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Elliott Broidy on Rabbi Pini Dunner’s A Populist in New York

Elliott Broidy on Rabbi Pini Dunner’s A Populist in New York

The prospect of Zohran Mamdani – the 33-year-old anti-Israel leftist – becoming the next mayor of New York City is profoundly frightening.

Rabbi Pini Dunner’s assessment in his latest article is spot on. Andrew Cuomo, the former governor of New York, was “taken down by someone who used to perform under the name Young Cardamom and now proudly refuses to condemn calls to ‘globalize the intifada.’”

Mamdani’s policy proposals are ludicrous: “free childcare, frozen rents, free public transport, and a sweeping expansion of affordable housing — all funded, apparently, by sprinkling magic tax dust on ‘the rich.’”

But what grates me the most is Mamdani’s viciously anti-Israel record – he refused to state that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state. He started a chapter of Students for Justice (SJP) in Palestine at Bowdoin College – a pro-terrorist organization that the Combat Antisemitism Movement has called the “leading antisemitic group on American college and university campuses.” SJP regularly incites violence against Jewish and pro-Israel students and glorifies U.S.-designated terrorist organizations, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In refusing to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” – which has led directly to recent murders in Washington, D.C. and a firebomb attack in Boulder, Colorado – Mamdani said that the word “intifada” simply means “uprising” in Arabic, and that in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s (USHMM) Arabic materials, the word “intifada” is used in the context of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

But Mamdani knows what he is doing. The word “intifada” has specific connotations of the Palestinian intifadas against Israeli civilians, the second of which was marked by suicide bombings (including of a Passover seder) and the mass murder of Israelis. (And Kampf is the German word for struggle – you don’t see people going around using that word so freely, but they might as well).

Mamdani’s comments were so egregious that the USHMM was forced to issue a condemnation, writing on X: “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.” Well stated.

Rabbi Dunner’s whole article, which also brilliantly weaves in Torah commentary, can be found here.