When politicians speak out about Israel, antisemitism, or the Holocaust, what they omit can matter as much as what they say. In the digital arena, where nuance collapses within seconds, ambiguity often becomes ammunition.

The case of New York politician Zohran Mamdani, a progressive rising star who will likely become the mayor of New York City, illustrates this dynamic vividly. His statements about Israel, antisemitism, and the war in Gaza have sparked heated debate — not only for their content, but for the way strategic ambiguity allows them to be interpreted in starkly different ways.

Our research analyzed Mamdani’s rhetoric across multiple platforms — from television interviews to TikTok and YouTube — and traced how his words were reframed by influencers and audiences online.

The findings reveal how ambiguous political language can fuel polarization, distort Holocaust memory, and invite antisemitic readings that the speaker may never have intended.

The Power — and Peril — of Ambiguity

Ambiguity functions as a rhetorical strategy: it allows politicians to gesture in several directions at once, offering different audiences the interpretations they prefer. This flexibility provides plausible deniability, yet also creates an opening for distortion and hate.

Mamdani’s communication style is a textbook case. His remarks on Israel and antisemitism frequently hover between empathy and insinuation, critique and deflection — giving the impression of moral seriousness while avoiding clear commitments.

The effect is twofold: admirers see courage and compassion; critics see evasion and coded hostility. But the real consequences emerge online, where ambiguous statements are picked up by content creators, reframed through ideological lenses, and amplified to millions — often in ways that intensify division and resentment.

Omissions That Speak Volumes

Following Hamas’ October 7, 2023 massacre, in which terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and abducted more than 250, Mamdani issued a statement that conspicuously omitted any mention of Hamas or its victims.

Instead, he accused the Israeli government of preparing a “second Nakba.”

Such omissions are not neutral. In political communication, what is left unsaid shapes interpretation just as powerfully as explicit statements. By focusing solely on Israel’s alleged actions, Mamdani’s message erased the context of terrorism and Jewish suffering — effectively reframing a massacre as an act of “resistance.”

This pattern continued in later comments. Mamdani publicly repeated claims — later shown by independent investigations to be caused by a misfired Palestinian rocket — that Israel had bombed the Al-Ahli hospital in Gaza and that pro-Israel students at New York protests had used “chemical weapons.” Both claims spread rapidly online before being debunked. Yet even after corrections, the emotional narrative — Israel as aggressor, Jews as oppressors — remained intact.

When asked about these inaccuracies, Mamdani rarely corrected himself. Instead, he shifted attention to alleged efforts to silence him. In one speech, he attacked the lobbying group AIPAC as “undermining American democracy.” In the version later posted to his social media, that line was quietly edited out — an omission that further invited speculation and conspiratorial readings.

The pattern is consistent: statements are made, outrage follows, then a revised version appears — leaving both supporters and detractors to project their own meanings onto the ambiguity.

Reframing and Decontextualization

Much of Mamdani’s rhetorical power lies in reframing contentious slogans. During debates and interviews, he defended the chant “From the River to the Sea” as an expression of “universal human emancipation,” detaching it from its historic associations with the destruction of Israel. Likewise, when confronted about the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” he called it “a call for justice,” likening it to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In the Bulwark podcast, he cited the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s translation of “intifada” as “uprising” — implying moral equivalence between Jewish resistance during the Holocaust and Palestinian militancy today. Such analogies, presented as scholarly nuance, flatten historical distinctions and convert Holocaust memory into a tool of political comparison.

This decontextualization serves two purposes: it universalizes Jewish suffering (suggesting it belongs equally to all oppressed peoples) and downplays antisemitic violence within the Palestinian movement.

The result is a moral narrative where Jewish trauma becomes a universal metaphor, detached from Jewish history — a rhetorical move with deep emotional resonance and troubling implications.

“Right to Exist” — With Conditions

Mamdani’s statements about Israel’s right to exist are similarly ambivalent. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, he affirmed support for Israel “as long as it abides by international law” — a condition that effectively renders recognition provisional. In a later debate, he reiterated that Israel has “a right to exist” but declined to say “as a Jewish state,” instead describing a hypothetical state “with equal rights.”

