New York City’s Democratic mayoral candidate told business leaders that he would seek to discourage the use of the phrase “globalize the intifada” but continued not to outright denounce it, the New York Times reported late Tuesday.
Zohran Mamdani made the comments during a closed-door meeting with the Partnership for New York City, an influential business consortium, the newspaper reported. Mamdani’s positions on Israel, which he has long criticized, were a central topic of the meeting, according to the report, which noted that the Jewish Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla was among those challenging Mamdani on issues related to Israel.
Signaling that he would discourage the phrase, which many Jews and others interpret as a call to violence against Jews, would represent a shift for the candidate. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state Assembly member, declined to condemn the phrase on a podcast shortly before the primary last month. Facing sharp criticism, he later said it’s “not the language I use” but has consistently said he believed the mayor should not police language.
Mamdani’s opponents in November’s general election — three independents and a Republican — are citing his comments as they paint him as antisemitic, and several leading Democrats have called on him to unequivocally denounce the phrase.
A recent poll found that one in three New York voters view Mamdani’s position on the phrase and on the movement to boycott Israel positively, but more than half say they are less likely to vote for him because of them.
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