Mamdani Condemns Land Sales For Israeli Settlements. New York City Still Protects Them.

NEW YORK, NY – The first thing that stood out to the Levin family about Pnei Kedem – an illegal Israeli settlement on occupied Palestinian land – was the view. In a promotional video, Leah Levin says: “The guy was showing us around and we just said, ‘Do you ever get sick of this? This is crazy.’” Her husband, JD Levin, stands beside her, carrying a baby. If you look closely, you’ll notice he’s also carrying a handgun in a holster on his hip. What ultimately convinced the young couple, originally from Lakewood, New Jersey, to settle in Pnei Kedem? “The vibe of the people.” Concerns before moving? “The weather.”

Families like the Levins purchase settlement properties through Israeli real estate companies that sponsor expos across New York City. These expos rely on the city’s financial and security cooperation to function: City funding supports the synagogues where they are often hosted, police keep protesters at a distance, and lawmakers have spent the past year advancing legislation to keep it that way. But New York is changing. Public anger over Israel’s genocide in Gaza helped propel Zohran Mamdani to victory in last year’s mayoral race. As mayor, however, Mamdani has yet to take concrete steps to stop land-sale expos in New York City – apart from condemning them. His inaction has prompted accusations of betrayal from pro-Palestinian activists, particularly as Israel’s violent settlement expansion accelerates in the occupied West Bank.

Although settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem are illegal under international law, U.S. law is unsettled. Advocates and legal experts are advancing arguments that settlements not only violate international law, but U.S. law as well, and say there is room to act.

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In December 2023, the Israeli real estate company Harey Zahav posted a picture of Gaza in ruins to its Hebrew-language Instagram account, captioned “Wake up, a house on the beach is not a dream!” The post also promised to resurrect Gush Katif, a former bloc of 17 Israeli settlements in the southern Gaza Strip. Another post shows an Israeli soldier holding a bomb bearing a Sharpie-inscribed dedication to the company. Others show company staffers serving in the army and smiling atop rubble.

But in its English-language ads, the company takes a more quiet-luxury approach to ethnic cleansing, advertising settlement living as an idealized form of suburban life. One video features an oversaturated montage of landscapes and settlement houses, soundtracked by Imagine Dragons and accompanied by an AI-generated caption waxing poetic about life in “Judea and Samaria,” the Zionist term for the occupied West Bank. The ads promise “Anglo community” and “American-style homes” with “an upstate New York feel.” One ad claims that “in several parts of Judea–Samaria, foreign citizens do not pay purchase tax.”

Roughly 750,000 settlers live in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, including an estimated 160,000 Americans – more than 20% of the total settler population. According to data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, more Americans settled in the West Bank in 2024 than any other nationality. The number of settlers from the United States equaled the number of settlers from the next five countries – Russia, France, the U.K., Belarus, and Ukraine – combined.

An army of Israeli real estate companies targets “Anglo” customers. They include YYK Real Estate, Jerusalem Real Estate, Meshulam Levinstein Group, and Getter Group. Some, including Harey Zahav, openly focus on newer settlements such as Pnei Kedem, where the Levins live. Pnei Kedem is located in the Gush Etzion settlement bloc; it endangers and displaces residents of the Palestinian town of Sa’ir. The settlement started as a small outpost in 2000, established with the help of Amana, an association that has been sanctioned by the U.S., the European Union, and Canada in recent years for its role in settler violence. Another settler association, Mishmeret Yesha, has equipped Pnei Kedem settlers with M-16 rifles provided by the Israeli military. One of its defining principles is “the removal of all hostile elements from the land.” If Americans wish to assist with the removal, they can make a tax-deductible donation of $5,000 to “fully equip” settlers like the Levins. The New York-based Central Fund of Israel processes donations on Mishmeret Yesha’s behalf.

Other Israeli real estate firms, including Tivuch Shelly – which maintains an office in New York – claim that they do not take part in the economy of expansion. But the company advertises luxury apartments in Ma’ale Adumim – a West Bank settlement founded in 1975 that now has a population of 30,000 – on its website, at land-sale expos, and in social media posts. Ma’ale Adumim is central to the E1 corridor, a planned settlement zone that would split the West Bank in half, severing northern Palestinian cities like Jenin and Nablus from southern ones like Hebron and Bethlehem. “The Palestinian state is being erased from the table, not with slogans but with actions,” Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, celebrating Israel’s approval of the project. “Every settlement, every neighborhood, every housing unit is another nail in the coffin.”