These formulations sound reasonable, but they subtly shift the premise: from defending Israel’s right to exist as the world’s only Jewish homeland — a right enshrined after the Holocaust — to questioning the legitimacy of Jewish self-determination altogether.

Such framing enables both deniability (“I said they have a right to exist”) and accusation (“but they are violating it”).

How Digital Amplification Works

Our team analyzed hundreds of YouTube and TikTok videos discussing Mamdani’s remarks, focusing on content creators with large followings such as Hasan Piker, Kyle Kulinski, Sam Seder, Guy Christensen, and Vaush.

Across these channels, we coded the creators’ framing of Mamdani’s rhetoric and examined the first 200 comments per video.

The pattern was unmistakable: ambiguity in Mamdani’s statements invited radical amplification online. Influencers portrayed him as a victim of “smears,” “Islamophobia,” and “AIPAC propaganda.”

In turn, comment sections erupted into open antisemitic conspiracy theories.

1. Denial and Inversion

Creators like Piker dismissed accusations of antisemitism as “fake nonsense,” claiming they were “weapons” to silence pro-Palestinian voices. Commenters echoed this denial, insisting that “antisemitism is a made-up shield” and calling the Anti-Defamation League the “Apartheid Defense League.”

This rhetorical inversion — portraying those who identify antisemitism as aggressors — transforms legitimate concern into alleged oppression. It blurs the line between defending free speech and trivializing hate.

2. Competing Victimhood

Another recurring pattern was reversal of victimhood. Influencers framed criticism of Mamdani as evidence of Islamophobia, arguing that “Muslim politicians are automatically branded antisemitic.” In comment sections, this morphed into claims that Jewish concerns about antisemitism are “privileged” over Muslim experiences of discrimination.

This competitive framing pits minority groups against one another, eroding solidarity and obscuring the specific nature of antisemitism as a distinct, historically rooted form of hate.

3. Conspiracy and Servility Tropes

When Democratic leaders criticized Mamdani, content creators claimed they were “doing AIPAC’s bidding.” Commenters took this further: “The Zionists control every dimension of life,” one wrote. Others invoked classic antisemitic imagery — “Follow the $$$ … puppets of Israel” — or even violent fantasies, predicting Mamdani would be “JFK’d” if he continued defying “the lobby.”

These narratives recycle centuries-old myths of Jewish financial and political control, now reframed in the language of internet populism.

4. Normalizing Anti-Israel Rhetoric

Creators like Kulinski claimed Mamdani’s stance represented “mainstream Democratic opinion,” suggesting most Americans — even Jewish ones — share his criticisms of Israel. Commenters adopted this as fact, declaring that “the only thing Zionists fear is losing power.”

This normalization transforms hostility toward Israel into a marker of political authenticity. Within this logic, accusing someone of antisemitism becomes proof of their moral courage — a dynamic increasingly visible across progressive movements.

5. Holocaust Inversion and Dehumanization

The most alarming finding was the reversal of Holocaust imagery. Influencers compared Israel to Nazi Germany; commenters fused the terms into slurs like “Zionazi” or “Isra-heil.” Some even glorified violence, cloaking assassination fantasies in gaming metaphors: “Trump and Netanyahu in NY? Perfect 2-for-1 moment for the Mario Brothers.”

While such remarks may seem fringe, they accumulate into a broader culture of digital derision — a climate where violent and dehumanizing speech becomes normalized through humor, irony, or moral outrage.

From Ambiguity to Escalation

The progression across these layers — Mamdani’s original statements, influencers’ reinterpretations, and audience reactions — shows how strategic ambiguity can spiral into participatory hate.

1. Primary discourse: Mamdani’s words, open-ended and self-protective, avoid explicit antisemitism while enabling multiple readings.
2. Secondary discourse: Influencers reframe his critics as tools of oppression, inverting accusations and legitimizing resentment.
3. Tertiary discourse: Audiences collapse nuance entirely, producing overt antisemitic language and violent fantasies.

