7 Reasons Why the Ground Zero Ceremony Should Have Been Off Limits for Mamdani

Takeaways

• 100,000+ people petitioned to keep Mamdani away from Ground Zero.
• Cameras caught Mamdani laughing with AOC as victims’ names were read.
• In 2017 he rapped his “love” to the Holy Land Five, convicted Hamas funders.
• He’s tied for years to a man who said America “deserved 9/11.”
• He praised an ally who excused a synagogue preschool attack.

New York City marked 25 years since September 11 with the same ceremony it holds every year: names read aloud, families in tears, a city standing still for a few hours. This year, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s presence turned that ceremony into a controversy of its own, and his record explains why.

1. A Petition No Mayor Should Have Brushed Aside

Giovanni Galante lost his wife, Grace, on the 105th floor of the North Tower. In August 2026, he and another widow started a petition asking organizers to keep Mamdani away from the anniversary ceremony. It grew past 100,000 signatures and was delivered to City Hall. Mamdani confirmed he’d attend anyway.

2. A Disgusting Moment While the Names Were Read

Footage from Friday’s ceremony shows Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez smiling and laughing together while family members read the names of the nearly 3,000 dead, a man visibly sobbing just off camera in the same broadcast feed. A sitting mayor and a sitting congresswoman chose to laugh on camera during the reading of the dead, at the one ceremony in America where that should never happen.

3. A Rap Song Praising Convicted Hamas Funders

Before politics, Mamdani released a song declaring, “My love to the Holy Land Five. You better look ’em up.” The Holy Land Five ran a charity convicted in 2008 on 108 counts of funneling more than $12 million to Hamas, and a jury later found them liable in the 2004 murder of a 17-year-old American boy outside Jerusalem. That was not a footnote. It was a preview.

4. A Years-Long Association With “America Deserved 9/11”

Mamdani has repeatedly appeared alongside Hasan Piker, a streamer who has said America “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. Mamdani eventually called the remark “objectionable and reprehensible,” but only after sustained pressure, and the two have kept appearing together since. A separate senators’ petition also faulted him for never directly condemning the phrase “globalize the intifada.”

5. Backing a Man Who Excused an Attack on a Synagogue Preschool

Mamdani has publicly praised Abdul El-Sayed, the Michigan Senate candidate whose campaign shared staff and style with his own. After a man rammed his car into Temple Israel’s preschool in West Bloomfield, armed and carrying mortar shells, El-Sayed responded, in part, “hurt people hurt people.” He later apologized, but reaching for context before condemnation, right after an attack on children, is disqualifying.

6. Years of the Same Tweet, Blurring Victims and Enemies

Since at least 2019, Mamdani has posted nearly identical 9/11 messages every September, mourning “the hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed” alongside the roughly 3,000 Americans murdered that day, never naming who carried out the attack. He’s done the same thing on Holocaust Remembrance Day, reusing one message three years running. That’s not an oversight. That’s a script.

7. A Chief Counsel Tied to al-Qaeda, While a Jewish Judge Was Blocked

Mamdani appointed Ramzi Kassem as chief counsel, a lawyer who has represented accused terrorists, including a convicted al-Qaeda operative whose sister was married to a 9/11 hijacker. Days before the anniversary, Mamdani handed Kassem the pen after signing a 9/11 executive order. Around the same time, his administration rejected a retired Jewish judge from a judicial panel over a past Ghislaine Maxwell case, then left Kassem in charge of that same panel.

Twenty-Five Years Later, the Bar Should Be Higher

None of these points stands alone. Together, they describe a mayor whose associations, appointments, statements, and conduct at the ceremony itself repeatedly blur the line between mourning terrorism’s victims and excusing the ideology behind it. New York deserved a mayor who understood that without being asked twice.