Israeli consul general Ofir Akunis’ Rosh Hashanah message: ‘Wake up’

Ofir Akunis, Israel’s consul general in New York, was not being subtle. In a recent interview with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency at his office in Midtown East ahead of Rosh Hashanah, Akunis likened New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s support for the Israel boycott movement to tactics used by Nazi Germany, called the mayor an “antisemite” and said Mamdani bears direct responsibility for attacks on Jews and Jewish institutions in New York.

Akunis was discussing Mamdani’s Day One decision to revoke an executive order issued by his predecessor, Eric Adams, against the movement to boycott, divest and sanction Israel when he invoked the Nazis. His comments, versions of which he has deployed at various occasions in recent weeks, mark an unusually stark escalation in the Israeli government’s criticism of New York’s mayor.

The consul general’s increasingly charged comments have entered unprecedented territory in a city where mayors have historically had a warm relationship with Israel and its representatives in New York. Mamdani, an avowed anti-Zionist, has himself broken that mold with harsh rhetoric about Israel.

Akunis faces criticism for Mamdani comments

As leaders of New York’s Jewish community navigate a tense relationship with Mamdani over Israel, critics from its progressive Zionist wing say the tenor of Akunis’ comments isn’t helping.

“I think in a moment where people are already feeling anxiety about the rise of antisemitism, to compare the anxiety people are feeling and equate it with the historical reality of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath, doesn’t help people right-size their fear,” said Margo Hughes-Robinson, executive director of the liberal advocacy group New York Jewish Agenda.

Hughes-Robinson called Akunis’ Nazi Germany comparisons “unproductive” and “frankly offensive to the memory of the Holocaust and to the victims and survivors.”

When asked about criticism of the comparison, Akunis clarified that he is “not saying that we should compare the horrors of the Holocaust to today’s climate.” But people “must look at history to understand how antisemitism has risen,” he said.

“For example, Mamdani has called AIPAC ‘monsters,’ using the same kind of dehumanizing language that Hitler and the Nazis used to describe the Jewish people,” Akunis said. “Highlighting these rhetorical similarities is crucial to ensuring that today’s generation understands the danger of Mamdani’s language and why it must be stopped.”

Hughes-Robinson was one of the few rabbinical and Jewish organizational leaders who would respond on the record to the JTA’s request for thoughts on the strategy Akunis has adopted in countering Mamdani’s anti-Israel positions. More than a dozen declined to comment.

While Mark Treyger, the current CEO of New York’s Jewish Community Relations Council did not respond to a request for comment on the topic, his predecessor expressed sympathy for the challenge facing Akunis.

“I don’t envy the position that he’s in,” said Michael Miller, who was CEO of the JCRC for 35 years, until 2021. Miller said that Akunis is in a tough spot “having to wrestle with the reality of a mayor who doesn’t believe the country that Ofir [Akunis] represents has legitimacy.”

Akunis representing right-wing era of Israeli politics

Akunis is representing Israel at a time when the country is led by its most right-wing government ever, when its international standing is tanking and when pro-Palestinian progressives like Mamdani are ascendant. Akunis had a close relationship with Mamdani’s predecessor, Adams, who was a staunch supporter of Israel. But an anti-Zionist mayor would pose a challenge to any Israeli diplomat, not just a member of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing Likud party, and not just in 2026.

A former Israeli cabinet minister and Knesset member, Akunis was appointed to the consulate in 2024 by Netanyahu. Akunis has ratcheted up the intensity of his Mamdani comments at the same time that the Likud — which Akunis belongs to — has made the New York City mayor a villain in its campaign ahead of Israel’s Oct. 27 elections.

“The mayor is busy inciting against and promoting a boycott of the Jewish state,” Akunis said during an event for young Jewish community leaders last month. “His method is the well-known antisemitic one: ‘No matter what, blame the Jews.’ This is exactly the same method that was used a century ago by the Third Reich.”

Akunis has not met with Mamdani, and says he would not do so until the mayor recognizes Israel as a Jewish state; Mamdani has said Israel has a right to exist as a state “with equal rights for all,” and that he cannot endorse states that privilege one “religion” over another. (Many pro-Israel critics have noted that he has no such compunctions when it comes to Pakistan, whose independence day parade he attended even as he skipped Israel’s.)

Like Akunis, Republican City Council member Inna Vernikov has been a staunch critic of the mayor. When asked about Akunis’ stark rhetoric, the Jewish lawmaker instead spoke about the mayor, saying that Mamdani promotes antisemitism “under the thin veil of anti-Zionism.”“How the public defines or interprets these actions is up to them, but Mamdani’s record is clear,” said Vernikov.

The role of consul general in New York is seen as one of Israel’s highest-profile diplomatic posts, given the metropolitan area’s concentration of Jews and Jewish organizations. One member of Knesset recently called it “the true embassy of Israel to the Jews of America.”

The role has also been described variously by Akunis’ predecessors as building bridges between Israel and local officials as well as with the Jewish community; maintaining support for Israel beyond just pro-Israel die-hards; and defending Israel against misinformation.

Akunis says his role is to stir people to “wake up.”

