Andrew Cuomo is now openly arguing that his defeat in the New York City mayoral race wasn’t the result of Zohran Mamdani’s surge — but Curtis Sliwa’s presence on the ballot. In a lengthy appearance on 77 WABC, Cuomo insisted that the Republican contender siphoned off just enough votes to derail his path to City Hall.
In the interview, Cuomo repeatedly branded Sliwa “a total fraud for decades,” charging that his candidacy served no purpose other than sabotaging Cuomo’s campaign. He said bluntly that if Sliwa had stepped aside, he “would’ve won” the race against the now–Mayor-Elect.
Cuomo discussed the election outcome with former Governor David Paterson, who admitted he had “never heard” of Mamdani’s name until earlier in the year and questioned how Mamdani “able to do what he did.” That remark opened the door for Cuomo to argue that the race was defined more by Republican missteps than by Mamdani’s rise.
Looking back, Cuomo claimed he always expected Sliwa to bow out. “I always believed he [Sliwa] would drop out because there was no way for him to win,” he said, insisting that Sliwa’s only role was to “be a spoiler and be responsible for Zohran’s victory.” Cuomo said he remained stunned that “as a Republican, he would … could live with himself and the Republicans could live with him as the person who elected Zohran, which is exactly what happened.”
Cuomo emphasized that even a minor shift in the numbers would have reshaped the contest. “If he had dropped out, I would have won, I’m convinced,” he said. “Because I would have gotten that seven, I would’ve been about a point from Zohran, but it would have changed the whole dynamic.”
He also accused Sliwa of spending the campaign “with the clown show,” directing far more fire at Cuomo than at Mamdani. When Paterson noted that Sliwa’s relatives had been calling the station claiming he wasn’t given equal time, Cuomo countered that WABC and Sid Rosenberg “made Sliwa” and “gave him tremendous coverage.”
Cuomo then revisited Sliwa’s controversial history, claiming the media ignored it. “Again, talking about election coverage — nobody ever mentioned that Sliwa has been a total fraud for decades,” he said, pointing to past scandals. He referenced the period “when it turned out that the Guardian Angels and Sliwa made up a whole raft of stories of rescues that they did, that turned out not to be true — that Sliwa said he was kidnapped by the New York Police Department and held, and then admitted that wasn’t true.”
By the end of the conversation, Cuomo summed up his view plainly: “I believe he cost me the election,” asserting once more that he would have prevailed had Sliwa not entered the race.
His comments followed Mamdani’s sweeping victory, which Breitbart News noted came after “consistent polling” showed him in the lead. Final totals reported by CNN put Mamdani at 50.4 percent, Cuomo at 41.6 percent, and Sliwa at 7.1 percent.
The tension between Sliwa and WABC had flared before Election Day as well. In a particularly heated moment during an earlier interview, Sid Rosenberg warned Sliwa he was self-sabotaging. “So far, you’ve been on this show for eight minutes, and all you’ve talked about is Cuomo,” Rosenberg told him. “And, I know you hate him, and I’m going to be honest with you, Curtis — because we’ve been friends for a long time — I don’t feel like you’re running against Mamdani anymore.”
{Matzav.com}
Israeli emergency crews on Monday rescued a teenage boy who had been trapped for roughly nine hours atop a crane suspended over a high-rise building in Yerushalayim.
Channel 12 News reported that the 15-year-old, stranded on a small platform hanging from the crane’s hook atop a 36-story building, phoned Fire and Rescue Services himself, reportedly telling them: “I need help, I’m stuck. I wanted to see the view.”
Petty Officer Eyal Cohen, deputy commander of the Yerushalayim District Fire and Rescue Station, said the boy had climbed to a height of about 328 feet around midnight, slipped and was “miraculously” stopped by a counterweight.
“He screamed throughout the night,” Cohen said. “The report came in the morning, and crews from the Ha’uma Station rescued him professionally. Only by a miracle did he make it out alive.”
Rescuers from the Yerushalayim District’s Special Rescue Unit were dispatched with additional personnel after the call came in. They rigged rope systems on the crane, navigated obstacles and a difficult angle, reached the boy and secured him safely.
He was lowered to the ground in good condition and handed over to medical and police crews for evaluation, authorities said.
The incident took place at the same tower where a 15-year-old boy fell to his death during the atzeres tefillah about a month ago. The Oct. 30 incident was reportedly a suicide. Authorities said they do not suspect Monday’s event was a suicide attempt.
