On his first day in office, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Thursday has overturned all the executive orders signed by his predecessor, Eric Adams, after September 26, 2024, the date that the outgoing mayor was indicted on five federal charges related to bribery, wire fraud and campaign finance offenses.

Among the canceled orders are the ban on protesting in front of synagogues, the ban on city employees cooperating with the BDS movement and the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which is considered controversial.

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In his first press conference after the inauguration, Mamdani vowed to keep the newly founded Office to Combat Antisemitism open.

The decision came as a surprise, as many had expected the incoming mayor to shut down the office opened in May. Critics have also dismissed the office as a campaign stunt on the side of then-Mayor Eric Adams and questioned its effectiveness.

The Office to Combat Antisemitism is led by Moshe Davis, a former Jewish liaison for the Adams administration, and focuses on monitoring incidents, coordinating with law enforcement and advising on policies to curb hate crimes.

Mamdani took a public oath of office on Thursday outside City Hall, after being privately sworn in as mayor at midnight on New Year’s Eve.

“I stand before you, moved by the privilege of taking this sacred oath, humbled by the faith that you have placed in me,” Mamdani said in his address.

“New York belongs to all who live in it together. We will tell a new story of our city,” he said. “The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. They will pray in mosques, at shul, at church, at gurdwaras, Mandirs and temples and many will not pray at all. They will be Russian-Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville and Irish families in Woodhaven, many of whom came here with nothing but a dream of a better life, a dream which has withered away.”

“They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception,” he said.

In response to what Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Ministry called a “series of antisemitic steps,” Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli said, “The mayor of New York is an overt antisemite and a supporter of terrorism.”

“It is no coincidence that one of Mayor Mamdani’s first actions was an attempt to cancel the IHRA definition of antisemitism,” Chikli said. “He knows very well that according to that definition he himself falls under the category of antisemitic.”