Exclusive | How ‘antisemitic’ activist Linda Sarsour nurtured socialist Zohran Mamdani’s NYC mayoral bid

Antisemitic activist Linda Sarsour isn’t just playing a big role in Zohran Mamdani’s NYC’s mayoral campaign — she’s been a political mentor and close friend of the silver-spoon socialist for nearly a decade and helped guide his far-left hatred of Israel, according to a foreign intelligence report and critics.

Mamdani’s propensity for making pie-in-the-sky Marxist campaign promises date back to his high school days when he made a failed bid for student government with a “fresh juice for all” campaign.

However, it was the Hamas-supporting, Palestinian-American firebrand Sarsour who helped nuture the 34-year-old into the radical mayoral frontrunner he is today, according to a foreign intelligence service report obtained by The Post.

”Zohran Mamdani’s candidacy is linked closely within a network of Islamist figures and organizations with extremist associations,” says the document, which names notorious Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing who once urged “jihad” on New York City.

“His reliance on Linda Sarsour as a mentor, and her own allegiance to . . . Wahhaj, situates Mamdani within the ideological chain of influence extending from Wahhaj’s radical teachings to the political sphere of New York City,” the document reads.

Sara Forman, executive director of the pro-Israel New York Solidarity Network, called Sarsour “one of the main antagonists for normalizing anti-Israel rhetoric in New York’s public sphere.”

“Much of what Zohran Mamdani now says about Israel and Zionists would have never been politically acceptable in New York,” said Forman.

“Linda Sarsour is an absolutist, committed to the destruction of the State of Israel with every fiber of her being,” she added. “Zohran Mamdani’s brand of socialism is intertwined with, and indistinguishable from, Linda’s and certainly a reflection of her decades of work to delegitimize Israel.”

Mamdani was “largely unknown in New York political circles” until joining the Sarsour-founded Muslim Democratic Club of New York in 2017, the report notes.

The two card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America worked closely later that year assisting DSA-backed, Palestinian-American community activist Khader El-Yateem’s failed campaign to win a City Council seat representing Bay Ridge ultimately won by Democrat Justin Brannan. Sarsour, Mamdani and Brannan are now political allies.

In 2020, Sarsour was instrumental in Mamdani’s first political run, helping use her influence to score the state Assembly seat he currently holds representing Astoria and surrounding Queens neighborhoods.

Shortly after Mamdani won the Democratic primary in his assembly race, Sarsour shared one of Mamdani’s political flyers on Facebook and gushed, “I am sitting here crying. My heart is FULL.”

She called the socialist pol “very dear to my heart.”

Mamdani replied, “Love you habibti,” the Arabic term for “loved one.”

“You did so much to make this a reality,” he wrote, adding a heart emoji.

Hank Sheinkopf, a longtime Democratic consultant, said “anyone who thinks [Sarsour] won’t have access to City Hall” if Mamdani becomes mayor — including “access to anything having to do with city policy toward Jewish-Americans — is out of their minds.”

“Every administration has had informal advisors,” he said. “Linda Sarsour will likely have an important role in the administration, as will other anti-Israel activists, many of whom are also anti-American.

“She is a critical element of his thinking, which is anti-Israel and ultimately antisemitic.”

Sarsour and Mamdani did not return messages.

Brooklyn Councilwoman and staunch Zionist Inna Vernikov called Mamdani “a lovechild of the radical left and radical Islamist movements that people like Linda Sarsour spearheaded” the past decade.

“In 2018, Sarsour placed Mamdani on the board of the Muslim Democratic Club of New York — a board which included members with past roles in CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America), groups cited by analysts in Hamas-funding probes,” the Republican lawmaker said.

“Linda Sarsour groomed, so Zohran could run and destroy.”

Mamdani was actually elected — not appointed — to the MDCNY board in April 2018, but Sarsour’s influence as co-founder played a huge role in him winning the seat, sources said.

Sarsour’s contempt for the Jewish state long predates the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist attack on Israeli civilians that sparked the war in Gaza. She declared in 2018 that fellow Muslims shouldn’t humanize Israelis because they’re the enemy.

“If you’re on the side of the oppressor, or you’re defending the oppressor, or you’re actually trying to humanize the oppressor, then that’s a problem,” said Sarsour, speaking at the Islamic Society of North America’s annual convention.

The 45-year-old activist is a former leader of the Women’s March on Washington that organized after President Trump won his first term, but she and two other founding members were booted from the group over their unapologetic embrace of notorious antisemite Louis Farrakhan.

Sarsour also has a history of speaking glowingly about Wahhaj, who has been linked to other terrorist activity in the United States beyond the 1993 WTC bombing that left six people dead.

The imam has denied any connection to terrorism. 

“My favorite person in this room, because that’s mutual, is Imam SIraj Wahhaj, who has been a mentor and motivator and encourager of mine,” said Sarsour during the 2017 ISNA convention, according to the intelligence document, which relies heavily on media reports and other Internet sourcing comparable to opposition-style research reports typically drafted to help political campaigns. 

Sarsour – a longtime advocate, like Mamdani, of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement – campaigned heavily from behind the scenes for Mamdani during the Democratic mayoral primary where he upset heavily favored ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who is now running the Nov. 4 general election as an independent.

She donated the maximum $2,100 to Mamdani’s campaign and has sent out many social-media blasts asking her hundreds of thousands of followers to donate to his campaign.

“Linda Sarsour played the long game, and though Zohran Mamdani may claim he’s disinterested in foreign policy, when he’s winking and nodding about Jews and Israel, it’s directed toward Linda Sarsour and those in his orbit aligned with her,” said Forman.