New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani sidestepped a question Wednesday about whether the New York Police Department would go ahead with plans to visit Israel in the fall to meet with the Israel Police for training.

“I don’t know what the City Council’s plans are,” Mamdani said. “They’re an independent body, and I’ll leave it to the speaker to answer that question.”

Senior NYPD officials have previously traveled to Israel for counterterrorism and antisemitism training.

Last year, video emerged from a 2023 conference in which Mamdani blamed Israel for police violence in New York.

“For anyone to care about these issues, we have to make them hyper-local. We have to make clear that when the boot of the NYPD is on your neck, it’s been laced by the IDF,” he said at the 2023 national convention for the Democratic Socialists of America.

The New York mayor has repeatedly assailed Israel in recent months, as antisemitic hate crimes have........

© The Times of Israel