Shelly Levine, a New York City native and CEO of Tivuch Shelly, defended selling Ma’ale Adumim apartments at New York City expos in an interview with The Key. She claimed that Ma’ale Adumim is a legitimate city, rather than a settlement, because tens of thousands of settlers already live there. Levine said she was working with the Israeli government to replace “slums” in the area with skyscrapers – a reference to the ongoing dispossession of Bedouin Palestinians. “I’m not doing expansionist things. It is an urban renewal,” Levine said. “How it works in Israel: They knock it down, they build many, many more stories, and the poor people get free, brand-new, modern, gorgeous houses for nothing. Pretty good idea. Don't you think we should do that in the United States?”

Her defense of Ma’ale Adumim summarizes the Israeli settlement strategy in the West Bank: steal land and violently expel its native inhabitants; fortify and expand the settlement through tax breaks, infrastructure, and public financing for as long as possible; and eventually the mega-settlement’s size will legitimize its existence. An outpost becomes a settlement becomes a city becomes part of a nation – with a right to exist and defend itself. This is what Israelis have long called “establishing facts on the ground.” The Israeli army doesn’t just protect this entire process; it actively participates. Settler-only units of the Israeli army function as settler militias; soldiers are stationed around settlements and outposts; the military operates checkpoints and observation posts; and settlement expansions receive daily military escorts.

Levine – who asked, when contacted by The Key, whether it was a “blatantly Arab magazine” – resents being associated with settlements. Like other liberal Zionists, she views unprecedented violence by settlers as an unfortunate aberration from the greater project of Israel. More than 1,100 Palestinians have been killed by settlers and Israeli soldiers in the West Bank since October 2023. Since the start of 2023, state-backed settler pogroms have forced residents to leave at least 47 Palestinian communities and the Israeli government has approved 103 new Jewish settlements – displacing nearly 11,000 Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem.

This violence is inseparable from the idea of Israel and its history, said Bilal Daoud, the cofounder of the Palestine Shield Initiative, an organization that provides Palestinians defending themselves against settlers with resources such as medical training and fire extinguishers. “By making the settlers of today bogeymen, they’re using them as scapegoats,” Daoud said. “If you turn back the clock to the ‘50s, all these cities in Israel today started out as settlements.” Israelis are currently building a new settlement across from the village where Daoud grew up, on a hill once stewarded by his grandfather and other Palestinians. “It was land that was cultivated for hundreds of years,” he said. “You’re talking about something that is directly attached to your existence. You as a family, as a people – those trees and that land were your source of existence, of living.”

The real estate companies need a place to sell their wares. In New York, the city helps provide one.

Any day of the week, older adults can visit the senior center at Young Israel of Midwood in Brooklyn for lunch, with a suggested contribution of just $1.50. The Orthodox synagogue’s senior center offers exercise, art, and “Israeli dance classes,” as well as movie screenings and assistance with benefits. Young Israel of Midwood is a local affiliate of the National Council of Young Israel, a synagogue-based Orthodox organization founded in 1912 with the purpose of attracting “American-raised, English-speaking Jewish youth.” Its website greets visitors with a picture of armed Israeli soldiers overlooking a valley, imploring them to donate to “SUPPORT ISRAEL AND THE IDF!”

Young Israel synagogues have hosted more land sales than any other synagogue network in New York state in recent years: at least 10 since 2024, by The Key’s count. All were organized or sponsored by real estate companies selling property in settlements in the occupied West Bank or East Jerusalem. The Key also found that the New York City Council has allocated nearly $2 million in discretionary funds to Young Israel and its affiliates in the last decade, more than 20% of which went directly to synagogues that host land sales, including Young Israel of Midwood. (In May, The Intercept reported that Midwood also received $800,000 from the City’s Department for the Aging in 2024.) Discretionary funds are meant to fill gaps in city services, supporting everything from food pantries to housing resources to cancer treatment. By hosting land sales, city-funded Young Israel synagogues lend settlement expos the appearance of an essential community service.

Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, and New York’s land-sale events are fundamentally discriminatory. Attendees are screened and sometimes even required to identify their Orthodox synagogue and rabbi, while settlement properties effectively bar non-Jewish residents. So why do land sales persist? “It’s a general lack of political will to enforce international human rights law by the United States, because the United States is so frequently running afoul of it,” said Jake Romm, an attorney and the U.S. representative for the Hind Rajab Foundation. The Department of Justice has the power to prosecute land sales that violate the federal War Crimes Act, he said, but the absence of a U.S. law specifically addressing settlements makes it more difficult for those outside the federal government to intervene.

“Settlements are illegal under international law. The ICJ has been extremely clear about that. But there’s no law outlawing settlements in the United States. The fact that there is no law is also a lack of political willpower,” Romm said. In the U.K., lawmakers are finally taking action of this kind: a new sanctions regime targets companies and individuals facilitating settlement and bans settlement advertising.