As meaning travels outward from the politician’s mouth to millions of screens, moral ambiguity collapses into moral abdication. This discursive spiral is not unique to Mamdani. It reflects a broader trend in digital politics, where rhetorical vagueness is weaponized by audiences seeking validation rather than understanding.

The Broader Challenge

Mamdani’s case highlights a growing dilemma for democracies: how to handle rhetoric that inflames division without crossing into illegal hate speech. Platforms and policymakers still struggle to address this “gray zone,” where statements remain technically permissible yet have corrosive downstream effects.

Democracy depends not only on freedom of speech but also on responsibility in speech. Politicians who wish to champion justice cannot outsource the meaning of their words to online mobs. Clarity is not censorship; it is accountability.

As the digital public sphere amplifies every utterance, the boundary between rhetoric and radicalization narrows. Mamdani’s example should serve as a warning: when ambiguity becomes a political habit, amplification becomes inevitable — and the cost is borne by those targeted in its echoes.

Dr. Matthias J. Becker is a Researcher in discourse studies at the University of Cambridge and New York University, and Research Lead at AddressHate. He directs the “Decoding Antisemitism” research project, which analyzes how antisemitic ideas spread in digital communication.

Gabrielle Beacken is a PhD student in Journalism and Media at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on propaganda, disinformation, and online antisemitism across social media and emerging technologies. She is a Research Assistant at the Center for Media Engagement’s Propaganda Research Lab. 

Liora Sabra is a PhD student in Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University. Her research explores antisemitism, Holocaust memory, and propaganda, focusing on definitional debates and their reflection in public discourse. She works at NYU’s Center for the Study of Antisemitism, contributing to research on prejudice and political communication.

A few days ago, I watched Haviv Rettig Gur respond on Instagram to a question I’ve been asked more times than I can count: “Didn’t the Jews use terrorism to drive out the British?”

Every pro-Israel advocate — and likely every proud Jew — has faced this question, usually delivered with a smirk. That little “gotcha” glint that implies moral equivalence: Your state was born out of terror, how dare you complain about buses being blown up and babies being murdered.

But the moral chasm between the Jewish fight against the British and Palestinian terrorism is not a matter of opinion or spin. It is moral and historical fact. The refusal to recognize that difference says far more about the questioner’s bias or ignorance than about Israel and how it gained independence.

Imperial Subjects and Stateless Refugees

When the British Empire seized control of the region called Palestine from the Ottomans in 1917, Jewish leaders saw them not as occupiers but as potential partners in restoring Jewish sovereignty. The Balfour Declaration had promised a “national home for the Jewish people” in part of what was then called Palestine — the historical Land of Israel — and the San Remo Conference of 1920 enshrined that promise in binding international law.

But within a few short years, Britain retreated from its commitments. London carved away three-quarters of the land that was meant for the Mandate to create a new Arab-only country called Transjordan, appointed the radical Haj Amin al-Husseini as Grand Mufti of Jerusalem — a man who would later collaborate with the Nazis — and, in 1939, on the eve of the Holocaust, issued its infamous White Paper, sealing the gates of the remaining quarter of Mandatory Palestine to Jewish immigration.

At the very moment Jews in Europe were facing extermination, Britain blocked their only escape route. The United States had already closed its doors; Canada, Argentina, Australia, and nearly every other nation followed suit. As Hitler’s armies advanced, Jews had nowhere to go.

Fighting an Empire With Nowhere to Go

By 1945, roughly 250,000 Jewish survivors remained trapped on German soil, living in displaced-person camps — many in former concentration camps. The world by then largely knew about the horror of the Holocaust and still left them stateless. Only in May 1948, when Israel declared independence, did those camps finally begin to empty.

People often say the Jews “kicked the British out.” The truth is more complex. Britain’s empire was already collapsing; the loss of India made Palestine an even more expensive burden. But the Jewish undergrounds — particularly the Irgun and Lehi — hastened Britain’s withdrawal.

Their campaign was fierce but targeted. They targeted railways, communications, and military installations — not civilians. Their message was simple: Go home.

