New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani drew criticism on Thursday from several prominent Jewish New Yorkers for releasing a social media video on rent regulation hearings that prominently featured a public employee sporting a keffiyeh, a checkered scarf associated with the Palestinian cause.

The video, which runs just over one minute long and doesn’t touch on Middle East issues, promotes a new door-to-door outreach campaign to encourage participation in upcoming meetings of the Rent Guidelines Board. 

In it, one of staffers featured in the video, Mohamed Alharbi — deputy borough director of the newly established Mayor’s Office of Mass Engagement — wears a keffiyeh over his shoulders, visible for all but a few moments of the clip.

“Shameful video. The anti-Zionist messaging isn’t subtle — it fuels a broader climate that emboldens antisemitism,” wrote Todd Richman, a veteran Democratic Party operative and co-founder of Democratic Majority for Israel, highlighting the recent spike in hate crimes targeting Jewish New Yorkers. “Don’t ignore the pattern. This rhetoric has real consequences. The Mayor should take this down immediately.” 

Benny Polatseck, who ran the creative communications team for former Mayor Eric Adams, also raised concerns.

“The keffiyeh wasn’t a slip. It was the point. And it’s disgraceful,” Polatseck asserted. “We would never have produced a video targeting a community in our city.”

Daniel Loeb, a hedge fund manager and major political donor in New York, questioned the entire initiative.

“Imagine if some guy wearing a terror Schmatta comes to your home unannounced and knocks on your door asking you a bunch of personal questions and demanding you appear at a government struggle session,” he tweeted, using a Yiddish word for rag.

The black-and-white patterned keffiyeh was the invention of English-born Lt. Gen. John Glubb, leader of the Arab Legion that seized the West Bank in 1948. Palestinian Liberation Organization head Yasser Arafat and terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled later popularized the garment as a political symbol in the 1970s.

The Mamdani administration did not respond to questions about the decision to feature a public servant displaying a political symbol in a publicly financed video.