Despite the inaction of their federal counterparts, city and state elected officials can still take action to target Israeli ethnic cleansing. The Hind Rajab Foundation, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, urged State Attorney General Letitia James to investigate Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir ahead of his July visit to New York, arguing that his campaign to arm settlers aids crimes against Palestinian New Yorkers who own property in the West Bank. James also has the power to investigate nonprofits that operate outside their charitable purposes or fund illegal activity, and to revoke their registration, impose fines, or seek injunctions. (Recall the tax-deductible donations to equip settlers like the Levins.) “Committing murder against Palestinians is not a charitable purpose,” Romm said. The mayor can refer cases to the attorney general, but the power rests with the state.

As a state assemblymember, Mamdani introduced Not on Our Dime in 2023, a bill that would bar New York nonprofits from funding or facilitating settlement activity that violates international law. It has yet to gain significant support within the legislature, and it’s unclear how the mayor will engage with it when it’s reintroduced next session. “The Not on Our Dime campaign forces public officials, the mayor included, to take a more concrete stand,” said Nasreen Abd Elal of the Palestinian Youth Movement.

Although the federal and state governments have the most avenues to act, the mayor could still use city agencies to disrupt the illegal settlement of the West Bank. Policies that screen attendees at land-sale events and exclude them on the basis of being non-Jewish likely violate city, state, and federal housing antidiscrimination laws, according to Jeena Shah, a law professor at the City University of New York. These policies align with Israel’s 2018 “Nation-State of the Jewish People” law, which protects and promotes racial segregation. Shah adds that companies like Harey Zahav and Tivuch Shelly may also be violating city consumer protection laws by selling illegally seized land without valid title. The mayor also has considerable influence over city contracts. Following former mayor David Dinkins’s precedent in opposing apartheid in South Africa, Mamdani could push New York to exclude businesses that profit from the occupation from entering city contracts.

So far, Mamdani hasn’t committed to any concrete steps, which has fueled a sense of betrayal among pro-Palestine activists. New York’s main Palestinian grassroots groups have called on the mayor to take steps they say fall directly within his power – if he has the political will to end land sales. “For him, taking action would mean staging a cascade of contradictions,” Abd Elal said. “Palestine becomes this wedge issue into larger, thornier questions about this purportedly progressive mayor’s relationship to the NYPD, to the real estate lobby, to the Zionist political establishment.”

At a recent Oct. 7 protest, students marched from City Hall to a vigil Mamdani was attending to confront him about his recent funding decisions and inaction on land sales, among other issues. Protesters called the mayor a traitor and chanted “Mayor Mamdani, take a stand! Stop the sale of stolen land!” The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, the political organization Mamdani belongs to, distanced itself from the protest, and pushed the Y-DSA, the organization’s youth branch, to do the same. Asked about the protests, the mayor responded, “I am the mayor of New York City, and this is what I signed up for.”

The protest’s demands on Mamdani, however, have united several major pro-Palestine organizations in New York, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, PAL-Awda, Within Our Lifetime, CUNY for Palestine, and Students for Justice in Palestine chapters across the city. “In contrast to what he’s materially delivered to the Palestine movement, there's just been a massive gap where Zionist organizations like the JCRC get money under the guise of combating antisemitism, and Palestinians get pandering and olive trees planted at Gracie Mansion,” said Faisal, a member of CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine who attended the protest and declined to share his last name for security reasons.

When reached for comment, a spokesperson for the mayor directed The Key to Mamdani’s condemnation of land-sale expos this year and declined further comment. The real estate firms Harey Zahav, YYK Real Estate, Jerusalem Real Estate, Meshulam Levinstein Group, and Getter Group, as well as the settler association Mishmeret Yesha did not respond to The Key’s requests for comment.

For most of the year, tensions between Mamdani and pro-Palestine activists have centered on the fight over buffer zones around synagogues hosting land sales. The NYPD has long protected land sales with buffer zones extending hundreds of feet, but several organizers with PAL-Awda, the group leading protests against land sales in New York City, say police protection has intensified since Mamdani took office. At a January 2026 land sale hosted by Tivuch Shelly at Young Israel of Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, Zionist counterprotesters threatened to rape and kill protesters and waved the yellow flag of Kach, the Kahanist movement outlawed even in Israel that has supported the enslavement and mass expulsion of Palestinians. Coverage largely focused on an X video showing pro-Palestine demonstrators chanting, “Say it loud, say it clear! We support Hamas here.” Democratic politicians swiftly condemned the chant, shifting the story’s focus from the sale of occupied land to attacks on Jewish houses of worship.

Within a week, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul called for 25-foot buffer zones around houses of worship, citing the chant. Days later, City Council Speaker Julie Menin proposed 100-foot buffer zones around houses of worship and schools.

