Zohran Mamdani. Photo: Ron Adar / SOPA Images via Reuters Connect

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani said he would “discourage” use of the controversial “globalize the intifada” phrase during an interview with social activist and MSNBC host Al Sharpton on Sunday, attempting to create more distance between himself and the divisive slogan. 

Sharpton pointed out that Mamdani’s previous refusals to condemn “globalize the intifada” hurt and offended many Jewish New Yorkers and asked whether his “personal views have changed” over the course of his mayoral campaign.

“Yes, they have,” Mamdani said, adding that he has committed to “wrestle with the complexities” of discussing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with New Yorkers. 

Mamdani shared that he’s conducted meetings with various “Jewish elected officials, with rabbis, with community leaders,” since the controversy surrounding his defense of the slogan. He said that a rabbi told him that the slogan reminded her of various bus bombings in Haifa, Israel, and that she feared that extremists could terrorize Jews in New York City. 

The slogan, which gained traction at anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests worldwide amid the Israel–Hamas war in Gaza, has been criticized by many Jewish New Yorkers who associate it with calls for violence against Jewish and Israeli civilians. The term “intifada,” Arabid for “uprising,” refers to two periods (the first beginning in 1987 and the second in 2000) when Palestinian terrorists ramped up violence targeting Israelis that included suicide bombings, shootings, and stabbings. Critics argue that invoking the intifada in a global context promotes the spread of political violence and implicitly endorses attacks on Jews, Israelis, and supporters of Israel worldwide.

Mamdani added that he recognizes there is a “gap” between the supposed intention of the slogan — which he claims is a call to bring attention to the so-called “Israeli occupation of Palestinian land” — and the impact the slogan has on many Jews in New York City. 

“This is language I would discourage,” Mamdani said. 

In June, Mamdani defended the phrase “globalize the intifada” by invoking the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising during World War II. In response, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum repudiated the mayoral candidate, calling his comments “outrageous and especially offensive to [Holocaust] survivors.” Amid backlash, Mamdani reportedly told a group of New York City business leaders that he would “discourage” use of the controversial slogan in a closed-door meeting in July. However, until now, Mamdani had not publicly distanced himself from the chant.

Mamdani’s attempt to reframe the slogan has drawn mixed reactions. Some Democratic leaders have said the clarification doesn’t go far enough. High-profile Democrats in the US Congress from New York such as Rep. Ritchie Torres, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand have all urged Mamdani to condemn the slogan, arguing that the phrase has violent connotations.

Mamdani has also experienced intensifying scrutiny regarding his position on Israel since his surprise win in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary. 

Mamdani, a representative within the New York State Assembly and member of the far-left Democratic Socialist of America (DSA), has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career.

A self-described democratic socialist, Mamdani has both advanced state legislation seeking to punish Israel and labeled the Jewish state’s defensive military operations in Gaza a “genocide.” In 2021, he issued public support for the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — an initiative which seeks to economically and diplomatically isolate Israel as the first step toward its eventual destruction.

On Oct. 8, 2023, 24 hours following the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust when Hamas invaded southern Israel, Mamdani published a statement condemning “[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin’ Netanyahu’s declaration of war” and suggesting that Israel would use the terrorist attacks to justify committing a second “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.

Public safety professionals attending an antisemitism training session organized by the New York City Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism and the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety on Sept. 8, 2025. Photo: Provided

Roughly 150 public safety professionals from across New York City on Monday attended a “first-of-its-kind” training on antisemitism hosted by Mayor Eric Adams’ Office to Combat Antisemitism and the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Kaz Daughtry at the Police Academy in Flushing, Queens.

Public safety officers and trainers from over a dozen city agencies attended the workshop, including the New York City Police Department (NYPD), school safety division, parks enforcement patrol, taxi and limousine commission police, and the departments of sanitation, health and mental hygiene, environmental protection, corrections, probation, and administration for children’s services.

The mayor’s office said the “high-level” event highlighted “the city’s commitment to equipping frontline personnel with the tools, context, and understanding to identify and respond to antisemitism in its modern forms.” Monday’s session opened with remarks from First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro, Deputy Mayor for Public Safety Daughtry, and Moshe Davis, executive director of the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism.

“This training is part of our city’s all-of-government approach to combat antisemitism head-on. We are not only responding to hate but working to understand where it’s coming from, who is fueling it, and how it’s evolving,” Davis said. “Education is a powerful tool in that fight. By equipping our public safety professionals with the knowledge and context they need, we’re ensuring they can confront antisemitism wherever it appears, whether it be in our parks, our schools, our streets, and beyond. This is how we protect the safety and civil rights of every Jewish New Yorker.”

