Mamdani in a recent interview refused to condemn the phrase—understood as a call to violence against Jews and Israelis—leading to a rebuke from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Far-left Zohran Mamdani supporters across the country celebrated their candidate’s victory in the New York Democratic mayoral primary on Tuesday with cheers of “globalize the intifada.”
Mamdani made headlines over his refusal to condemn the phrase—a call for violence against Jews and Israelis—in a recent interview, a decision that led the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to issue a statement sharply criticizing the candidate. While Mamdani has not publicly chanted the slogan, pro-Hamas protesters on college campuses in the United States often do so during their demonstrations.
In recent weeks, radical pro-Hamas terrorists have globalized the intifada themselves, culminating in the Washington, D.C., shooting that left two young Israeli diplomats dead and the firebombing of a group of Jews in Boulder.
One Mamdani supporter who reacted to Tuesday night’s election results was Mohammed El-Kurd, a Palestinian writer and correspondent for the Nation with a history of advocating violence against Jews.
“Consider the intifada globalized,” he wrote on X.
El-Kurd faced scrutiny from British authorities last year after declaring, “We must normalize massacres as the status quo” at an anti-Israel rally. He has praised Palestinian “martyrs” who took part in the Second Intifada—in which terrorists killed over a thousand Israelis—and has described Israelis as “neonazi pigs.” El-Kurd also excused Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in an X post published that same day.
“What is happening in occupied Palestine is a response to weeks and months and years of daily Israeli military invasions into Palestinian towns, killings of Palestinians, and the very fact that millions of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are besieged under Israeli blockade,” he wrote. Months earlier, in February, El-Kurd delivered a lecture at Princeton University, where professor Zahid Chaudhary heralded him as a “truth teller.” El-Kurd went on to tell the crowd that Palestinians have no choice but to resort to violence against Israelis.
Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, recently the subject of a glowing New York Times profile, posted on X that “its [sic] white boy jihad summer.” Piker has said that “America deserved 9/11,” has claimed that “it doesn’t matter if rapes happened on October 7th,” and has exhorted his followers to murder landlords and “let the streets soak in their red-capitalist blood.”
University of Massachusetts Boston professor Jeff Melnick was similarly exuberant.
“Trying not to get stupidly optimistic (though that is kind of my…personality) but maybe this will be a tiny little turn against the Zionist colonization of our speech, our elections, our everything,” he posted to his BlueSky account on primary night. “Globalize the intifada.”
Melnick has over the years described Israel as an apartheid state, saying it was “forged in ethnic cleansing.” He is a longtime advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, which seeks an end to the Jewish state.
Steven Thrasher, chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, posted “Globalize the intifada” to his now-private BlueSky account. Thrasher participated in the pro-Hamas encampment at Northwestern in spring 2024, where he tussled with police officers and gave a speech to the activists present.
“You have gone up against the American empire,” Thrasher told the encampment dwellers. “It might feel scary at times. Because, in essence, a colonial war of occupation is playing out on this lawn.”
Northwestern denied Thrasher tenure earlier this year after the dean of the journalism school deemed his teaching “inadequate.”
“INTIFADA: GLOBALIZED,” added Noah Kulwin, a sometime contributor to the New York Times and New York Magazine.
Though Mamdani has seized the all-important Democratic nomination for mayor, he will still have to successfully navigate the general election before taking the keys to the city.
Former New York governor Andrew Cuomo previously pledged to remain on the ballot in November even if he lost the primary, but his showing Tuesday night cast doubt on his long-term viability. Should Cuomo decide against a third-party run, Mamdani will face incumbent mayor Eric Adams—now running as an independent—and Republican nominee and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa.
His candidacy has drawn support from radical anti-Israel groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which has contributed $100,000 to Mamdani’s PAC to date. He also counts as donors many Columbia University faculty members who signed a letter defending Hamas shortly after the Oct. 7 attack.
