NEW YORK — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani on Friday posted a video and a statement for Nakba Day, an annual Palestinian event, drawing furious backlash from leading Jewish groups in the city.

Nakba is Arabic for “catastrophe,” and refers to Israel’s founding and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Israel’s 1948 War of Independence. The Nakba narrative and the associated “right of return” for the refugees’ descendants are seen by many as demands for Israel’s demise as a Jewish state.

Mamdani’s video, posted shortly before Shabbat, showed an interview with a “Nakba survivor,” New York resident Inea Bushnaq. She described fleeing her home because “the Zionists were coming into Jerusalem.”

“Nakba is Arabic for ‘catastrophe,’” the text in the video said. “It refers to the expulsion and displacement of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed.”

“The Haganah, Irgun and Lehi militias, among others, destroyed more than 400 Palestinian villages and cities, killing thousands of Palestinians and carrying out dozens of massacres,” the video said. “May 15 is the annual commemoration of the Nakba. For Palestinians, their displacement and the Nakba continues to this day.”

Bushnaq in the video described the use of keys as a symbol of the right of return.

“People, of course, locked their houses when they left, and all they had of it was the key when it turned out there was no going back,” she said. “It became sort of a symbol — you have the key but not the house.”

Mayor Mamdani: the refugees you post about exist because 22 Arab states launched a war to destroy Israel on May 15, 1948—rejecting the UN plan that also called for a Palestinian state. In its aftermath, 800,000 Jews were expelled from Arab lands. Your post mentions none of this. https://t.co/Fn1aY788Tc Advertisement if(typeof rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner != "function" || !rgb_remove_toi_dfp_banner("#Article_Incontent1")){ window.tude = window.tude || { cmd: [] }; tude.cmd.push(function() { if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("rgbmedia-app") > -1){ tude.setDeviceType("mobile"); } tude.refreshAdsViaDivMappings([ { divId:........

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