PAL-Awda assembled a broad coalition of civil liberties groups, labor unions, and anti-Zionist Jewish organizations to oppose the buffer zones. But most of these allied organizations limited their opposition to free-speech concerns, declining to engage with the underlying issues raised by the land-sale protests. In an explainer piece on the state buffer-zone law, the New York Civil Liberties Union did not address the merits of the land-sale protests, but said the law “risks stifling the No Kings and Hands Off marches, anti-war rallies, and ICE protests that millions of New Yorkers have rightly participated in.” NYC for Abortion Rights was a notable exception, actively defending protests outside houses of worship for their political activity, such as hosting anti-abortion groups. “We’ve actually kicked an anti-abortion group out of a church that was hosting them in Brooklyn because we were picketing that church very, very actively,” said Bex, an organizer with NYCFAR who declined to share her last name for security reasons.

The coalition managed to water down both buffer-zone proposals, but police measures governing. In March, the City Council passed a law requiring the NYPD to publish a plan for securing houses of worship where protests take place. The NYPD described the directive as “not chang[ing] what we do day-to-day.” The purchase of settlement property would continue to receive police protection as though it were as sacred as anything else that happens in a synagogue.

When Young Israel of Midwood hosted a land sale in May, the event followed a familiar pattern. Counterprotesters threatened to kill demonstrators, shouting “I hate Black people” and chanting that ICE was coming. PAL-Awda organizers say that Zionist violence at protests is often preparatory. “In a lot of these neighborhoods, when you graduate high school you do a gap year in the Zionist entity, and there you participate in violence,” said Jerry, an organizer who withheld his last name for security reasons. “This is practice for the real fight.”

New York’s political leaders do worse than shrug at the routine violence committed by counterprotesters; shrugging would require acknowledgment. Weeks after the Midwood protest, the state legislature passed a watered-down buffer-zone law that created a new misdemeanor offense for “interference with access to a place of worship” – conduct that, as NYCLU Policy Director Naila Awan noted, is “already illegal.”

Two days after the state passed its buffer-zone law, a land sale was hosted at the Hilton Midtown hotel in Manhattan. The NYPD protected the venue by forcibly establishing a buffer zone that pushed protesters to a corner across the street. By providing security for land sales regardless of whether they take place at a synagogue or not, the city effectively equates buying settlement property with an act of worship. Mamdani has also allowed the NYPD to deploy the Strategic Response Group (SRG) – a unit notorious for brutalizing protesters – to protect land sales. The mayor has previously promised to disband the SRG and reiterated that commitment this week, according to Politico. Though the plan has not been finalized, a new civilian unit backed by the NYPD would reportedly take the lead in policing protests. “Our administration will disband the Strategic Response Group and separate protest response from counterterrorism,” a spokesperson for the mayor said in a statement on Thursday.

In September, the Mamdani administration revealed a plan to combat antisemitism that includes $1 million for additional synagogue security and $6.4 million for a grant program administered by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York. The council is led by Mark Treyger, who told The New York Times that supporters of land sales view them as an expression of religious identity protected by the First Amendment. Treyger has also said that land-sale protests “intimidate Jewish institutions and communities for living our identity openly and proudly.”

Two months before the buffer-zone bills were proposed, a mayoral spokesperson said Mamdani believes New Yorkers should be free to enter houses of worship “without intimidation, and that these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law.” A land sale in a synagogue puts those two principles in direct conflict. Activists say that Mamdani cannot address the issue at all without confronting this contradiction.

Only protesters have confronted the contradiction directly – and perhaps for that reason – they are the only ones to have stopped land sales. After a recent sale was canceled and rescheduled on Zoom, the event’s organizers, U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, and other elected officials blamed the protests. “The very barricades that the NYPD puts up to try to control where we protest also scares off and makes it harder for [prospective buyers] who are trying to go inside,” said Tova, a PAL-Awda organizer who declined to share her last name for security reasons. Erecting buffer zones that backfire may be the closest the city has come to acting against land sales.

Meanwhile, real estate companies continue to transform the West Bank into a landscape of settlements. Last week, Israeli forces began demolishing the homes of Bedouin Palestinians in the proposed E1 corridor. Settler leaders in Ma’ale Adumim requested the demolitions.

Perhaps Palestinians should be grateful for the Israeli occupation instead of working so hard to fight it, suggests Shelly Levine. “There were 600 Arabs in Ma’ale Adumim working in the SodaStream factory. Everybody had a problem with it,” she said. “So they moved it to the middle of Israel. And 600 nice Palestinian people who were making a living lost their jobs. None of you have any idea of what goes on in Israel.”