NYC council candidate under fire for antisemitic tweets calls trips to Israel ‘propaganda’

A flurry of tweets on Twitter. Courtesy of Pixabay
Moumita Ahmed, one of the eight candidates running in the Feb. 2 non-partisan special election for the New York City Council seat vacated by former Councilman Rory Lancman, who took a job in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration, said during a debate on Tuesday that she supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement. Last week, she came under fire over an alleged antisemitic tweet.
“I support the two-state solution and I support people’s right to boycott,” Ahmed said during a virtual candidate forum hosted by the Citizens Union, Queens Daily Eagle and the Gotham Gazette. “In my district, there are differences of opinions when it comes to that, so I want to make sure that I protect people’s First Amendment right to boycott.”
The 24th Council District includes the neighborhoods of Kew Garden Hills, Hillcrest and Jamaica Estates – all with significant Jewish populations. Lancman, who resigned in November to serve as a special counsel for ratepayer protection to the governor, said the Jewish community in the district he represented since 2014 “is overwhelmingly pro-Israel, and not just philosophically: they studied there, their children might be studying there now, family members live there.” Lancman, who said he has not endorsed a candidate in the race, added that an “anti-Israel advocate at any level of government anywhere is a threat” to the community, “and given the explosion in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City, a threat to me.”
Last week, Ahmed, who is aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), faced backlash for a tweet she published in February of 2015 in reply to a @PalestineGlobal tweet that contained an image of a baby with a bleeding bullet hole on its forehead and a red ribbon across its body with the Star of David. “My every heartbeat is for the children of Palestine,” she responded to the tweet.
During the forum this week, Ahmed apologized for the tweet. “Antisemitism is wrong. It is something that I’m committed to fighting against,” she said, “and I will show up for you every time you are under attack.”
But Ahmed said she would decline to take part in an annual sponsored trip to Israel by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRCNY), an initial requirement in a recent DSA questionnaire. The questionnaire asked New York City Council candidates to agree “not to travel to Israel if elected… in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation.” It was condemned by New York officials, including Mayor Bill de Blasio and State Attorney General Tish James.
“I am not going to go on a trip that is furthering any sort of propaganda or any sort of rhetoric coming from [a] government that is expanding settlements in Palestinian lands, for example,” Ahmed said.
Ahmed said she would seek the advice of the progressive Jewish Vote group — that supports her candidacy — before deciding whether to take a trip to Israel. Ahmed is also supported by the Working Families Party and earned the backing of former gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon.
State Assemblyman Daniel Rosenthal, who lives in the district and was a former aide to Lancman, criticized the “disparaging comments” by Ahmed about the JCRC trips as “completely unacceptable.”
Rosenthal came under attack by Palestinian protesters while visiting Ramallah on a 2018 trip to Israel. The trips, he said, provide lawmakers “a fully informed view of what is happening, and their showcasing a wide range of opinions is commendable.”
Everyone has the right to be critical of a policy or event they do not support,” Rosenthal added. But the BDS movement “as a whole refuses to recognize Israel’s right to exist. They apply hypocritical double standards and they target and seek to delegitimize non-connected actors.”
Another candidate, Soma Syed, who sought the DSA endorsement but didn’t end up getting it, said she too wouldn’t go on a sponsored trip to Israel – but out of principle not to travel to foreign countries on non-governmental sponsored trips. “I would go to Israel on my own funds, or if the New York City government pays for it, and that goes for every country,” she said.
Syed expressed support for BDS and agreed to the travel ban when she applied for the endorsement, but she has since backtracked and criticized the DSA. “I don’t support BDS,” she said, adding that she didn’t even make it through the screening process, “and as time went by, I realized BDS was not the right solution. It’s not okay to single out a country, a group of people who have been persecuted for centuries. The way to do that is to have dialogue, to bring our Jewish sisters and brothers to the table and create a two state solution.”
The remaining candidates at the forum – former Councilman James Gennaro, Deepti Sharma, Dilip Nath and Neeta Jain – all said they would go on a JCRC-sponsored trip to Israel.
Jacob Kornbluh is the Forward’s senior political reporter. Follow him on Twitter @jacobkornbluh or email [email protected].
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 2
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward Cory Booker proclaims, ‘Hineni’ — I am here — 19 hours into anti-Trump Senate speech
-
Opinion In Trump’s war against campus antisemitism, hate the tactics but don’t ignore the problem
-
Yiddish כ׳בענק נאָך די וועלטלעכע ייִדן וואָס האָבן אָפּגעריכט אַ טראַדיציאָנעלן סדר Longing for those secular Jews who led a traditional seder
מײַן פֿעטער יונה האָט נישט געהיט שבת און כּשרות אָבער בײַם אָפּריכטן דעם סדר האָט ער געקלונגען ווי אַ פֿרומער ייִד
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.