NYC mayoral candidate walks back ‘genocide’ accusation against Israel

Michael Blake on Nov. 1, 2018. Photo by Noam Galai/Getty Images

By Ron Kampeas and Jacob KornbluhMay 18, 2025

A New York City mayoral candidate whose trajectory from pro-to-anti-Israel raised eyebrows is once again walking back a position on the conflict, this time to say that he regrets accusing Israel of genocide.

Michael Blake, a former state legislator in a crowded race for the June 24 Democratic primary, is polling below one percent. But his walkback on whether Israel is committing genocide, delivered Sunday in an interview with the Forward, is a signal of how large Israel looms in the mayoral stakes.

In another sign of Israel’s importance in the race, the Met Council on Jewish Poverty expressly did not invite to its annual breakfast Zohran Mamdani, a state legislator, polling in second place, who has been sharply critical of Israel.

David Greenfield, the Met Council CEO and a former New York City council member, said Mamdani’s positions, including backing the boycott Israel movement and neglecting to cosponsor resolutions marking the Holocaust, meant he did not merit an invitation.

“Anyone who foments hate against any group in New York is not welcome in our breakfast,” said Greenfield, who accused Mamdani of “fanning the flames of antisemitism.”

In election years, the breakfast, taking place on the morning of Manhattan’s Salute to Israel parade, is a key platform for candidates to reach Jewish voters. Five of the nine candidates addressed the breakfast this year.

Blake attended the breakfast, where he was eager to walk back his statement, made on Oct. 13, 2023, that Israel was committing genocide in Gaza.

“Genocide. It’s happening right before our eyes,” Blake said then in a social media post made all the more striking because it came just six days after Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust, and weeks before Israel launched a ground operation in Gaza. (In the same post, Blake said Hamas must be “eliminated.”)

Blake on Sunday told the Forward, “It was wrong language to use.”

Asked if he thought Israel was committing genocide, Blake said, “No.”

”We sent out a new statement to clarify the intent was never to state that the State of Israel was doing that,” he said. “It was to speak of the pain that was happening on both sides.”

He said Hamas was squarely to blame for what he called the “chaos.”

“The responsibility has to be how do we get everyone home,” he said. “We want to be very clear that it was not the people of Israel that did this.”

Blake, a former vice chair of the Democratic National Committee and a former Obama administration official, had in the 2010s traveled to Israel with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee

“I have a responsibility to support America’s friend and ally, Israel,” he said in 2017 at AIPAC’s annual policy conference, Jewish Insider reported. Since the Oct. 7 massacres, he has accused the Israeli military of spreading a “horrible and disrespectful lie” regarding the killing of aid workers in Gaza last April, and criticized a bipartisan House bill aimed at federally monitoring the rise in antisemitism on college campuses.

Brad Lander, the city comptroller and one of two Jewish candidates in the primary, also emphasized his pro-Israel bona fades at the Met Council breakfast.

“When people question Israel and they question our alliance with the Jewish people, the first thing I say to them: Tell me that Hamas is a terrorist organization,” said Lander, who has come under fire from former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is leading in the polls, for his affiliations with the party’s left. “If you can’t say that, then you don’t stand with us.”