A Monday Instagram post praising Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks sparked conflicting messages from a trio of New York City Democratic Socialists of America groups.
The three groups initially posted the statement jointly with other activist organizations to announce an Oct. 7 protest at New York City Hall, prompting criticism, according to news reports and screenshots posted online. New York City Young Democratic Socialists of America and the City College of New York’s YDSA chapter then removed themselves from the pro-Hamas post, while the third, New School YDSA, still featured it on its account as of Tuesday.
“October 7th marks three years since resistance against imperialism changed the fate of our world forever,” reads the post about the Hamas-led invasion of Israel that involved rampant killing, rapes, and kidnappings of civilians. The post simultaneously accuses Israel of “THREE YEARS OF GENOCIDE.”
The snafu marks another example of the DSA struggling to decide just how extreme its positions will be as it increasingly influences U.S. elections. The group previously failed to reach public consensus on whether a gunman’s killing of two Israeli Embassy workers in Washington in May 2025 was justified, with one “Maoist” faction praising the murders and the DSA’s national chapter declining to. The DSA calls itself the largest socialist organization in U.S. history by membership count and helped Zohran Mamdani win the New York City mayoralty in 2025.
New York City YDSA and City College YDSA did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s requests for comment about their apparent retractions. The Monday post lists five DSA groups as endorsing the City Hall protest.
“The far left sees October 7th — the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust — not as an occasion to mourn the 1,200 Israelis murdered in an act of terror but as an occasion to romanticize the mass murder of Jews as ‘resistance,'” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) said on X in response to the Instagram post. “The inevitable consequence of glorifying political violence is political violence itself. That is the dangerous direction in which American politics seems to be heading.”
MAMDANI’S ANTISEMITISM PLAN INCLUDES PROGRAM CO-LED BY CONTROVERSIAL ARAB GROUP
Activists chose City Hall as their target to condemn Mamdani for letting police arrest anti-Israel protesters and for crafting a city plan to address antisemitism. The post blasts him for promising physical security for “zionist synagogues which host illegal real estate sales of stolen Palestinian land.”
“We denounce the Mayor’s meaningless words of alleged solidarity with the Palestinian people followed by capitulation to zionist pressure,” the statement reads.
Continue reading...
[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
