ZOHRAN MAMDANI'S COMMENTS
This month, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani drew criticism from the Jewish community and leading Holocaust experts when he defended the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada” by claiming that the United States Holocaust Museum describes the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as an intifada. “Globalize the intifada,” according to Mamdani, is a slogan that calls for “a desperate desire for equality and equal rights in standing up for Palestinian human rights.”
Mamdani’s comments, though infuriating and disappointing, are reflective of the way the Jewish community has been gaslit by much of the “progressive” left for the past 20+ months.
Since the October 7 massacre, pro-Palestine activists in the west have popularized the slogan and have repeatedly justified its use by drawing (highly inaccurate) comparisons between October 7 and the Palestinian intifadas to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
"Exploiting the Museum and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising to sanitize 'globalize the intifada' is outrageous and especially offensive to survivors. Since 1987, Jews have been attacked and murdered under its banner. All leaders must condemn its use and the abuse of history." - US Holocaust Memorial Museum
"Attempting to defend phrases that are used to incite violence against Jews by referencing Holocaust history is shameful, unethical, and has no place in public or political discourse. As antisemitism and violence rise, our society and leaders need to stand up against the distortion of Holocaust history and unequivocally condemn violence that fuels hate." - Shoah Foundation
THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising took place between April and May 1943 and was the largest Jewish uprising during the Holocaust. It was a last-ditch effort to resist the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto to the death camps, where every single Warsaw Ghetto resident would be gassed or worked to death. What instigated the uprising was the deportation of over 250,000 Warsaw Jews to Treblinka in the summer of 1942. Nearly 100% of Jews deported to Treblinka were gassed upon arrival.
In fact, according to uprising commander Marek Edelman, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto knew that they were facing a certain death either way. “...no one doubted how it was likely to turn out...[Jewish youth wanted to] determine what death they would choose: Treblinka or Uprising.”
In the context of this conversation, it’s worth noting that the Warsaw Ghetto uprising was the work of two Zionist organizations – the socialist, left-wing Jewish Combat Organization and the right-wing Jewish Military Union.
The resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising never once targeted German or Polish civilians. Zero German or Polish civilians were killed in the revolt. In fact, according to German records, a grand total of 17 Nazis were killed in a month of fighting.
THE INTIFADAS
In the Israeli-Palestinian context, there have been two intifadas, which were campaigns of bombings, suicide bombings, stabbings, car-ramming, lynchings, and stone-throwing*, primarily directed at civilians.
- Important to note that the stones in question here weren’t small pebbles, but rather, large stones that killed people.
THE FIRST INTIFADA
The First Intifada took place between 1987-1993. While it included non-violent actions, such as boycotts, strikes, and civil disobedience, it was also characterized by violence – frequently aimed at civilians – including over 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks, and 600 attacks with guns or explosives. In 1993, Hamas began carrying out suicide bombings. Other Palestinian terror groups would soon follow.
THE SECOND INTIFADA
Significantly more violent than the first, the Second Intifada was a 5-year-long suicide bombing campaign, lasting from 2000-2005, with 80% of its targets being civilians. In addition to 141 suicide bombings, Palestinian terrorists targeted Israelis with stabbings, drive by shootings, missiles, hand grenades, land mines, and car bombs.
11 of the 30 victims of the 2002 Passover massacre during the Second Intifada were Holocaust survivors
June 18, 2002: a Hamas suicide bomber detonates in a Jerusalem bus, murdering 19 civilians, including senior citizens and children, and injuring 74 others.
During the Second Intifada, terrorists overwhelmingly targeted civilian spaces in suicide bombings, including cafes, night clubs, malls, restaurants, buses, and more. The motive was clear: to murder civilians.
When you call to “globalize” the intifada, you are calling to globalize this.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was a desperate, last ditch effort to resist the total liquidation (i.e. extermination) of the Warsaw Ghetto. The intifadas – particularly the Second Intifada – were characterized by indiscriminate violence against civilians.
LET'S TALK ABOUT LANGUAGE
There is so much more to the language we speak than the literal definition of words. The contextual meaning of words is crucial in human communication, playing a significant role in language processing and comprehension.
The word intifada comes from an Arabic word meaning “to shake off,” but it’s a term used for violent uprisings or rebellions. It was first used in the 1950s to describe the Iraqi Intifada, a series of violent protests to overthrow the Hashemite dynasty. As mentioned prior, in the Israeli-Palestinian context, there has never been a non-violent intifada, nor has there been an intifada that did not indiscriminately target civilians.
Some apologists claim that an intifada doesn’t necessarily describe a violent campaign because the word simply comes from the term for “shake off.” But this is a completely disingenuous argument, like claiming “Mein Kampf” simply means “my struggle” or “sieg hiel” simply means “hail victory.”
Likely the earliest record of the use of “globalize the intifada” dates to a series of protests in the United States in April 2002, at the height of the most violent of the two Palestinian intifadas.
A DOGWHISTLE AT BEST
Over the past decade, our society has taken great care to clean up its language, more than ever before. There are so many terms we’ve stopped using because they come from problematic histories and have been deemed harmful for a marginalized population. We’ve discussed microaggressions and political dogwhistles. We’ve talked about impact over intent.
Yet somehow we are meant to believe that when crowds of thousands led by groups with intimate ties to those with Jewish blood on their hands call for an intifada, something that, certainly in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, has only ever been a bloodbath, fueled by antisemitic rhetoric and incitement, we are meant to just trust that these people are not actually calling for violence against Jews?
When calls for an intifada are coupled with images of the inverted red triangle, a Hamas marker of violence, are we meant to believe that this doesn’t really imply violence against Jews? When you chant “there is only one solution, intifada revolution,” are we meant to ignore that this alludes to the Final Solution? That the chant explicitly rejects a two or a one-state solution in favor of violence against Israeli civilians, the majority of whom are Jews? When you scream for a global intifada, are we simply meant to ignore that the Islamic Republic’s terror network slaughters Jews not only in Israel, but in the Diaspora as well? Are we meant to ignore that this rhetoric has correlated with the skyrocketing of violent antisemitic incidents elsewhere around the globe, including murder, kidnapping, synagogue bombings, and rape?
For a full bibliography of my sources, please head over to my Instagram and Patreon.