After opening remarks, there were presentations led by two experts in the field of antisemitism. David Collins, a retired FBI special agent and senior research fellow at the George Washington University Program on Extremism, discussed continuously evolving antisemitic extremism in the United States, and the ties between propaganda, terrorism, and the increase in anti-Israel rhetoric. EJ Kimball, director of interfaith engagement at the Combat Antisemitism Movement, then talked to the public safety professionals about how to recognize and identify hate symbols and behaviors, antisemitism, and other forms of hate in their respective fields.

Monday’s event was the first of a series of workshops that the Mayor’s Office to Combat Antisemitism will organize for city employees in the next few months to ensure that they are receiving the training and understanding needed to confront antisemitism.

“Keeping New York City’s streets safe is the first step to fighting antisemitism and all forms of hate,” Adams said in a released statement. He noted that every officer, trainer, and city employee “must know how to recognize and respond” to antisemitism.

“That’s why we brought together New York City’s public safety leadership, to confront how antisemitism is evolving: how ancient hatred is being repackaged through conspiracy theories, political extremism, and propaganda masquerading as activism,” he explained. Adams added that his administration created the Office to Combat Antisemitism to lead with “clarity, coordination, and education, and it’s why we’re now training the people who keep this city safe.”

“From swastikas and inverted red triangles to threats against Jewish students or synagogues, we will not let hate gain ground,” he said, referring to the fact that inverted red triangles have become a symbol of support for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

“In the face of rising global antisemitism, New York is setting a national standard. Here, we fight hate with action. We will fight for the city we love,” the mayor added

Adams’ interagency task force to combat antisemitism held its inaugural meeting in July. A month earlier, New York City adopted the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism.

Cast member Olivia Colman attends the world premiere of “Wonka,” at Royal Festival Hall, in London, Britain, Nov. 28, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Maja Smiejkowska

Javier Bardem, Olivia Colman, Emma Stone, Brian Cox, and Ayo Edebiri are among the more than 2,500 film industry professionals who pledged on Monday not to work with Israeli film institutions and companies that they claim are “implicated in genocide and apartheid against the Palestinian people.”

Oscar, BAFTA, Emmy, Cannes, Berlin, Venice, César, Goya, and Peabody Award winners are included in the list of film industry figures who signed an open letter about the pledge that was published on Monday by a group called Film Workers for Palestine. The signatories include Mark Ruffalo, Peter Sarsgaard, Tilda Swinton, Cynthia Nixon, Alyssa Milano, and Lily Gladstone. Jewish Hollywood figures such as Ilana Glazer and Hannah Einbinder have also signed the pledge, as well as vocal critics of Israel who had made antisemitic comments in the past such as Susan Sarandon, Miriam Margolyes, and Ken Loach.

Others who signed the pledge include prominent writer-directors Yorgos Lanthimos, Adam McKay, Ava DuVernay, and Joshua Oppenheimer; producers James Wilson, Robyn Slovo and Tracey Seaward; and Oscar-nominated producer-director Mike Lerner. The group said they pledge not to screen films or to appear at or work with Israeli film institutions — including festivals, cinemas, broadcasters, and production companies – complicit in alleged “genocide and apartheid” against Palestinians.

“It is the responsibility of every independently minded artist to use whatever powers of expression they possess to support the global resistance to overcome this horror,” said Lerner in a released statement. “This pledge is an essential non-violent tool to undermine the deadly impunity that Israel and its allies currently enjoy.”

The open letter began by stating that “in this urgent moment of crisis, where many of our governments are enabling the carnage in Gaza, we must do everything we can to address complicity in that unrelenting horror.”

“We answer the call of Palestinian filmmakers, who have urged the international film industry to refuse silence, racism, and dehumanization, as well as to ‘do everything humanly possible’ to end complicity in their oppression,” the letter stated. Examples of complicity allegedly include “whitewashing or justifying genocide and apartheid, and/or partnering with the government committing them,” as written in a footnote of the open letter.

Film Workers for Palestine said Monday’s pledge was inspired by Filmmakers United Against Apartheid, a group founded by Jonathan Demme, Martin Scorsese, and 100 other filmmakers in 1987 who refused to distribute and screen their films in apartheid South Africa.

On a FAQ page, Film Workers for Palestine claimed that most Israeli film production and distribution companies, institutions, sales agents, and cinemas benefit from “Israel’s system of apartheid” and have never “endorsed the full, internationally recognized rights of the Palestinian people.”

Jewish screenwriter and director David Farr, who also signed the pledge, said, “As the descendant of Holocaust survivors, I am distressed and enraged by the actions of the Israeli state, which has for decades enforced an apartheid system on the Palestinian people whose land they have taken, and which is now perpetuating genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza. In this context I cannot support my work being published or performed in Israel.”