'The billionaire class and Zionism': Activists slam Mamdani's move to rehire police commissioner

New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani has come under fire this week from supporters for rehiring police commissioner Jessica Tisch, who has been criticised for cracking down on pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

“We strongly oppose this decision,” the pro-Palestinian advocacy group, Within Our Lifetime, said in a statement circulating online.

“Retaining Tisch represents a political alignment with the NYPD’s legacy of racialized policing, surveillance, and repression, and a retreat from the values of justice and liberation that Mamdani’s campaign claimed to champion,” the statement says.

The statement has been endorsed by dozens of pro-Palestinian groups, including the National Students for Justice in Palestine at John Jay College, The College of Staten Island, Brooklyn College, and The New School.

Local groups representing communities where Mamdani enjoyed strong support in last month’s election are also signatories to the statement, including Crown Heights Bites Back, Brooklyn Jail Support and Bay Ridge Solidarity.

Jessica was appointed police commissioner by mayor Eric Adams in November 2024. Before her arrival, the New York City Police Department pursued a crackdown on protestors at campuses like Columbia University, where students demonstrated in solidarity with Palestinians after the outbreak of Israel’s war on Gaza. At Columbia alone, over 100 students were arrested by police in riot gear. 

The war on the enclave erupted after the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 attack on southern Israel sparked a ferocious Israeli assault that the United Nations, human rights experts and historians have called a genocide. Over 69,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war. 

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“Tisch was one of Eric Adams’s closest appointees,” the organisations said. “Her reappointment under Mamdani ensures the seamless continuation of Adams’s NYPD, defined by corruption, scandal, federal investigations, and violent crackdowns on protests,” the statement says. 

'Intersection of the billionaire class'

Jessica is the daughter of Meryl and James Tisch. The latter is CEO of the Loews Corporation, an American conglomerate whose holdings include CNA Financial and Loews Hotels.

The influential Jewish-American family has been active in the NYC Police Foundation, which created and funds the NYPD’s liaison programme with foreign police forces, including Israel.

"These connections place Tisch at the intersection of the billionaire class, the NYPD’s global footprint, and zionism," reads the statement. 

The statement points out Mamdani's former campaign promises made about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. 

“As a candidate who pledged to arrest Netanyahu during the campaign, Mamdani must answer how he can reconcile that promise while retaining a member of Netanyahu’s host family,” the statement added.

During his campaign, Mamdani said he would arrest Netanyahu if he set foot in NYC, but he later walked back those statements.

Jessica was the former head of the city’s sanitation department. As police commissioner, Jessica oversaw training that labelled keffiyehs and watermelons as antisemitic symbols. Both are expressions of Palestinian culture and have been used to non-violently protest against Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. 

In October, Jessica spoke at the Anti-Defamation League’s annual conference, where she defended Israel’s assault on Gaza.

The ADL has long been denounced by pro-Palestinian groups for describing Palestinian rights movements as antisemitic. The organisation has also, in the past, worked with US law enforcement to spy on and target Arab-American groups and has also facilitated and funded US police training trips to Israel.