The King David Hotel bombing in 1946 — endlessly cited by Israel’s detractors — was aimed at the British military and intelligence headquarters for all of Palestine and Transjordan. Civilians tragically died, including Jews and Arabs, but the target was military. Crucially, the Irgun phoned in a warning to evacuate. The British ignored it.

Menachem Begin, who led the Irgun, was devastated by the civilian deaths. That reaction matters. It shows the moral line the Jewish fighters recognized — a line no Palestinian faction, from the PLO to Hamas, has ever cared to draw.

The Lesson the Palestinians Haven’t Learned

Imagine if Palestinians had followed that same model — if their fight had been confined to soldiers and military targets. Instead, since the 1950s, Palestinian terrorism has centered on murdering civilians as a deliberate strategy: to terrorize, to try and make Jewish life unbearable, and to drive Jews from their homeland.

From the Ma’ale Akrabim massacre in 1954 to the airline hijackings of the 1970s, from suicide bombings in the 1990s to the atrocities of October 7, the goal has remained constant — not self-determination but the mass murder of civilians to break a people’s will.

During the Second Intifada, 140+ suicide bombings ripped through Israeli buses, cafés, and markets. These attacks weren’t meant to change borders; they were meant to destroy coexistence itself.

The Moral Core — and the Fatal Misreading

As Haviv Rettig Gur observed, the Jews who fought the British never sought Britain’s destruction; they sought Israel’s rebirth. That distinction — between fighting for freedom and fighting for annihilation — is the essential moral divide.

It’s why Israel built a democracy while Gaza’s rulers built a cult of death. It’s why Jewish leaders accepted the 1937 and 1947 partition plans, choosing half a loaf over endless war, while the Mandate’s Arab leaders — led by the Mufti who sided with Hitler — rejected both.

When the Palestinian Authority, Fatah, and Hamas gained control of territory, they didn’t try to build a state; they built repression, corruption, and terror infrastructure. Jewish leaders, by contrast, used the small strip of land they held after the War of Independence in 1948 to build a thriving democracy.

The Zionist militias before 1948 understood something Palestinian leaders never have: the British were foreign rulers who could leave. The Jews are indigenous and will not. Israelis are not “colonizers” in any part of the historic Land of Israel. They are a people who reclaimed sovereignty and self-determination in their ancestral home.

Any Palestinian leadership that continues to see Jews as the British in 1939 — as temporary outsiders to be expelled — guarantees only endless conflict. Israel’s founders fought not merely for survival, but to restore moral agency and national self-respect after 2,000 years of exile and persecution – in both Arab and European controlled lands. That is the revolution Palestinians have never attempted — the decision to undertake nation-building instead of defining it by someone else’s destruction.

The Moral Ledger of History

Today, when many Western academics and activists equate Jewish efforts to end British imperial rule with Hamas’ slaughter of civilians, they expose their own moral illiteracy. They flatten history until those who targeted soldiers are equated with those who butcher children in pizza parlors and buses.

But history keeps receipts.

One side sought life. The other glorified destruction.

That is the difference between a revolt and terrorism — and it’s a difference the world ignores at its peril.

For peace ever to be possible, Israelis must have real reasons to believe Palestinians no longer see them as the British of 1939 — but as a permanent, indigenous people who are not going anywhere.

Micha Danzig is an attorney, former IDF soldier, and former NYPD officer. He writes widely on Israel, antisemitism, and Jewish history and serves on the board of Herut North America.

Israel’s founding prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once quipped: “If an expert says it can’t be done, get another expert.”

While there are established facts no matter who says them, that wisdom has certainly been vindicated in the war that began with Hamas’ October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel.

Over the past two years, politicians, academics, journalists, and analysts – people routinely presented as “experts” – have issued dire predictions and sweeping moral judgments about Israel and its enemies. Again and again, they were wrong.

Here are ten examples.

1. The General Who Underestimated the IDF

Soon after October 7, a US three-star Marine lieutenant general assigned to advise Israel warned against a ground invasion, predicting Israel would lose 20 soldiers a day. His projection – over 14,000 fatalities – proved vastly exaggerated. The 918 IDF soldiers killed remain a national tragedy, but the prediction of catastrophic losses was, like many others, baseless.

