New York City is celebrating historic declines in gun violence, but beneath the official press releases, another set of numbers tells a far more disturbing story. While shootings and murders hit record lows in January 2026, antisemitic hate crimes exploded across the city at a pace that even veteran watchdogs are calling unprecedented. The spike coincides with the first month in office of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a politician whose public record on Israel and Zionism has alarmed Jewish communities long before he took control of City Hall.
The New York City Police Department announced that January 2026 was its safest January for gun violence in recorded history. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the department delivered “the fewest shooting incidents, victims, and murders in recorded history,” pointing to data-driven policing and targeted deployment strategies. The department recorded 40 shooting incidents with 47 victims, breaking prior lows from 2019 and 2025. Murders fell to their lowest January level ever, shattering the previous record of 22 set in 2018 and 2022. Manhattan and Staten Island went the entire month without a single murder. Retail theft dropped 16 percent, and crime in school safety zones declined by more than 50 percent.
Buried at the end of that same NYPD press release was a statistic that should have dominated every headline. Antisemitic hate crimes were up 182 percent in January 2026 compared to January 2025. The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force investigated 58 incidents last month, up from 23 a year earlier, a 152 percent increase overall. Of those 58 incidents, 31 targeted Jews. That means more than half of all reported hate crimes in New York City in January were antisemitic, even though Jews make up roughly 10 percent of the city’s population.
The scale of the disparity is striking. According to NYPD statistics, January saw seven anti-Muslim incidents, five incidents targeting Asians, five related to sexual orientation, three based on religion, two against blacks, two based on gender, one targeting age, one targeting Hispanics, and one targeting whites. Anti-Jewish incidents exceeded all other categories by a wide margin.
Scott Richman, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s New York region, described the surge as “staggering.” Speaking to JNS, Richman said, “From swastikas at a playground in Borough Park to a car ramming at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, the Jewish community in New York City is very much on edge.” He added, “In the face of this, we urge Mayor Mamdani to quickly name the next head of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and to appoint a leader who will both represent this diverse Jewish community and confront all forms of antisemitism.”
Those calls come as Mayor Mamdani begins his term with a well-documented history of hostility toward Israel and Zionism. Mamdani has publicly called for New York City to divest from Israel Bonds and has stated that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested if he set foot in the city. He has repeatedly aligned himself with the language and political framing of the global anti-Israel movement, including endorsing calls to “globalize the intifada,” a phrase inseparable from waves of suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings that murdered Israeli civilians.
Israel’s foreign ministry accused Mamdani of pouring “antisemitic gasoline on an open fire” after he reversed an order by the outgoing mayor, Eric Adams.
“On his very first day as @NYCMayor, Mamdani shows his true face: he scraps the IHRA definition of antisemitism and lifts restrictions on boycotting Israel. This isn’t leadership. It’s antisemitic gasoline on an open fire,” the foreign ministry said in a post on X.
Mamdani revoked an Adams-era order that adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism, which the previous administration said included “demonizing Israel and holding it to double standards as forms of contemporary antisemitism”.
Another of Adams’s orders revoked by Mamdani included prohibiting city officials overseeing the city pension system from making decisions in line with the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement, which Mamdani has said he supports.
Yet another order directed the New York police commissioner to evaluate proposals to regulate protest activity near houses of worship. It came after demonstrations outside an Upper East Side synagogue hosting an event promoting immigration to Israel sparked claims of antisemitism.
This is not abstract rhetoric for Jews in New York. It is language that legitimizes violence and dehumanization, and it is now echoing through the city during a period of sharply rising antisemitic attacks.
New York’s statistics now show that Jews are being targeted at playgrounds, synagogues, and community centers while city leaders celebrate crime reductions that do not include them.
There is no mystery about the connection between rhetoric and reality. When Israel is treated as a criminal enterprise and Zionism as a moral offense, Jews become fair game. When a mayor enters office after years of anti-Zionist agitation, including calls that glorify violent uprisings, it sends a message to the street. The message is heard clearly.
The NYPD deserves credit for reducing gun violence and murders across the city. Those achievements are real and measurable. But statistics do not exist in isolation. A city cannot declare victory while Jews are singled out for more than half of all hate crimes. That is not public safety. That is a warning sign.
New York is being tested. The numbers are not ambiguous. Antisemitism is surging, and it is doing so under political leadership that has normalized hostility toward the Jewish state and Jewish self-determination. The Bible’s demand for justice is uncompromising. A society that ignores it may enjoy temporary calm, but it is building on unstable ground.
