Almost all of the news clips about Zohran Mamdani saying he would not visit Israel if elected NYC mayor have been removed from Youtube’s search engine.

In the democratic candidates' debate for NYC mayor, preceding the democratic candidates primary, all of the candidates were asked where their first foreign visit would be. All said Israel with the exception of eventual winner Zohran Mamdani. He was pressed on his refusal to say Israel and eventually asked if he believed in "Israel's right to exist."

I used to look up this clip often, because it was such a bizarre exchange and the reactions in the comment sections signaled such a seachange in American politics. There were pages and pages of results until just before the war with Iran started. Now there are almost none. Not only have most search results from that particular exchange been scrubbed, but it's almost impossible to find any references to the debate at all. The only news video that was returned in my most recent search was a full recap of the debate that didn't mention the Israel exchange at all. If you search specifically for the democratic primary debate NYC mayoral debate, you will either get results from five years ago or from the general debate with all party candidates from a few months later.

The videos themselves haven't been removed. I searched for links on other sites that linked to some videos and I found this one from the NBC 4 New York channel with 1.5 million views. However, when I search the exact title of the video with Youtube's search engine, it is nowhere in the search results.