“This was a very complex rescue, both because of the great height and the difficult angle of the crane,” Lt. Cmdr. Shai Nechemia, commander of the Ha’uma station, told Channel 12 News. “The fighters acted with discretion and professionalism to construct a rope system that enabled safe access to the boy and his rescue.”
{Matzav.com}
Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid told JNS on Monday that Israel would “effectively” exercise its right to self-defense against the Iranian regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs “if necessary.”
“I think Iran is an existential threat to the Middle East and to the entire world, and it’s not only an Israeli problem, it’s a global problem,” said Lapid, speaking at a meeting of his Yesh Atid Party at the Knesset.
Iran’s ballistic missile program is “threatening the entire region, and therefore, it’s an American problem, a Saudi problem, an Emirati problem, an Israeli problem,” added Lapid, speaking in English.
Israel reserves the right to protect itself “under any circumstances, and we will effectively use this right if necessary,” he said.
Tehran has rebuilt most of its missile arsenal and is approaching the number of projectiles it had before the 12-day conflict with Israel in June, Israeli security officials cited by Channel 13 said over the weekend.
The Islamic Republic has accelerated production of surface-to-surface missiles and is expected to amass within a few months approximately 2,000 missiles capable of reaching the Jewish state, the report said.
Between June 13-24, Iran launched over 550 ballistic missiles and sent 1,000-plus UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles) toward Israel’s territory.
At the start of the war, the Israel Defense Forces revealed an Iranian plan for a combined aerial and ground assault that sought to “destroy the State of Israel and establish a Palestinian state on its ruins.”
In parallel with Iran’s efforts to obtain nuclear weapons, the regime had focused on producing “tens of thousands” of missiles and drones, while advancing its plans to carry out a “combined ground offensive against Israel on multiple fronts simultaneously,” the IDF stated on June 13.
The Islamic Republic’s “Destruction of Israel Plan” was to have started with a “large-scale rocket and missile barrage” on Israel, launched by the regime’s terror proxies in Lebanon, Yemen and across the region.
Amid the aerial assault, thousands of terrorists were to invade Israel from the Gaza Strip, Judea, Samaria, Syria, Jordan, Iraq and Yemen.
Benny Gantz, a former IDF chief of staff and defense minister who now heads the opposition National Unity Party, told JNS on Monday that “another conflict won’t be necessary if Iran stops what it does—so actually it’s in the Iranian’s hands.”
However, “if they will reignite their nuclear process, and other ways of convincing them will not work, then another round is not necessarily inevitable, but an option definitely,” the opposition lawmaker stated.
“The missiles that the Iranians are making are not just a threat to the State of Israel; they are endangering the entire Middle East,” said Gantz, adding: “And definitely if they come in high qualities, it might become kind of [a] potential existential threat, as everybody saw.”
Jerusalem “knows how to deal with it, and whether we do it defensively or whether we do it offensively, Israel will stay a safe place to live in,” he vowed, while warning the same might not be true for Iran if the regime “will continue in this direction” of nuclear proliferation.
Also on Monday, the Islamic regime denounced a resolution by the International Atomic Energy Agency demanding that Iran fully cooperate with the agency and provide “precise information” about its stockpile of near weapons-grade uranium, as well as grant its inspectors access to nuclear sites.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei slammed the resolution as “a stain on the designers and sponsors of it,” and said “no meaningful negotiation will take shape” until the United States halts its “dictates” to Iran.
Iran sent a letter to Saudi Arabia last week asking Riyadh to convince the Trump administration to reopen nuclear negotiations, Reuters reported.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Tehran is not looking for confrontation and that the regime is “open to resolving the nuclear dispute through diplomacy, provided its rights are guaranteed,” per the Reuters report.
The regime denied sending the missive, with Baqaei telling the state-run IRNA news agency on Monday that “the president’s letter to the crown prince … did not include any reference regarding negotiations.”
{Matzav.com}
A Melbourne courtroom delivered a controversial determination on Monday, concluding that the man who set the East Melbourne Synagogue ablaze last summer acted out of mental instability rather than hatred toward Jews. According to JNS, the ruling left many unsettled as the country continues to see a surge in attacks targeting Jewish institutions.
The judge, Magistrate Malcolm Thomas, accepted the argument that 35-year-old Angelo Loras was suffering from an untreated schizophrenic episode when he poured accelerant on the shul’s front entrance and lit it on fire on July 4. His delusions, the court said, stemmed from failing to take prescribed medication.
