Mamdani-backed Congress candidate defends joining Oct. 8 rally celebrating Hamas atrocities

Darializa Avila Chevalier, a candidate for Congress in New York City, has defended participating in an anti-Israel, pro-Hamas rally on October 8, 2023, the day after the Hamas onslaught in Israel, an event that saw participants celebrate the high number of Israeli fatalities in the worst terror attack in the Jewish state’s history.

Avila Chevalier, 32, is running against US Rep. Adriano Espaillat for New York’s 13th Congressional District in Upper Manhattan and parts of the Bronx.

Avila Chevalier is a far-left, anti-Israel activist, and while Espaillat has longstanding progressive bona fides, he is a centrist Democrat when it comes to Israel.

The race is another test case for how anti-Israel activism is roiling US politics, particularly on the left, and illustrates the struggle between the Democratic Party’s centrist establishment and its far-left wing.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani endorsed Avila Chevalier last week, giving her campaign a major boost. Espaillat had endorsed Mamdani in the general election and Mamdani had reportedly pledged to support Espaillat’s congressional run. Mamdani’s about-face shook confidence in his trustworthiness among some political operatives in the city, Politico reported.

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Images of Avila Chevalier at the anti-Israel rally over two-and-a-half years ago circulated after the endorsement. Avila Chevalier was not well known at the time and her participation in the rally had been previously reported by Canary Mission.

Times of Israel footage from the rally showed Avila Chevalier, wearing a keffiyeh, standing next to a protester holding a sign that said, “Zionism is genocide.”

The Times Square rally was largely a celebration of the Hamas invasion, which saw terrorist invaders slaughter more than 1,200 people in southern Israel, mostly civilians, and take 251 hostage.

The demonstrators waved Palestinian flags and chanted, “Resistance is justified,” “Globalize the intifada,” and “Smash the settler Zionist state.” They mocked and made obscene gestures toward Jewish counter-protesters.

Demonstrators also chanted “700,” apparently referring to the confirmed number of Israeli fatalities in the attack at the time, and held up the number seven on their hands while making throat-slitting gestures. Others flashed victory signs with their hands while shouting insults.

Avila Chevalier defended her participation in the rally in a Thursday statement to City & State.

“I have been advocating for the human rights of Palestinians for my adult life. And as someone who has seen a pattern, whenever anything happens on the ground [in Israel], there’s always a really outsized reaction that costs thousands of people their lives,” Avila Chevalier said. “That is what I was worried about.”

“At the core of it all for me is human dignity. And I think so often we get lost in the ‘well on this date, and on that date’ when it’s all cyclical, if we don’t get to the core of how we disregard the human rights and dignity of some people over others,” she said.

New York City’s chapter of the far-left Democratic Socialists of America — Mamdani’s base — endorsed Avila Chevalier in January. The party co-sponsored the October 8, 2023, rally, then walked back the endorsement days later.

Mamdani did not attend the rally. In an interview last year, he dismissed the party’s endorsement of the rally as an offhand social media post. Mamdani’s statement the day after the attack mourned “the hundreds of people killed across Israel and Palestine in the last 36 hours,” condemned Israel for going to war, and called for dismantling Israeli “apartheid.”

Espaillat, a Democrat, is a five-term incumbent, the first Dominican American and first formerly undocumented immigrant in Congress, and the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus.

Avila Chevalier has attacked Espaillat for his support for Israel, such as in votes to send military aid to the Jewish state, and has accused Espaillat, who has earned the endorsement of the pro-Israel group AIPAC, of being “bought by the Israeli lobby.”

Espaillat has been targeted over Israel in the past. His Manhattan office, which had posters of Israeli hostages on its windows, was vandalized with anti-Israel graffiti in 2024.

Espaillat has the backing of centrists in the city, such as the Jewish New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin, who is leading efforts to combat antisemitism in the council. He has longstanding ties to unions.

The protest controversy comes after posts surfaced from an account that Avila Chevalier deleted. In the posts, Avila Chevalier denied Israel’s existence, called to abolish police and borders, decried interracial relationships and “white liberals,” voiced support for Communism, and used profane language to disparage police, the Democratic party establishment and Kamala Harris.

In 2020, Avila Chevalier reposted a comment that said, “Israel doesn’t exist.” That same year, she branded Joe Biden, then a candidate for the presidency, as a “rapist” and a “war criminal,” called the US a “fucking disgrace,” and attacked Jewish US Sen. Bernie Sanders, a harsh critic of Israel, for “liberal Zionism.”

Avila Chevalier has said she has “grown considerably” since the posts, telling WNYC, “I’m not interested in relitigating the politics of my tweets, which are politics of the past.”

She has been involved in pro-Palestinian activism since before she graduated from Columbia University in 2016, when she was part of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine group, and in the 2016 formation of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which is aligned with the larger Boycott, Divest and Sanctions movement against Israel. She later helped organize Columbia’s Gaza encampment as an alumna in 2024.

Mamdani, an anti-Zionist, has also endorsed New York City congressional candidates Brad Lander and Claire Valdez. All three of his endorsees oppose US military aid to Israel.

The Avila Chevalier-Espaillat primary will take place on June 23.

JTA contributed to this report.