Mamdani: ‘Plight’ of Palestinians brought me into politics

The Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City has repeatedly espoused anti-Israel rhetoric.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The anti-Israel Democratic candidate for New York City mayor told an audience five years ago that the Palestinian cause was the reason he entered politics, Haaretz reported Thursday.

The left-wing daily publicized a recording of a meeting candidateZohran Mamdani held over Zoom in 2020, during the Covid-19 pandemic, when he was running to become a state assemblyman.

The reason he became “politically active in the first place,” the Muslim politician told his listeners, was because he “came up through” what he called “the Palestinian solidarity movement.”

Born in Uganda to Indian parents, Mamdani lived for three years in South Africa, “where apartheid had just ended and there was a feeling that although it had ended in South Africa ,it was still going on in Palestine, and it was incumbent on everyone who had fought it here to fight it there,” he said.

“I grew up without any false conceptions about the narrative as opposed to the reality,” he said, espousing the Palestinian anti-Israel rhetoric.

“When you look at some of the demands of the Palestinians, they are so basic and made out to be so convoluted,” he added, without mentioning the decades of Palestinian terrorism and rejection of numerous offers on Israel’s part to try to solve the conflict.

After only four years as assemblyman, Mamdani beat out a crowded field last month in the Democratic primaries to become the front-runner to head the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel.

Notwithstanding his claims of not being antisemitic, he has refused to condemn calls for violence against Jews, such as “Globalize the intifada”; termed Israel’s war of self-defense against the Hamas terror organization in Gaza a “genocide”; and threatened to have Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrested and charged with war crimes if he comes to New York, in line with the controversial warrant issued by the International Criminal Court last November.

His victory has alarmed many Jewish New Yorkers.

“Among the battle cries of those who seek to murder Jews is to ‘globalize the intifada,’ and as a purveyor of that attitude, as someone who rationalizes and minimizes and denies the dangers that accrue to the Jewish people and the importance of the State of Israel, it’s deeply concerning” that Mamdani won, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, told JNS in an interview.

Mamdani became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018, a decade after moving to the U.S. with his family at age seven.

Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi last week calling for the Justice Department to initiate denaturalization proceedings against the politician, whom President Donald Trump called “a communist.” Mamdani’s political platform includes adding heavy taxes to wealthy New Yorkers to enable free transportation and university for the city’s residents, among other perks.

Trump also threatened to have Mamdani arrested if he becomes mayor and follows through on a pledge to prevent Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from deporting illegal immigrants from the city.