Loras entered guilty pleas to arson and to recklessly endangering lives. Because of the time he already spent in custody, he became eligible to walk free on Monday. Roughly 20 people had been gathered inside the building for a Friday night meal when the flames broke out, heightening the alarm across Melbourne’s Jewish community.
The attack coincided with a separate violent outburst at an Israeli restaurant in the city that same night, an incident in which the establishment sustained considerable damage, adding to a sense of unease.
Reacting to the court’s decision, Jamie Hyams, Director of Public Affairs at the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, told JNS, “This is a difficult one because there do seem to be genuine mental health issues, but it’s perhaps worrying that Mr. Loras, who was born in Iran, came to have a bag with flammable liquids and something to start a fire with, that he came to choose a synagogue out of all the available buildings, and that he came to be there on a Friday night and was trying to gain entry. We certainly hope this was indeed just an unfortunate coincidence, and that there will be no repeat.”
His comments reflect a broader concern: antisemitic activity in Australia has climbed sharply since the Israel-Gaza conflict erupted in October 2023.
In early December, the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne was struck by a firebombing. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese later announced that Iran’s government orchestrated that attack along with another assault targeting the Jewish community.
Just days after the Adass Israel incident, a car in the Sydney suburb of Woollahra—home to a large Jewish population—was torched, and two properties were defaced with anti-Israel graffiti, marking yet another escalation.
Elsewhere in Sydney, the phrase “[Curse] the Jews” was spray-painted onto a vehicle, serving as another disturbing reminder of rising hate.
The pattern continued into January. The Southern Sydney Synagogue in Allawah was hit with antisemitic graffiti, followed the next day by red swastikas plastered across the façade of the Newtown shul in the city’s inner west.
Another violation occurred when a home previously owned by Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was vandalized.
The climate has been further inflamed by rhetoric online. In February, a video circulated in which two Australian nurses, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, declared they would refuse medical treatment to Israelis and would send them “to h—.” Authorities responded by barring both individuals from working with participants in the National Disability Insurance Scheme for two years.
{Matzav.com}
Park East Synagogue in Manhattan received an unannounced show of support on Monday when outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams stopped by the shul that had been subjected just days earlier to a jarring anti-Israel demonstration. Protesters had gathered outside the building shouting “globalize the intifada” and “death to the IDF,” turning a routine community event into a scene of hostility.
Adams used his visit to send a message of resolve. “We don’t back down in the face of hate – we show up,” he posted, emphasizing that he stood “proudly” beside Rabbi Arthur Schneier and the shul’s members to “celebrate Jewish life and reaffirm our unshakable bond with Israel after last week’s antisemitic protests.” He went on to stress, “Neither antisemitism nor ANY other form of hate has any place in NYC.”
Images from the visit showed the mayor speaking warmly with congregants and posing alongside Rabbi Schneier, underscoring his intention to reassure the community after a tense week.
The demonstration that triggered the outcry took place the previous Wednesday, when roughly 200 activists organized by Pal-Awda NY/NJ assembled outside the synagogue during an event sponsored by Nefesh B’Nefesh. Attendees were jeered as they arrived, and one protest leader riled up the crowd by declaring: “It is our duty to make them think twice before holding these events… We need to make them scared.”
Adams was traveling abroad when the incident unfolded, but the aftermath reverberated through City Hall. First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro later said the mayor was furious that police officers had allowed demonstrators to reach the entrance. NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch personally apologized to the congregation, acknowledging that the department had not adequately protected the event.
Federal officials soon stepped in. On Sunday, the U.S. Department of Justice announced the launch of a probe into the protest. Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon stated, “Every time we see violence around a house of worship, we take action,” confirming that a federal investigation “is underway.” She added that the DOJ maintains “zero tolerance” for obstruction “around any American house of worship.”
Local reactions continued to pour in. Several elected officials denounced the protest outright, while a spokesperson for Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani issued a more mixed response. The spokesperson condemned the demonstration, yet also said Mamdani believes that “sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law,” without explaining how Nefesh B’Nefesh’s work could possibly fit that category.
All of this unfolded against a troubling backdrop: fresh NYPD statistics released the day before the mayoral election won by Mamdani showed that Jews were targeted in 62% of all hate crimes reported last month—29 antisemitic incidents out of 47 total—highlighting the tension gripping the city’s Jewish community as leaders confront rising threats.
{Matzav.com}
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