A group of leftist New York State lawmakers on Friday reintroduced a bill that would strip nonprofit status from organizations that engage in “unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity,” reviving a failed legislative effort first launched in 2023 by then-Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani, who now serves as mayor of New York City.

The measure, known as the “Not On Our Dime! Ending New York Funding of Israeli Settler Violence Act,” was unveiled at a press conference in Long Island City. Assembly Member Diana Moreno, who succeeded Mamdani in the State Assembly and is one of nine Democratic Socialists of America-endorsed members of the state legislature, is carrying the bill in the Assembly. State Senator Jabari Brisport is sponsoring the legislation in the State Senate.

If passed, the bill would align New York state law with the Geneva Convention and the International Criminal Court, which define Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory as illegal. The legislation considers East Jerusalem, including the Old City, as occupied territory.

The bill would empower the New York attorney general to dissolve the nonprofit status of organizations that knowingly fund settlement activity and to impose fines of no less than one million dollars. It would also explicitly allow Palestinians who have been harmed by violence funded by New York-based charities to file lawsuits against them.

Co-sponsors in the State Senate include Kristen Gonzalez, Julia Salazar and Robert Jackson. In the State Assembly, the bill is co-sponsored by Claire Valdez, Emily Gallagher, Marcela Mitaynes, Phara Souffrant Forrest, Sarahana Shrestha, Jessica González-Rojas, Steven Raga, and Yonkers representative Nader Sayegh.

“We have a moral responsibility to defend human rights and push back against displacement and violence,” Senator Gonzalez said. “Our tax dollars should not support violations of international law in the West Bank or anywhere, and we can make that possible by passing the Not On Our Dime Act.”

The bill was introduced over Shavuos, and there was therefore no immediate response from major Jewish organizations.

Jewish groups had opposed the original 2023 version of the bill, arguing that its broad definition of settlement activity would have stripped nonprofit status from a wide range of mainstream Jewish charities, including volunteer ambulances and other organizations that operate in settlements but do not advance settlement activity, as well as social service groups operating across the Green Line that do not support settlement expansion. The original bill was swiftly rebuked by colleagues in the State Assembly and never came to a vote.

Mamdani’s 2023 measure proposed amending the state’s nonprofit law to “prohibit not-for-profit corporations from engaging in unauthorized support of Israeli settlement activity,” and Mamdani said at the time that it would stop the flow of roughly $60 million annually from New York-based nonprofits to settlement-linked entities. The 2023 bill said nonprofits that spent at least one million dollars in violation could be sued, fined by the state attorney general, and lose their tax-exempt status.

Mamdani, who took office as mayor in January, declined to reject the prospect of enacting similar legislation at the city level during the 2025 mayoral race. “Charities and nonprofits that receive a taxpayer subsidy should not support the violation of international law, and that’s what the right-wing Israeli settlement project is doing,” he told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, calling it “an effort that goes against the stated foreign policy of our own government, going back several decades.”

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