Shaking off Zohran Mamdani’s Violent Doublespeak

It is appropriate to fear political leaders who hide behind double meanings of violent words.

The word “intifada” can mean “uprising” and comes from the Arabic root for “shaking off.”

Also, the word “holocaust” can be defined a burnt offering, and the word “lynching” can mean to severely criticize or condemn. But that’s not the reality that any of these words represents on the ground, including “intifada.”

Like many self-styled anti-Zionists, Democratic NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mandani claims that the call to “globalize the Intifada” is not a call for violence against Jews globally but really just a “desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.” He claims to have concern for universal human rights.

As recently as this weekend, Mamdani also claimed he won’t condemn the phrase because it’s not his role as mayor to police free speech. The interview gives the impression that there’s no speech he would condemn because he’s such a free-speech absolutist, but, of course, Mamdani also supports the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction movement against Israel, which seeks to isolate Israel from active participation in science and culture.

The trouble for Mamdani is that he has painted himself into a corner. He has left a very specific written and video track record that makes his position clear and concrete. He actively supports globalizing the intifada: global violence against Jews including in New York City, the city he wants to manage, and he hides behind obvious doublespeak to do it.

While he claims to support these causes against Israel in the name of “universal human rights,” his concern is not quite so universal. Mamdani started a chapter of SJP at Bowdoin, but he didn’t also start clubs at his elite liberal arts college to advance equal rights for Palestinians in the 20+ Arab Muslim countries that actually deny Palestinians equal rights. In Syria, Jordan, Iraq, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Morocco, and Libya, the UAE, and others, many or most Palestinians may never obtain the full citizenship, professional status, and property rights that they can earn in Israel, Latin America, and the West. Not one concern from Mamdani.

Of course, Mamdani doesn’t express concern about the non-Muslims who suffer fewer human rights in Muslim countries, either. In Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Malaysia, the Maldives, Algeria, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Mauritania, and others, various rules oppress non-Muslims in various ways. Christian churches are banned, non-Muslim prayer is outlawed, non-Muslim court testimony is not considered seriously, sharia law favors Muslims over non-Muslims in family courts, non-Muslims cannot inherit or become citizens or hold government office, and on and on and on. No concern from Mamdani about “universal” human rights here, either.

In 2013, five years before becoming a US citizen, Mamdani expressed enthusiasm about the Muslim Brotherhood and one of its enormous acts of violence in Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is “one of the most influential Islamist organizations in the world,” and it is banned in most Arab countries because of its religious fundamentalism [1] and penchant for violent terrorism [2]. 

In 2015, Mamdani tweeted about a “looming” third intifada. 

In 2019, Mamdani performed a rap song in which he declares his “love” for the “Holy Land Five,” five men convicted of raising $12M for Hamas, a designated foreign terror organization with openly genocidal intent against Jews. 

By expressing enthusiasm for the Muslim Brotherhood, its massacres, the Holy Land Five, globalized intifada, acknowledging a looming “third intifada,” not expressing concern about Muslim oppression of Palestinians, and not acknowledging Muslim oppression of non-Muslims, Mamdani fully tips his hand. He knows there were two specific intifadas in Israel: the first in the 1980s and 90s and the second in the 2000s. He knows both intifadas were eventually violent, and he wants more of that violence, not just in Israel but globally.

Indeed, despite Mamdani’s protestation, since the first use of the word “intifada” in 1952 in Iraq, there has never been — not once — a fully nonviolent intifada anywhere. And the dictionary that says “intifada” means uprising also says that the word refers to the first two intifadas: attacks against innocent civilians in Israel.

In light of his paper trail, Mamdani’s support for a globalized/third intifada is really quite analogous to support for a “Second Holocaust,” claiming as a defense that a Holocaust is actually just a burnt offering, and finally complaining that the people worried about his calls for genocide of Jews were being oversensitive.

His message is as concrete and specific as it would be to glorify the charismatic leaders of the first Holocaust, lamenting only that the first Holocaust was just not quite global enough. 

His track record reads to most Jews like the call for the “lynching” of the majority of Black people, only then to say that lynching is really just to severely criticize or condemn. 

This is why most Jews are afraid of Mamdani: because Mamdani as an individual human being and as a politician is actually calling for violence against Jews worldwide and hiding behind doublespeak to do it. In light of his claim that violence is a social construct, one wonders if he might even consider violence against Jews to be the protected free expression of anti-Zionist political beliefs.

The murder of Jews in far-away places doesn’t seem to rank high on the list of primary concerns of Democrats in New York City. Mamdani may not recognize violence, but New Yorkers sure do. And perhaps understanding that Mamdani is calling for violent, collective punishment against Jews in New York City will concern enough people to stop his election as mayor of the city with the most Jews in the world.

Footnotes:

1. According to Al-Da’wah, the official publication of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Brotherhood’s goals are to “create an Islamic order” based on the use of Sharia law in place of Western or secular law; “an economy based on Quranic principles;” a ban on the sale of alcohol; outlawing of birth control; and the forcing of women to the home to “fulfill their divinely ordered function of bearing and raising children.”
2. The Muslim Brotherhood is either fully illegal or monitored as a potential terror organization in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Russia, Syria, some of Libya, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Sudan, Tunisia, Austria, and Germany. The Muslim Brotherhood funds terror groups Hamas, Hasm, and Liwa al-Thawra. It is also ideologically affiliated with other terror- or terror-associated groups like Al Qaeda, ISIS/Daesh, Al-Nusra, Al Islah, and the Sudan Islamic Movement.