Jewish and Israeli-Owned Businesses in New York Brace for Mamdani

It’s going to be a tough four years.

by Hugh Fitzgerald | Feb 11, 2026

Mayor Mamdani explaining how Islam and Muhammad should inspire immigration. Screengrab via X 

The new mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, is consumed with anti-Israel animus. He refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. He will not denounce the chant “from the river to the sea/Palestine will be free,” which means that Israel should disappear, and be replaced by a twenty-third Arab state. He has not denounced the call to “globalize the Intifada,” which means to kill Jews not just in Israel, but everywhere. And he is a supporter of the BDS (Boycott, Divest and Sanction) Movement, that aims to damage Israel economically.

Mamdani has created anxiety among American Jews and Israelis in New York City, and now they are organizing a coalition to protect their businesses in the new, unfriendly environment that his administration — both anti-business and especially hostile to Jewish- and Israeli-owned businesses.

More on the new group can be found here.

Business groups in New York have announced a new coalition to protect Israeli and Jewish businesses amid concerns that the administration of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani will unfairly target them.

The New York-Israel Chamber of Commerce (NYICC) Coalition, announced on Monday, is a nonprofit partnership designed to protect Israeli-associated and Jewish-owned companies operating across New York State amid concerns of what organizers describe as discriminatory policies and a deteriorating security climate.

“Israeli companies bring innovation that improves the quality of life for New Yorkers and facilitates secure commerce for thousands of companies in almost every vertical industry,” Al Kinel, president of the NYICC Coalition, said in a statement. “The free enterprise system that made New York City strong and encouraged many Israeli founders to select New York City for US operations is at risk.”…

Mamdani is not only anti-Israel. He’s a proud self-proclaimed socialist, an enemy of the free enterprise system. And New York City is about to become his laboratory, as he experiments with what he optimistically calls “democratic socialism.”

During January 2026, when Mamdani became mayor, antisemitic acts in New York City increased by 182% over the number recorded in January of 2025. Mamdani’s own anti-Israel animus, that at times is indistinguishable from antisemitism, has created an atmosphere in the city in which antisemitic attacks have become more acceptable.

On his first day in office, Mamdani revoked a series of executive orders enacted by his predecessor to combat antisemitism. Among the measures he nullified was an order that opposed the campaign to boycott Israel….

Just think. Before issuing, revoking, executive orders on anything else — on schools, hospitals, transportation, or the police — Zohran Mamdani decided his very first order of business ought to be to revoke measures that Mayor Eric Adams, his predecessor, had taken to “combat antisemitism.” Mamdani doesn’t want to combat it; he wants to encourage it. And one of the measures he revoked that first day on the job was intended to outlaw campaigns to boycott Israel; he’s all in favor of the boycott.

A study released by the United States-Israel Business Alliance in October revealed that, based on 2024 data, 590 Israeli-founded companies directly created 27,471 jobs in New York City that year and indirectly created over 50,000 jobs when accounting for related factors, such as buying and shipping local products….

No other country has had such an impact on New York City’s economy as Israel, and its entrepreneurs who form a major part of the city’s “innovation ecosystem.” Mamdani doesn’t care. He wants to drive the Israeli businesses out, no matter how many jobs they provide to city residents or how many billions in economic activity they generate.

Heather Mulligan, president and CEO of the Business Council of New York State, emphasized that New York’s prosperity depends on openness and equal treatment.

“New York City’s strength and growth have always come from its diversity and welcoming of entrepreneurs from around the world,” she said in a statement. “Like all employers, Israeli-founded businesses are an equally important part of our economy, creating jobs, leading innovation, and contributing to the economy of the communities where they operate. Prosperity and growth should be for everyone — regardless of race, gender, or creed — and there should be no place in the city or elsewhere for discrimination against any business or entrepreneur based on who they are or where they come from.”

That’s not what Zohran Mamdani thinks. He thinks Israeli businesses and entrepreneurs deserve to be discriminated against. After all, they help prop up what he knows is the colonial-settler apartheid genocidal Jewish state, that all right-thinking people want to see disappear, and the mayor is nothing if not right-thinking.

If Mamdani gets his way, Israeli businesses will find it harder to establish themselves in the city, or if already established, to remain in such a hostile climate; Israeli entrepreneurs will be made unwelcome and take themselves, and their businesses, elsewhere — for example, to Boston or Washington. Then Mamdani will have some explaining to do to the estimated 57,000 people in the city who have either been employed by Israeli-owned companies or linked to them indirectly, when accounting for such related factors as buying and shipping local products.

Let him drive out of New York those Israeli businesses and businessmen who are now some of the city’s most innovative residents. Think of the losses to the city’s economy if the 648 Israeli-founded companies in the city, which now generate $19.5 billion in gross economic output, were to leave the city in response to the unfriendly-to-Israel climate Mamdani, after only a month in office, has already created. How much economic damage, the result of Mamdani’s obsessive hatred of Israel and its people, will citizens of his city accept?