Overview
- New York City released a short video from Gracie Mansion that urges residents to testify at upcoming Rent Guidelines Board hearings and shows two Office of Mass Engagement staffers.
- One staffer, identified as Mohamed Alharbi, wears a keffiyeh, a scarf widely used as a Palestinian symbol at protests, which many Jewish New Yorkers called provocative.
- Jewish community figures and several prominent Democrats and donors said the imagery inserts anti‑Israel politics into an official PSA and called for the video to be removed.
- Alharbi has said his family is Yemeni, and the mayor’s post framed the outreach as civic engagement after only about 400 people spoke at the last rent hearing in a city of more than 8 million.
- Critics linked the choice to prior moves by Mayor Zohran Mamdani, citing his 2023 “Keffiyeh Cup” fundraiser for UNRWA and an early executive order that revoked the city’s adoption of the IHRA antisemitism definition and other post‑2024 directives.