cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/7430762

cross-posted from: https://news.abolish.capital/post/22251

Zohran Mamdani has the legal tools to end the Israeli settlement funding and sales pipeline in New York City — now, he just needs the political will to act.

When Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race of New York City, many believed his election would transform not just municipal policy but how the city confronts injustice, at home and abroad. Many were inspired when, as an assemblyman in May 2023 at the CUNY School of Law, Mamdani introduced the “Not On Our Dime!: Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act” (NOOD Act), a bill that would have prohibited New York‑registered nonprofits from using tax‑exempt status to fund Israeli settlement expansion and other violations of international law. But despite his pre‑mayoral record and the sustained grassroots pressure, Mamdani’s actions since taking office have disappointed and not matched the urgency of the moment.

New York City is a national hub for Zionist charity infrastructure, with major nonprofits headquartered here and hundreds of millions in tax‑deductible funds raised annually by New York‑registered charities that support Israeli settlement activity, making the city a primary conduit for financial flows that sustain displacement and occupation. However, when activists recently protested a real estate event in Queens that they said was marketing settlement land, Mamdani publicly condemned the chants of protestors, saying “support of a terrorist organization has no place in our city,” referring to Hamas, while failing to address the reason they were protesting in the first place. Later, when asked if he had condemned the illegal land sales that recruit settlers to move to the West Bank, Mamdani clarified his opposition to the sale of occupied land, but failed to similarly issue a forceful statement against the settlement sales event.

While some of Mamdani’s supporters say it’s too early to criticize him for failing to take decisive action against New York City’s role in Israeli settlement activity across the West Bank and East Jerusalem, there are, in fact, several very concrete and simple actions he can take. And for Palestinians on the ground, action cannot come soon enough as settlements are rapidly expanding and intensifying today through escalating violence and displacing families off of their land.

Stopping Israeli settlement expansion now

Israeli settlement policy continues to breach international law, with plans to construct 20,000 housing units in East Jerusalem and 10,300 units in the West Bank, along with 49 newly established outposts. This is on top of an unprecedented number of illegal settler outposts that have been built in the West Bank since 2023. These figures are not abstract. In my own village, Beit Iksa, settlement expansion has led to the establishment of a new permit regime since September 2025 that amounts to de facto annexation. Residents are now required to obtain magnetic ID cards and special permits just to access their own homes. This reality illustrates exactly why organizers in New York have pushed to create a legal accountability framework like the Not On Our Dime Act (NOOD).

Organizers in Palestine and across the U.S. have long campaigned against the flow of money from U.S. nonprofits into settler organizations and projects. Years before Mamdani’s bill, community actions targeted nonprofit fiscal sponsors, and other mechanisms through which money and legitimacy are funneled into settlement‑linked activities, including direct campaigns demanding the NY Attorney General revoke 501©(3) status for groups linked to settler causes.

In recent years, community campaigns have exposed and interrupted events in New York that publicly advertise and market West Bank land, using direct action and legal filings to spotlight the issue and challenge permits and venues promoting such sales.

These campaigns have demanded that New York’s legal regime can and should be used to challenge settler funding and real estate marketing directly, and now Mamdani is in a position to do so. New York already has multiple overlapping legal avenues that could ensure the city acts against illegal settlement activity, tools the mayor could activate without passing new laws.

Here are four concrete actions Zohran Mamdani can take as mayor to challenge the funding pipeline to Israeli settlements in New York City:

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