyn Hinds blasted Mamdani for ignoring the historical context of the Israeli occupation and Palestinian resistance, which cannot be seen in isolation.

“Still ignoring the previous 75 years of occupation, massacres, and land theft… Still ignoring the real death toll of almost 700,000 Palestinians murdered,” he stated.

Karachi-based writer Zainab added that beginning with October 7 as the origin point of Palestinian suffering is itself an imperialist talking point.

“The workers and youth worldwide are taking far more radical positions than these ideologically bankrupt leaders in government offices,” she wrote.

Gambian academic Momodou Taal summed up the sentiment shared by many others.

“Never trust anyone who speaks about peace without mentioning liberation.” He warned that Mamdani’s recent comments on Cuba and Venezuela, combined with his Gaza statement, suggest “it’s clearly only going to get worse,” he tweeted.

Reminder of Israel’s crimes

According to the Government Media Office, Israel has dropped more than 200,000 tons of explosives on the territory in just 730 days, roughly 13 times the force of the Hiroshima bomb.

Hospitals, schools, homes, farmland, mosques, and cemeteries have been obliterated, leaving a population reeling from loss and trauma.

The human toll has been staggering. Since October 7, 2023, over 76,000 Palestinians have been killed or gone missing, including more than 20,000 children and 12,500 women.

Entire families have been wiped out, with at least 2,700 families totally erased from civil registries.

Gaza’s health sector has been devastated. At least 38 hospitals and 96 health centers have been bombed, 197 ambulances destroyed, and over 1,600 medical staff killed, with 362 arrested.

The education system has faced similar destruction, with 95 percent of schools damaged, 668 bombed, and 165 completely destroyed, leaving at least 13,500 students and 830 teachers dead.

Zohran’s statement