Democratic candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani reacts after winning the 2025 New York City Mayoral race, at an election night rally in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, US, Nov. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

The clean-up has begun.

As votes rolled in and it became clear that Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani had secured the big victory long predicted, the media whitewash was already underway.

Mamdani’s rise — from relative unknown to mayor of America’s largest city — is, politically speaking, extraordinary. He won more votes than any candidate in a New York City mayoral race in 50 years.

But it was also a campaign haunted by allegations of antisemitism, anti-Israel extremism, and sympathy for radical Islamist movements and chants like, “Globalize the intifada.” Those allegations were well-founded, which is precisely why the media — until now — felt obliged at least to mention them, if only to dismiss them as “smears.”

Now that he’s won, even that pretense of scrutiny is vanishing.

The Record the Media Are Erasing

These facts are not in dispute — and they have all been previously documented by HonestReporting and others:

• May 2021 – Pro-Palestinian rally, Manhattan:
  Led BDS chants and attacked city officials who traveled to Israel.

  Aug 4–6, 2023 – DSA National Convention, Chicago:
  “When the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF.” (Video resurfaced Oct 2025)

  2023–2025 – Multiple posts and interviews:
  Repeatedly labeled Israel an “apartheid” state and accused the US of “subsidizing genocide.”

  June 5, 2025 – Media interview:
  Refused to affirm Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, saying instead that he supports “a state with equal rights for all” and opposes any “hierarchy of citizenship… on the basis of religion.”

  June 8, 2025 – Cornell Tech boycott call:
  Urged a boycott over the university’s partnership with Israel’s Technion.

  June 2025 – NBC’s Meet the Press:
  Refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” saying it’s “not language I use,” but stopping short of disavowing it.

  July 16, 2025 – Private meeting:
  Said he wouldn’t use the phrase “globalize the intifada” going forward, but defended it as “a protest slogan against occupation.”

  Oct 1–2, 2025 – ABC’s The View:
  Called the Gaza war a “genocide” to audience applause.

  Oct 27–28, 2025 – Debate fallout:
  Told an emotional story about a hijab-wearing “aunt” who stopped riding the subway after 9/11 over “Islamophobia” fears — but discrepancies later emerged, forcing him to walk back the claim and clarify that he had actually been referring to a cousin.

  Nov 4, 2025 – MSNBC’s Morning Joe:
  Declared, “I support BDS.”

The Whitewash in Real Time

Now that Mamdani has won, much of the media is pretending none of this ever happened.

What were once documented facts about his statements and positions are being rewritten as mere accusations by political opponents.

This is how media rehabilitation works: reframe the record, dilute the facts, and gaslight the public into thinking the extremism was never there.

Take CNN, which described Mamdani as having “reached out to New York’s Jewish community, which had been roiled by his criticisms of Israel’s government.”

Criticisms of Israel’s government?

Is claiming that Jews thousands of miles away are somehow responsible for police violence in New York — that “the boot of the NYPD is laced by the IDF” — merely a policy critique?

According to CNN, yes.

US Jews (& Israeli Jews) are entitled to & may have plenty of their own criticisms of Israel’s government.@CNN has completely missed the point re: Jewish concerns about Zohran Mamdani–a man who has a problem not with Israel’s government or leader but with its very existence. pic.twitter.com/dbdX1Dzp3S

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 5, 2025

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal insisted Mamdani “says Israel has a right to exist,” while the New York Times wrote that he simply “declined to say it should be a Jewish state.”

That is dishonest framing.

Mamdani has explicitly rejected the legitimacy of Israel as a Jewish state — which is what Israel is. To say you support Israel’s existence only if it stops being Jewish is not to affirm its existence at all.

It’s like declaring support for Japan’s right to exist — just not as a country run by Japanese people or speaking Japanese.

Zohran Mamdani clearly stated that he does not believe Israel has the right to exist as the Jewish state that it is, & instead should be a state with “equal rights.”

Newsflash: Israel already has equal rights for all. And the insinuation, as well as the targeting, of one… pic.twitter.com/ztA29X4cF9

— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) November 5, 2025

Then there’s Rolling Stone, which bizarrely claimed Mamdani “hasn’t said or done anything antisemitic” and “did not call to ‘globalize the intifada.’”

Such media examples aren’t hard to find. They are everywhere now — each one sanding off the rough edges of Mamdani’s record.

The Image Laundering Has Begun

The mainstream press has shifted into image-rehabilitation mode, presenting Mamdani as a unifying progressive rather than a divisive ideologue.

This isn’t so much journalism as it is public relations for an extremist whose record is a matter of record.

Make no mistake: the same outlets now gaslighting Jewish readers about who Mamdani is are the ones already hinting that this “Muslim socialist mayor” could one day be president.

And for that to happen, his Jew-hating, pro-terror past must be scrubbed from memory.

Welcome to the memory-holing of Zohran Mamdani.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.