NY Mag’s ‘Habibi City’ Issue Trots Out Bizarre Phrase on the ‘Land Mass Currently Called Israel’

(Photo Credit: @NYMag on Instagram and NDZ/STAR MAX/IPx)

New York Magazine‘s latest issue hailing The Big Apple as “Habibi City” included multiple articles painting Israel as the genocidal ghost haunting the city’s SWANA — or Southwest Asian and North African — population.

One story titled “When Eating Out Is Political” by Medeline Leung Coleman examines how food has been “politicized” in New York City following the 10/7 attack, when Hamas terrorists stormed Israel and murdered about 1,200 people before taking hundreds of hostages, including a baby, back to Gaza.

The report has been called out by many since it was published on Monday for an oddly worded section about a restaurant where the “land mass currently called Israel is titled ‘Discover Palestine.'” Apparently, just using the country’s name and calling it Israel was too incendiary.

And the feature story has some bizarre sections as well.

Writer Zaina Arafat celebrated the surge in Middle Eastern cultural events in NYC and how Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) “has made a point of documenting himself engaging in Muslim rituals.” But while this has all been “beautiful to witness,” Arafat wrote SWANA citizens still have to “face” Zionism. She did not explain how residents face the ideology, but she said it is one of the issues, alongside “xenophobia” and “Islamophobia,” that SWANA New Yorkers have to grapple with.

And while the article touts the “tightly knit communities built by Syrians, Yemenis, and Palestinians,” being Israeli is an inherent problem.

“While Israel is geographically part of the region, the question of whether Israelis can claim a connection to it, particularly given the political framework of terms like SWANA, is complicated — and it gets more so depending on a person’s ethnic background,” Arafat wrote.

To get in the NYC SWANA community’s good graces, the article suggests Jews and Israelis must be “anti-Zionist.”

Arafat also posits the Gaza War was a genocide, writing members of the SWANA community have embraced a shared collection of beliefs which include “what happened in Gaza in the aftermath of October 7 constitutes a genocide.”

The story by Coleman similarly asserted Israel had committed a genocide in Gaza. Coleman wrote about one of her Jewish friends who was so “horrified by Israel’s genocide” she and other Jews “started consulting restaurants’ social-media posts to discern the owners’ political views.”

NY Mag’s story has received a fair amount of pushback online, with Tablet Magazine calling out the aforementioned section about SWANA NYC’ers having to “face” Zionism and Islamophobia.

Tablet said the article completely overlooked the fact that hate crimes against Jews have soared; the outlet’s Instagram account noted the New York Police Department has recorded 178 hate crimes against Jews so far this year, compared to 21 against Muslims — making anti-Jewish hate crimes 8.5 times more likely to occur.

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That comes after Axios reported in May physical assaults against Jews last year “reached the highest levels since 1979.” And when it came to “anti-Semitic incidents,” NYC “saw 860 incidents — by far the largest cluster nationally.”

Tablet editor Liel Leibovitz blasted the issue in a post for The Free Press on Tuesday as well. Leibovitz wrote NY Mag “didn’t just report on the SWANA-fication of New York: It adopted its rhythms, its feverish and conspiratorial thinking, its senseless and illogical formulations, and its rank biases.”

Others on X mocked NY Mag over the “land mass” phrase and the “Habibi City” title, including Washington Free Beacon reporter Jon Levine, who shared a picture of a suspected terrorist who shouted “Allahu Akbar” and threw an explosive at a protest in March.

The attack was not mentioned in the magazine, of course.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.

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