Zohran Mamdani on Gaza:
Yesterday I was on Staten Island for a meeting with faith leaders and a young man from Gaza attended that meeting as part of an organization that houses refugees on Staten Island. He did not have one of his arms.
He was one of the many children that have been maimed by this genocide. I think that is quite serious. I think there are tens of thousands, I do not think, I know there are tens of thousands of children who have been maimed, who have been forced to undergo operations without anesthesia.
And when we speak about the more than 70,000 Palestinians that have been killed, we know that likely that number is even higher, and yet we do not even know what it reaches.
And also we know that it is not a faraway issue. I have met Palestinian New Yorkers who have told me how they've spent decades in this city, building their lives, saving money to send it back home to build a home in the village they grew up in, only to see it obliterated in an instant with an Israeli airstrike.
And then that same older New Yorker tells me of how his son called him and begged him to send him money for food, that his grandchild was starving, and that he couldn't do anything about it.
And so I say that this is something that has not only offended the conscience, the morals, the mere humanity of so many New Yorkers, but it has also ripped apart the lives of many who have been personally affected by it as well.