“I’m a big admirer [of the United States], but I’m worried because I can see in front of our eyes the huge change in this city, but not only here — all over,” Akunis said, noting a shift also in “the political parties” of the country, and especially in New York. He said that the American people and defenders of Western Civilization “must wake up before it will be too late,” and that “these people will force the Sharia laws on you instead of the American Constitution.”

Republican politicians are leading efforts to make Sharia — Muslim religious law —  a political issue. They charge that Muslims are seeking to impose their laws and customs in American courts, a claim that many liberals have rejected and called out for a lack of supporting evidence.

Akunis stepped into the role in February 2024 at a sensitive moment, as American Jews grappled with surging antisemitism and anti-Israel activism following the Oct. 7 attack and months into the war in Gaza, and as the Biden administration clashed with the Netanyahu government over the conflict.

Now, with hate crimes against Jews in New York City up 8.5% from last year, Akunis has blamed that trend on Mamdani’s leadership. Most recently, he doubled down on his accusation that Mamdani was “directly responsible” for the Central Synagogue attack last month, in which a man punched a congregant and headbutted a security guard, despite the assailant’s numerous anti-Mamdani social media posts.

“It is an atmosphere. The atmosphere is negative,” Akunis told JTA, noting that Mamdani is frequently “spreading lies about the State of Israel and our soldiers.”

To dispel that atmosphere, Akunis said, Mamdani needs to “turn down the temperature” and focus less on international issues. “He needs to do his job, be the mayor of New York. He’s not the president of the United States,” Akunis said.

Hughes-Robinson of New York Jewish Agenda agreed that the temperature needs to be lowered, but said that that duty falls on Akunis and other officials as well as Mamdani.

“I would hope our public leadership takes seriously the need to not be inflammatory,” she said. She included Akunis’ statements and a widely circulated video by Mamdani that slammed Netanyahu as examples of “political points-scoring” that only ratchet up the tension.

But Akunis also has his supporters within the Jewish community. The right-wing Zionist Organization of America, which is based in New York and supports the current Israeli government, wrote in a statement that it agrees with Akunis’ “strong condemnation of Mamdani’s relentless Jew-hatred” and agreed that the mayor is responsible for the rise in hate crimes.

“Mamdani’s egregious public anti-Jewish bigotry has surely inspired and promoted the increased attacks on Jews,” said the ZOA’s national president, Morton Klein.

Still, Akunis wouldn’t go so far as to say that Israelis aren’t safe in New York City. “In the past it was much better,” he said, but the city is not in a “situation that Israelis cannot visit this place.”

He added, “I can’t say that Israelis cannot come to visit this city, because I think the most popular line between Israel and other places outside Israel is to New York.”

J.J. Goldberg, former editor in chief of the Forward and a longtime resident of the Upper West Side, believes Akunis may be angling for a new political role at home once his time is up as consul general.

“He’s still got a future in his mind, and so he’s got to stand out as a defender of Israel in Likud terms, which means an attack at every opportunity,” Goldberg said. He added that there is an “open opportunity for him to get some headlines in Israel by attacking Mamdani.”

Akunis said that he had not seen the recent Likud campaign billboard that includes Mamdani among Israel’s enemies and could not comment on it. (“They want Netanyahu to lose. Don’t let them win,” reads the billboard, featuring images of Mamdani alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Iran’s Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei and Hezbollah Secretary General Naim Qassem.)

“But about the main idea,” he said, ”if someone is saying that he hates Israel — like Erdogan, like Khamenei, and unfortunately like Mayor Mamdani — I need to stand against them.”

He also said he could not comment specifically on ultra-nationalist Israeli ministers such as Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich whose visits to New York City have sparked controversy. At the same time, Akunis said that people “need to respect the will of the people in Israel, and the will of the people back then, at the end of 2022, was to vote for Bezalel Smotrich to the Knesset.”

Consul General of Israel Dani Dayan marches to the left of Mayor Bill De Blasio at the Celebrate Israel Parade in New York City on June 2, 2019. (Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)

Goldberg contrasted Akunis’ more hardline approach in the city to that of Dani Dayan, a previous consul general whose right-wing views and experience as a settler leader set him apart from the bulk of New York’s liberal-leaning Jewish population. But while many anticipated that Dayan’s relationship with liberal Jews would be strained, his term was marked instead by relative amity.

“He understood where the gap is between him and everybody else, and walked around it, and was tolerant of people who disagreed with him,” Goldberg said of Dayan.

Dayan’s successor, Asaf Zamir, was appointed in 2021 while Netanyahu was briefly out of power, and later resigned in 2023 in protest over Netanyahu’s judicial reform push. Zamir said in 2022 that he wanted to “broaden the tent” by engaging with people that “sometimes have criticism of Israel, as long as we agree on the basic lines of Zionism.”

According to Nancy Kaufman, New York Jewish Agenda’s board chair and former CEO of the National Council of Jewish Women, Akunis has not met with NYJA leadership, whereas Dayan met with NCJW and Zamir met with NYJA (the group was founded after Dayan’s term had ended).

“He’s not interested in what we have to say in the progressive community, and I think that’s unfortunate,” Kaufman said.

Akunis, meanwhile, says he won’t meet with “any group that promotes blood libels against Israel or the Jewish people,” but that otherwise his door is open.

“I will meet with whoever wants to meet me and hear my opinion, and the official policy of the Israeli government,” he said.