The Democratic Socialists of America are wasting no time flexing their political muscle after one of their own, Zohran Mamdani, captured the New York City mayor’s office this week. Internal documents obtained by Just the News reveal the group’s plans to pressure the newly elected mayor to inject a sweeping, hardline anti-Israel agenda into city governance — an agenda that has little to do with New York’s pressing needs and everything to do with ideological extremism.

The internal memo, circulated by the DSA’s “Anti-War Working Group,” lays out a list of “demands” that read more like a manifesto than municipal policy. Among them: divesting city pension funds from Israeli bonds, ending all city contracts with companies that do business in Israel, banning Israeli products from city-run grocery stores, and even “arresting Netanyahu and active IDF soldiers for war crimes.” Other items call for the city to “evict weapons manufacturers,” “strip nonprofit status from charities that support the IDF,” and “end NYPD training with the IOF” — a derogatory term for the Israeli Defense Forces.

The document exposes what the DSA truly prioritizes: not affordable housing or public safety, but relentless hostility toward Israel. The group’s national convention recently passed a resolution titled “For a Fighting Anti-Zionist DSA,” which declares that “Palestinian liberation is the moral compass of the socialist movement.” It explicitly calls for the U.S. to “end military and economic aid to Israel” and “enforce the ICC arrest warrant of Netanyahu.”

That fixation has turned the DSA into a political machine centered on grievance and global ideology rather than local governance. The Network Contagion Research Institute at Rutgers University described the DSA’s growing focus on Israel as “a signal of intensifying ideological rigidity and intolerance.”

The DSA’s New York City chapter appears determined to use its influence over Mamdani — who has long identified as a democratic socialist and once told a DSA conference that “the boot of the NYPD is laced by the IDF” — to drag City Hall into its foreign policy crusade. The group’s strategy notes detail plans to “leverage Zohran’s campaign infrastructure” and to “pressure him to staff with people whose values are aligned.”

Rather than tackling crime, affordability, or quality of life, the DSA’s agenda centers on punishing Israel — a nation with which New York has deep cultural and economic ties. The working group even suggests the city “operate grocery stores free from Israeli products” and “investigate real estate agents hosting illegal sales of stolen lands in the West Bank.”

The DSA’s national rhetoric echoes the same themes. In October, the organization declared that its mission was to “end U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide and apartheid” and to “break the gears of the U.S. imperial war machine that enables Israel.”

For a city that proudly calls itself the melting pot of the free world — home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel — the DSA’s obsession represents a troubling confirmation of Jewish New Yorkers’ fears. Their demands would effectively turn City Hall into a political weapon against one democratic ally while ignoring New Yorkers’ day-to-day concerns.

Mamdani, who defeated former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, has recently attempted to distance himself from the DSA’s more radical postures, insisting his platform is “distinct.” But his long record of DSA activism — and past calls to “defund the NYPD” and “arrest Netanyahu” — suggest otherwise.

Now, the DSA expects repayment for its loyalty. Its members helped deliver his victory, and their internal memos make clear they intend to collect — not in the form of housing or transportation reform, but in the advancement of an ideological campaign against Israel that has little to do with the lives of eight million New Yorkers.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)