The Oddity of Mamdani’s Agreement to ‘Discourage’ Use By Supporters of ‘Globalize the Intifada’

In his attempt to be elected the next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani has proved himself to be a trimmer. He will even — mirabile dictu — encourage his followers not to use the phrase “Globalize the Intifada.” The phrase, as all people of sense know, is a call to kill Jews indiscriminately, as happened to Israeli Jews during the two intifadas, the first that lasted from 1987 to 1990, and the far more deadly second intifada that lasted from 2000 to 2005, in which more than 1000 Israeli men, women, and children were murdered by Palestinian terrorists. The imperative to “globalize the intifada” means to keep killing, not just Israeli Jews, but Jews everywhere, so that nowhere are they safe. It’s a call for genocide.

Though he has repeatedly been asked to do so, Zohran Mamdani has stoutly refused to denounce the phrase. And he still refuses. He is only suggesting that his supporters not use the phrase because it could alarm some potential voters, and we can’t have that. So just go easy on the phrase, he counsels. The implication is: hold back, but only for now. After the election, the phrase can triumphantly be brought back into unapologetic circulation by Mamdani and his admirers. More on Zohran Mamdani’s latest example of meretriciousness can be found here: “Mamdani Says He Will Discourage Use of ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ Reaffirms Commitment to Anti-Israel Movement,” by Corey Walker, Algemeiner, July 16, 2025:

Facing mounting pressure from Jewish community leaders, business executives, and fellow Democrats, New York City mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani has moved to clarify his stance on the controversial slogan “globalize the intifada,” signaling he will discourage its use while continuing to back the broader anti-Israel movement it represents.

And so Mamdani semaphores the following: “I’m not backing away from the phrase, I still support it, as you do, but just for a few months, until the election on November 4, could you put a lid on it? It upsets some people who can be so thin-skinned. I think you know whom I mean. And we need their votes. Afterwards, we’ll be completely free to speak our minds.”

In a closed-door meeting this week with over 100 business leaders organized by the Partnership for New York City, Mamdani said he will not use the phrase himself and will urge allies to stop using it as well, attendees told multiple news outlets. The candidate, a democratic socialist and state assemblyman from Queens, emphasized that while the slogan has become a flashpoint, his commitment to the Palestinian movement remains unchanged….

He still can’t do the decent thing, and say that “I have been made aware what that phrase means to many people and I am horrified. I ask my supporters not to use, ever, that phrase which is, I now realize, a call for mass murder of Jewish people.”

Of course he can’t say that. He isn’t horrified. He likes the phrase. He doesn’t much care for Jews, in Israel or anywhere else.

Nonetheless, Mamdani was clear that he does not view “globalize the intifada” as inherently violent. Instead, he said it symbolizes a transnational protest against what he calls Israeli “apartheid.” He described it as a call for political pressure, boycott movements, and international solidarity, not physical confrontation.

No, “globalize the intifada” does not “symbolize a transnational protest against what he calls Israeli “apartheid.” It is not a call for “political pressure,” but a call for mass murder. He is still going to offer his absurd excuses for the phrase, and the more he does so, against the plain meaning of the words “globalize” and “intifada,” the more silly and sinister he appears.

Last month, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada” by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.”

Warsaw Ghetto? Yes, of course. According to Zohran Mamdani, the Palestinians in Gaza are being held captive, and treated just as the Jews were in Warsaw by the Nazis, in a “ghetto” from which they cannot escape, and which will impliedly be followed by trips to the gas chamber. But the Palestinians are not pent up in Gaza. Since October 7, 2023, 150,000 people have left Gaza, through the Rafah crossing. And before October 7, 19,000 Gazans had been traveling to Israel every day to work, and received wages four times what Palestinian employers would pay them. Had Hamas not attacked on that day, the Israelis were planning on hire even more workers from Gaza. There are no concentration camps, no snarling German shepherds, no electrified fences, no forced hard labor at breaking rocks, no whips, no killing vans, no gas chambers, no medical experiments conducted by Dr. Mengele, no murdering of innocents.

Let us remind the egregious Zohran Mamdani that of the 2.2 million people in Gaza, less than 1% of them have been civilians who died as a result of the war. According to Hamas, 58,000 Gazans have died so far. Of those, according to the IDF, 24,000 have been Hamas combatants. In addition, 800 Gazans die each month — and did so before the war — from accidents and disease. In the 21 months of war, 16,800 died of non-combat-related causes. Do the math, and one finds that 58,000-24,000=34,000; 34,000-16,800 =17,200. Thus 17,200 civilians died in Gaza as a result of the war. Those deaths are regrettable. But out of population of 2.2 million, they constitute less than 1% of the population. Can anyone claim that to be “genocide”? Well, Zohran Mamdani has, but has yet to present the data to support that spurious charge.

Mamdani won’t condemn the notorious phrase. He believes that indeed we “should globalize the intifada,” and make life so difficult for Jews everywhere that they will have to abandon their support for the colonial-settler ethnic-cleansing genocidal state of Israel. He will, however, stop using the phrase himself, and urge his followers to do likewise, until November 4, Election Day, after which he and they can say what they really think.

Mamdani’s reasoning is thus: other people have used similar language, so that must mean that the phrase can’t be that bad. Besides, “when I use a word, it means what I want it to mean.” The Humpty-Dumptyism of Zohran Mamdani now extends to whole phrases. When he talks to Jewish leaders, of course he assures them that he won’t be using that particular phrase, but he still won’t denounce it.

How many voters, appalled by Mamdani’s previous use of the phrase “ globalize the Intifada” and his continued refusal to condemn it, will now be assuaged by his promise not to use the phrase and to discourage his supporters from doing so? How many are likely to forgive his refusal to condemn the phrase and to mistake his studied reluctance to use the phrase as equivalent to its repudiation? Very few, I think. Here I’d like to invoke Abraham Lincoln, the very opposite of Zohran Mamdani in every way, who famously said: “You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time.” Amen.