Zohran Mamdani’s opponents paint him as a dangerous radical. The young, socialistic candidate for New York City mayor wishes to dispel that perception—in some ways. Last week, he appeared on a podcast with The Bulwark’s Tim Miller, a former Republican and the sort of moderate Mamdani knows he needs to win over, or at least neutralize, if he is to carry this week’s Democratic primary. As Miller presented a litany of concerns about Mamdani’s plans to freeze stabilized-housing rent, establish city-run groceries, and other offenses against Econ 101, the candidate expressed a willingness to hinge his policies on outcomes and abandon his plans if they failed.
But when Miller asked Mamdani about the pro-Palestine slogan “Globalize the intifada,” the candidate’s pragmatism and intellectual humility evaporated. “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.
Mamdani may sincerely believe this, as do some of his supporters. But he then delved into the semantics of intifada, citing the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s use of the word as the translation of “uprising” in an Arabic version of an article the museum published about the Warsaw Ghetto. This comparison, to a Jewish armed rebellion against the Nazis, hardly dispels concern about the incendiary implications of the slogan. If the intifada is akin to the ghetto uprising, then it is a call for violence. If its theater of operations is global, then it is necessarily directed against civilians. Days before the Democratic primary, when Mamdani appeared to be gaining momentum, the controversy about his comments on Miller’s show dragged the race’s focus back to the Middle East, a subject that Mamdani has not emphasized in his campaign. Yet this debate has largely missed the significance. What makes the slogan so disturbing in an American context is not the intifada bit. It’s the globalize part.
An unfortunate spillover effect of the war between Israel and Hamas is its extension into U.S. politics. If we are heading toward a future in which even candidates for local office in the United States run on their position toward the Middle East, American politics will come to resemble that intractable conflict. The pluralist alternative is to confine conflict over Palestine and Israel to any national elected office that could have actual influence on U.S. foreign policy. Everybody needs to be willing to live with a mayor who does not share their personal solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict.
Mamdani’s defense of globalizing the intifada has spurred more commentary about his left-wing views on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But his beliefs about Israel are not the concern. The intifada is taking place inside Israel and the Occupied Territories. Globalizing the intifada definitionally involves events outside that region.
Even if globalizing the intifada doesn’t have to mean global violence, that interpretation is plausible. Indeed, some people inspired by the free-Palestine movement do take the slogan literally. Supporters of the movement have engaged in harassment, graffiti, and violence and terrorism against Zionists worldwide. In recent months, pro-Palestine activists have carried out homicidal or potentially homicidal attacks in Pennsylvania; Washington, D.C.; and Colorado.
The ambiguity of the slogan is not a point in its defense but a point against it. The dual meanings allow the movement to contain both peaceful and militant wings, without the former having to take responsibility for the latter. If activists refused to employ slogans that double as a form of violent incitement, it would insulate them from any association with the harassment and violence that has tainted their protests. Their failure to do so reveals an unwillingness to draw lines, as does Mamdani’s reluctance to allow any daylight between him and their rhetoric.
Mamdani is neither stupid nor politically naive. He has backtracked on his previous support for defunding the police and, as mentioned, courted moderates (such as my colleague Derek Thompson, in an interview for the latest episode of his podcast, Plain English) by saying that his governing agenda would be driven by outcomes over ideology. If Mamdani is willing to absorb the political pain of tying himself to a slogan that many Jews find frightening, in an election in which they constitute a major voting bloc, his gloss on the slogan implies a genuine commitment to everything the slogan represents.
Mamdani insisted to Miller, evasively, that he won’t repudiate globalizing the intifada because, as he put it, “the role of the mayor is not to police language.” Yet there’s no rule in politics that says a mayor or a candidate can’t criticize political rhetoric. Nor has Mamdani bound himself to such a prohibition: He has policed the terminology of his opponents by, for instance, complaining that he has faced “dehumanizing language” as a Muslim candidate for office.
Mamdani defended himself by denouncing anti-Semitism in broad terms and painting his opponents as cynics for using imputed anti-Semitism as a political cudgel against him. This offers little reassurance. Almost everybody is willing to renounce anti-Semitism on the opposite side of the political spectrum. The far right is stuffed with philo-Semites, who are willing and eager to attack the scourge of Jew hatred so long as it is on the left, while ignoring or apologizing for the rise of anti-Semitism in their own ranks. The key test of principle—the only test, really—is whether you are willing to call out your allies’ hatred. Mamdani’s refusal on this crucial point is a signal that he will downplay anti-Semitism when it springs from the pro-Palestine movement.
American Jews should be willing to accept a candidate for municipal office who does not share their views about the Middle East. (Arab and Muslim Americans have long been obliged to do so.) A candidate who does not take seriously an incitement to violence against other Americans, though, is not something anybody should have to accept.
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