Condemnation games

You must condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” That’s the demand that some pro-Israel politicians, reporters, organizations, and activists keep making of Zohran Mamdani, New York City’s presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor.

The manufactured controversy surrounding Mamdani and this phrase began days before the June 24 election, when a radio host asked Mamdani for his thoughts about unnamed pro-Palestinian activists who supposedly use such language.

Instead of outright condemning the phrase, Mamdani said, “I know people for whom those things mean very different things.” He said that some who say it are trying to express a “desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights,” and noted that the US Holocaust Museum had used the word “intifada” in Arabic-language descriptions of the 1944 Warsaw Uprising against Nazi Germany.

Former New York Gov Andrew Cuomo and other Mamdani opponents seized on his nuanced response, embellished and exaggerated what he said, and loudly condemned him. By the time the dust settled, members of the public and even prominent politicians like Sen Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) were claiming that Mamdani himself had actually used the phrase. He hadn’t.

In fact, no member of his campaign staff had ever used the phrase or even said “intifada,” an Arabic word often translated as revolution or uprising that has been used to describe the largely peaceful Arab Spring protests and that was indeed used by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum until it quietly dropped the phrase.

Yet, even after Mamdani’s stunning victory in the Democratic mayoral primary, reporters and some politicians keep demanding that Mamdani condemn the phrase. During an interview with “Meet the Press” on Sunday, June 29, Mamdani was repeatedly asked why he has declined to do so.

This time, Mamdani said it was not a phrase he would use and that he understood concerns about it, but that he did not want to police speech as the mayor of New York or legitimize President Donald Trump’s efforts to deport activists based solely on their pro-Palestine speech.

In other words, Mamdani doesn’t want to end up as an evidentiary footnote in a Justice Department deportation filing against a student protester or set a precedent that makes him responsible for condemning every problematic chant shouted at a pro-Palestine rally over the next four years.

Fair enough. But there’s another, even more important reason Mamdani shouldn’t have to condemn the phrase: Put simply, no one would ask him to do so in the first place if he was not a Muslim.

Think about it. There are plenty of other politicians opposed to the genocide and critical of the Israeli government, including Sen Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), Rep Alexandria Ocasio Cortez (D-NY) and former Rep Jamaal Bowman (D-NY).

Has anyone ever asked them to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada?” Of course not. Why should they have to answer for a phrase they have never used, that none of their staffers have ever used, and that hardly anyone else ever uses?

Excerpted: ‘Why Mamdani and Other US Muslims Now Refuse to Play the Condemnation Game’. Courtesy: Commondreams.org