The New York City Council is establishing an antisemitism task force, beating Mayor Zohran Mamdani to the punch, in the wake of what appears to be the city’s latest act of Jewish hate.
Republican Inna Vernikov and Democrat Eric Dinowitz will chair the bipartisan Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, City Council Speaker Julie Menin announced Thursday.
Through the task force, Menin got a step ahead of Mamdani, who has not yet picked a person to lead his Office to Combat Antisemitism.
NYC Council going after antisemitism
The City Council’s task force announcement came as a New Jersey man was arrested for repeatedly ramming his car into Chabad Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn.
“It’s now cool to be antisemitic, to attack Jews, to harass Jews, to create a hostile environment. And the problem is that we have leadership that is either emboldening antisemitism or allowing it to happen,” Vernikov said.
So far in 2026, an anti-Israel demonstration outside the Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills featured chants supporting the terrorist group Hamas, two teenagers were charged with drawing dozens of swastikas on a Borough Park playground, and a local man was arrested for attacking a Queens rabbi on Holocaust Remembrance Day, in addition to the crash.
But Dinowitz also lamented incidents that go unreported.
“The kids that want to take off their yarmulkas because they are afraid of being Jewish in our city,” he said.
Menin took another step Thursday, introducing a bill establishing a buffer zone around houses of worship to protect congregants from protests, like around the Park East Synagogue and the one that involved Hamas supporters in Queens.
Mamdani to name separate antisemitism task force
Mamdani, who rushed to the Chabad in Crown Heights on Wednesday night, has been under pressure from Jewish New Yorkers to show his support since he has taken a hard line against Israel and called for an economic boycott.
The mayor said he would name his own task force to “make this a city where Jewish New Yorkers are not just safe, but frankly, celebrated and cherished.”
Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul general in New York, was skeptical.
“The response requires more than a statement. We warned that changing the definition of antisemitism and lifting the ban on boycott initiatives against Israel could lead to an increase in attacks, and regrettably, that is what is happening,” Akunis said in a statement to CBS News New York.