2. The Hezbollah “Victory” That Never Came

On October 4, 2024, Samer Jaber, a PhD researcher at Royal Holloway University, wrote on Al Jazeera: “Hezbollah has been dealt a heavy blow, but it can still win over Israel.” A year later, Hezbollah has been dismantled as a fighting force, and even Lebanon’s own government now regards it as an enemy.

3. The “World War III” Predictions

When Israel – and later the US – struck Iran in June 2025, media outlets including The Independent and The New York Times warned of “catastrophic consequences” and “the start of World War III.” The Iranian ambassador to France declared such a scenario inevitable. Yet instead of triggering global war, the strikes crippled Iran’s terror network and, in the absence of one of its primary sponsors, forced Hamas to accept a ceasefire.

4. The UN’s “14,000 Babies” Claim

In May 2025, Tom Fletcher, the UN’s humanitarian chief, told BBC Radio 4 that “14,000 babies will die in the next 48 hours unless we can reach them.” His words were repeated uncritically by The New York Times, NBC, ABC, TIME, and The Guardian. The prediction never materialized — and was proved to be a manipulation of other statistics — but the damage to Israel’s image did.

5. The Manufactured “Famine”

UNRWA head Philippe Lazzarini repeatedly warned of an “imminent famine” in Gaza. Yet under the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, famine can only be declared if three specific thresholds are crossed: 20 percent of households face extreme food shortages, 30 percent of children suffer acute malnutrition, and two or more people per 10,000 die of hunger each day. None of those conditions was met. For Gaza’s population, that would mean over 400 starvation deaths daily – a figure not claimed even by Hamas.

6. The “Genocide Scholars”

Omer Bartov, a professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, declared in The New York Times: “I’m a genocide scholar. I know it when I see it.” He first accused Israel of genocide in December 2024 — months before the war’s end.

Yet Gaza’s population rose throughout the conflict as Israel consistently evacuated civilians from combat zones. Genocide requires intent to destroy; Israel’s intent was to protect. As HonestReporting board member Salo Aizenberg dryly noted, to become a member of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, “all you need is a credit card.”

7. The Misread ICJ Ruling

In May 2024, the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to halt any actions in Rafah that could bring about the destruction of the Palestinian people in whole or in part. But major outlets — BBC, CNN, NBC, Newsweek — misreported it as a blanket ban on Israel’s Rafah operation. The IDF proceeded, eliminated Hamas’ last stronghold, and the supposed “violation” never materialized.

8. The “Restrained” Hamas

On the eve of the October 7 attack, Israel’s own National Security Adviser, Tzachi Hanegbi, confidently described Hamas as “restrained.” Speaking privately on the afternoon of October 6, he noted that Hamas had stayed out of Israel’s recent clashes with Islamic Jihad and was focused on sending more Gazan workers into Israel. Sixteen hours later, Hamas invaded.

Hanegbi — fired by Prime Minister Netanyahu this week — had also told Maariv in September 2023, “I don’t see our enemies raring to fight, not in Lebanon, not in Gaza, and not in Syria.”

9. Did Hamas Choose Stability Over Jihad?

Historian and former deputy minister Michael Oren wrote after Operation Shield and Arrow in May 2023 that Hamas had “chosen social and financial stability over jihad.” In reality, Hamas’s “restraint” was strategic deception — a prelude to October 7. The calm wasn’t peace; it was preparation.

10. The Prophet of Doom

In May 2025, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman predicted Israel was “preparing to re-invade Gaza” and “advance annexation” in the West Bank. His headline read, “This Israeli Government Is Not Our Ally.” Six months later, President Trump declared the war over. There was no annexation, no mass expulsion — just another failed prophecy from the paper that rarely learns.

The Pattern: Expertise Without Accountability

From generals to journalists, UN officials to academics, the pattern is the same: overconfidence, distortion, and a lack of accountability when “expert” narratives collapse.

Ben-Gurion’s advice still stands: when an expert insists something can’t be done — or invents horrors that never were — it’s time to find another expert.

The author is the Executive Director of HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.