We Want '48

What happened outside Park East Synagogue wasn't about settlements. It never is.

Protesters push against NYPD barricades outside Park East Synagogue, Manhattan, May 5, 2026. The yellow and green Hezbollah flag is visible above the crowd. Source: Freedom.TV

For years, a movement that explicitly calls for Israel’s elimination has operated under the cover of legitimate political protest, and politicians willing to accept its framing have made that possible. Tuesday evening outside Park East Synagogue on the Upper East Side was the latest example.

Before a single protester arrived, the Mayor of New York had already weighed in. His spokesperson issued a statement saying Mamdani was “deeply opposed” to “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event” — a touring commercial expo advertising properties across Israel, the vast majority of them in Tel Aviv, Netanya, and other cities well within Israel’s recognized borders. One confirmed company’s table included listings in West Bank settlements, the statement said. It went out before anyone from City Hall had confirmed what was actually inside.

The journalist who got inside found a welcome sign noting the event was “for information purposes only,” more than a dozen tables advertising luxury developments in Tel Aviv, Netanya, and other cities within Israel’s recognized borders, and one confirmed company — Harey Zahav — with brochures for properties in Karnei Shomron and Kfar Eldad, two West Bank settlements.

Outside, several hundred protesters surrounded the building from both sides. Pal-Awda, the group that organized the demonstration, said it was there because of the settlements. Here is what they chanted: “We don’t want no two states, we want all of it.” “We want ‘48.” “From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab.” A Hezbollah flag moved through the crowd. Protesters formed inverted red triangles with their hands — a symbol associated with Hamas target designation. Two protesters ripped a poster of the Lubavitcher Rebbe from a traffic light and threw it in the trash. An NYPD officer was hospitalized and demonstrators were pepper-sprayed.

Nobody was chanting about the 1967 lines. Nobody demanded a settlement freeze or called for a two-state solution. 1948 is not the year the occupation began. It is the year Israel was founded. “We want ‘48” is not a critique of what Israel does beyond the Green Line — it is a position on whether Israel should exist at all, said out loud, to a drumbeat, outside a synagogue on the Upper East Side.

In years of watching these protests, I have not seen a single sign calling for a two-state solution or an end to the occupation of the West Bank. The movement's demands are not about the settlements. They never were.

Not everyone who has concerns about Israel’s conduct is in that crowd. There are people who watched the last two years — the casualties, the ministers, the settlements — and drew conclusions that were incomplete or wrong but didn’t come from hatred. They’re not outside Park East. The people outside Park East told you clearly where they stand. “We want ‘48” is not a conclusion you reach by watching the news badly. It is an ideological position, held by people organized enough to show up at the same synagogue twice with Hezbollah flags, chanting for Israel’s elimination. Treating that as the legitimate political expression of concern about settlements doesn’t just misread the movement — it insults the people whose concerns actually are about settlements.

Mamdani accepted the cover story anyway. His condemnation positioned this as a principled legal objection — the kind serious people make about settlement construction. But the people his statement gave cover to were not making that objection. They were chanting for Israel’s elimination while waving the flag of a US-designated terrorist organization.

Mamdani’s record on this runs in one direction. On October 20, 2023 — thirteen days after Hamas massacred 1,200 people in southern Israel, before Israel had launched its ground operation in Gaza — he was already calling it a genocide. On his first day in office he cancelled his predecessor Eric Adams’ executive order recognizing the IHRA definition of antisemitism. Four days before Tuesday, when Israel intercepted the Global Sumud Flotilla — which the US State Department called a pro-Hamas initiative organized by a designated terrorist group — Mamdani called the interception “a brazen violation of international law.” Four days later, same phrase, a real estate fair at a synagogue. In April, 60% of hate crimes reported in New York City targeted Jewish victims.

After the first Pal-Awda protest at Park East last November, the City Council passed a bill creating protocols for buffer zones around houses of worship. Mamdani let it become law without his signature. He separately vetoed a similar bill covering schools, citing free speech concerns.

“International law” is not a legal standard in Mamdani’s usage. It is a directional instrument, applied to Israeli actions consistently and nowhere else. In practice, it gives a movement that wants Israel eliminated the language of human rights to march under.

Mamdani is not the origin of this. He is the most visible current example of a longer pattern — progressive politicians lending their language and institutional authority to a movement that uses settlements and occupation as proxies for something more total. Every time a politician frames a synagogue event as a potential international law violation, every time the government/people distinction is invoked to avoid reckoning with what’s actually being chanted, the movement gains legitimacy it did not earn. The Netanyahu-Ben Gvir government has given that process significant material to work with: the settlement expansion and settler violence, the ministerial incitement, the conduct in Gaza. That is real and not without basis. But it has also made it easier to confuse the person who arrived at these conclusions by watching the news with the person outside Park East, and there are politicians who find that confusion useful.

Pal-Awda protested the same synagogue in November. They carried a Hezbollah flag outside a Queens synagogue in 2024. The real estate events are the occasion, not the cause. What changes is the political weather — how much official cover the movement has, how confidently it can present the elimination of Israel as a protest against a real estate brochure.

I lived in New York for five years. Half my salary was spent at Whole Foods. I understood the appeal — subsidized supermarkets, rent reductions, the energy, the sense that something new was possible. And it’s New York, people said. The largest Jewish city on earth. We’ll be fine. I told friends that this was the risk — not his housing agenda, not his transit vision, but this: that his political positioning would give movements like Pal-Awda the confidence to operate more boldly, with less hesitation about what they carried or what they chanted, even if it meant confronting police outside a synagogue on the Upper East Side.

The morning after, Mamdani said he was satisfied with how the NYPD had handled the protest. On the charges that his criticism of Israel fuels antisemitism, he offered this: “Critique of the policies of a government are very much separate from bigotry towards the people of a specific religious faith.”

The people outside Park East on Tuesday were not making that distinction. They chanted for Israel’s elimination, formed Hamas targeting symbols with their hands, and ripped a poster of the Lubavitcher Rebbe from a traffic light and threw it in the trash. The people who want to make a serious argument about settlements are left to make it in the shadow of all that — while the mayor who helped create the conditions for Tuesday night calls the evening satisfactory.