New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, confronting a municipal budget crisis and local job and population loss, continues to dabble in Middle Eastern geopolitics — with plans to attend the gala of a leading anti-Israel advocacy group on Tuesday evening.

Hours after gathering with City Council Speaker Julie Menin to ask the state for further help in covering the city’s multibillion-dollar budget shortfall — a request Gov. Kathy Hochul immediately rejected — the democratic socialist mayor was set to attend a party for the Institute for Middle East Understanding. The IMEU is a 21-year-old pro-Palestinian organization that accused Israel of genocide for years before the Oct. 7 attacks triggered the latest round of conflict with Hamas.

On Oct. 7, 2023, the day of the Hamas massacre against Israel, IMEU dispatched its communications director to MSNBC (now called MS NOW) to provide “crucial context: Israel commits violence against Palestinians daily through its military occupation and apartheid rule,” the organization said. The spokeswoman, who appears frequently in the group’s social media feed, is Diana Buttu, a former legal advisor to the Palestinian Liberation Organization.

Though the Canadian-born Buttu joined the PLO’s team after the signing of the Oslo Accords, she later wrote that “the parties should not have started negotiating in the first place” and that talks were “futile.”

Nonprofit records show that much of IMEU’s funding comes through donor-advised funds: “dark money” vehicles that mask the source of contributions. The group has in turn issued grant money to a single organization: its own political arm, the IMEU Policy Project.

The IMEU Policy Project, helmed by its parent organization’s executive director, Margaret Dereus, has in turn spent its funds on TV ads — one targeting Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), but most aimed at moderate Democrats, including Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear. It has also run a TV spot promoting the “Block the Bombs” Act, aiming to cut off U.S. military aid to Israel. 

IMEU also operates a political action committee called Peace, Accountability, and Leadership, or PAL-PAC. PAL-PAC shares funds with Justice Democrats, and has spent thousands of dollars this cycle supporting far-left candidates such as Kat Abughazaleh in Illinois and the Rev. Frederick Haynes III in Texas. It has also backed Darializa Avila Chevalier, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America challenging Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), a major New York City power broker who supported Mamdani in the general election.

American Priorities, another PAC founded by Mamdani backers, has identified IMEU Policy Project as one of its “partner” organizations.

IMEU did not respond to questions from Jewish Insider about the gala.

Despite moderating on the campaign trail, and confronting a raft of local concerns and complications, as mayor Mamdani has continued to espouse the anti-Israel rhetoric that helped propel him to prominence — even blasting the Jewish state from the podium at a recent St. Patrick’s Day event.