Mayor Zohran Mamdani faced boos, chants and furious heckling Wednesday night at an Oct. 7 candlelight vigil in Union Square. Protesters accusing him of abandoning Palestinian causes marched from City Hall and disrupted the event while some waved Hamas and Hezbollah flags.

Mamdani held a candle as the crowd berated him at the memorial, which honored Jewish victims murdered by Hamas terrorists and Palestinians killed during the war that followed. The mayor remained stoic beside former City comptroller Brad Lander as the disruption continued.

“You coward!” some protesters shouted at Mamdani. Others demanded, “How do you let this happen?”

The demonstrators also chanted, “Zohran, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.” Additional chants included “Mayor Mamdani, take a stand. Stop the sale of stolen land” and “Shame on you.”

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Tamar Glazerman, cofounder of Israelis for Peace, described the Union Square vigil as “a difficult night, heckled by a few hundred counter-protesters.” Her organization had arranged the memorial that the protesters crashed.

“Verbally, it was very violent,” Glazerman said, adding, “what I think is unfortunate is the lack of listening.” She said the presence of the word Israelis in the group’s name appeared to overwhelm anything participants actually said.

“Because the only thing that matters is that we had Israelis in our name,” Glazerman said. “Not a word that we said had mattered.”

One woman who attended the candlelight service and declined to provide her name told The Post that she “felt it was emotionally difficult.” She questioned whether the demonstrators were listening closely enough to recognize possible areas of agreement.

The attendee criticized the protesters for having “zero nuance when lots of nuance is needed.” She called the experience “extremely painful and very jarring personally.”

The Union Square chaos followed an earlier protest outside City Hall, where approximately 125 demonstrators accused Mamdani of betraying Palestinian causes since taking office. The crowd chanted, “Mayor Mamdani, take a side, justice for Palestine.”

One protester displayed a picture of Mamdani rolling out the red carpet for Netanyahu in response to the prime minister’s visit to New York last month. After remaining stone-faced during the vigil, Mamdani traveled uptown to Hinds Hall by Ayat, a Palestinian restaurant featured in the Michelin Guide.

Sources said Mamdani went to the restaurant to meet with Palestinian families. His appearances came as he marked the third anniversary of the Hamas attack with a written statement that Jewish advocates sharply criticized.

Less than one quarter of Mamdani’s Wednesday morning statement addressed the “unthinkable loss” suffered when “Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others” on Oct. 7, 2023. Most of the statement instead focused on Israeli and Palestinian casualties during the resulting war.

“The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza,” Mamdani said. The mayor cited Hamas statistics while condemning Palestinian casualties from the conflict launched in response to the terrorist attack.

This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.

The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes. Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment. To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity. — Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@NYCMayor) October 7, 2026

Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, accused Mamdani of using the victims’ memory to advance his agenda and undermine the Jewish community. “You are weaponizing a day meant for mourning the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust to recycle your usual anti-zionist talking points,” Greenblatt wrote on X.

Greenblatt also noted that Mamdani never used the word “Jews” in the statement. He wrote, “On Oct. 7, Hamas-led attackers murdered civilians, committed sexual violence, mutilated bodies and took hostages.”

Israeli United Nations Ambassador Danny Danon similarly accused Mamdani of attempting to “hijack the only day we have for the victims of survivors.” Danon told The Post, “He’s trying to hijack the day to talk about attacking Israel.”

“It’s like on 9/11 you talked about victims and al-Qaeda terrorists,” Danon said. He described Mamdani as “dangerous and sophisticated” and said the mayor would attend ceremonies for both sides while claiming concern for both losses of life.

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