It’s hard to believe that there could be a candidate who is too far to the left even for Democrat politicians who behave as if Uncle Joe Stalin were a MAGA Republican, but such is the Democrat Party these days. New York’s left-of-Castro Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-Planned Parenthood) has come out against the Muslim Marxist candidate for mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani. When you’ve lost even Kirsten Gillibrand, it might be a good time for you to pause and engage in some reflection about whether heading back in the direction of sanity might be a good idea. But whether Mamdani will do this remains an open question.
Gillibrand appeared on radio host Brian Lehrer’s WNYC radio show on Thursday and took Mamdani to task for refusing to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada.” After a caller expressed concern about this, Gillibrand said: “The caller is exactly the New York constituents that I’ve spoken to that are alarmed. They are alarmed by past public statements. They are alarmed by past positions, particularly references to global jihad. This is a very serious issue because people that glorify the slaughter of Jews create fear in our communities. The global intifada is a statement that means destroy Israel and kill all the Jews.” That is true. Intifada means “uprising” or “rebellion,” and during the two intifadas that Palestinian Arabs declared against Israel, numerous Israeli civilians were killed.
Gillibrand went on to call upon Mamdani to assure New York City voters that he would “protect all Jews and protect houses of worship and protect funding for not-for-profits that meet the needs of these communities.” She intimated that she was working with Mamdani and was making progress in this direction: “One of the issues I did talk to him about yesterday was exactly this issue, and he has agreed to work with me on this and to protect all residents.”
Lehrer, however, disputed Gillibrand’s claim that Mamdani was as radical as she had said. “On Mamdani,” he said to her, “I just feel compelled to say we can find no evidence that he has supported Hamas or has supported violent jihad…. Can you? He was never out there saying ‘globalize the intifada.’ He was asked about others who used it.”
This was technically true. Mamdani has not used the phrase. He has, however, also refused to condemn it. In mid-June, he said in an interview with The Bulwark: “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 didn’t say anything about the Israeli civilians murdered during the First and Second Intifadas, and even went so far as to add: “And I think what’s difficult also is that the very word has been used by the Holocaust Museum when translating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising into Arabic, because it’s a word that means struggle.”
A search of the Holocaust Museum’s website doesn’t turn up any use of the term “intifada” in connection with the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and if what Mamdani is saying about an Arabic translation is true, it’s an unfortunate choice of words, as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising didn’t involve the murder of any civilians. In any case, after that, Mamdani played the ever-ready victim card, saying: “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.”
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Gillibrand didn’t appear aware of all this, as she responded a bit defensively to Lehrer’s challenge, saying that she didn’t have “all the data and information,” but remembered Mamdani making a reference to “global intifada.” Lehrer went in for the kill, telling Gillibrand that Mamdani had explained to him that calls to globalize the intifada were “not calls for violence because intifada is a much broader term involving all kinds of uprisings and resistance and things like that.”
This, however, was a bill of goods that Gillibrand wasn’t buying, even from one of Mamdani’s highly touted free grocery stores. “Brian,” she said, “I didn’t hear your exchange with him, but if I was speaking to him directly, I would simply say that is not how the words are received. It doesn’t matter what meaning you have in your brain. It is not how the word is received. When you use a word like intifada — to many Jewish Americans and Jewish New Yorkers, that means you are permissive of violence against Jews.”
Indeed. It looks as if New Yorkers have a choice now of whether to approve of such violence or to reject it. Which they will choose is anybody’s guess, but Kirsten Gillibrand, of all people, has made her stance clear.
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