Anti-Semitic socialist has refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday blasted attempts to “sanitize” the anti-Semitic slogan “globalize the intifada” as “outrageous and especially offensive to survivors” one day after socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani invoked the museum to defend the phrase.
“Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize ‘globalize the intifada’ is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors,” the museum wrote in a Wednesday morning X post. “Since 1987 Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history.”
While the museum’s post did not name Mamdani, the candidate during Tuesday’s Bulwark podcast defended the phrase “globalize the intifada,” a popular chant at anti-Israel protests that calls for violence against Jews worldwide.
The mayoral candidate is polling in second place behind disgraced former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D.), who has called rising anti-Semitism “the most important issue” in the race. Cuomo has condemned calls to “globalize the intifada,” saying that such slogans are “giving license to come after Jews.”
Mamdani claimed during the podcast that the phrase “globalize the intifada” has been misunderstood. “To me, ultimately, what I hear in so many is a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” he said. “And I think what’s difficult also is that the very word [intifada] has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle.”
“As a Muslim man who grew up post-9/11, I’m all too familiar in the way in which Arabic words can be twisted, can be distorted, can be used to justify any kind of meaning,” Mamdani went on. He said he is uncomfortable with “the idea of banning” the phrases “globalize the intifada” and other anti-Semitic slogans such as “from the river to the sea,” which calls for the destruction of Israel.
Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and member of the Democratic Socialists of America, has long faced scrutiny over his anti-Israel stances.
Just a day after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, Mamdani released a statement decrying “Netanyahu’s declaration of war” and “the Israeli government’s decision to cut electricity to Gaza.” A week later, Mamdani took to the street and was arrested outside Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D., N.Y.) home in Brooklyn, demanding that Schumer stop Israel from retaliating against Hamas terrorists.
Mamdani has also refused to acknowledge Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, expressed support for the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement, and declared that, if elected mayor, he will not visit the country.
Other Democrats disagree sharply with Mamdani.
“When you repeat slogans like ‘globalize the intifada,’ you are inciting violence against Jews in the United States and around the world,” Rep. Ritchie Torres (D., N.Y.) wrote on X after two Israeli embassy staffers were murdered outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. “The danger of incitement is no abstraction.”
