NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has repeatedly refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada.” He was given a pass by a large share of liberal Democrats once he promised not to use it and counsel others not to either. Contrast this to how liberals reacted to the antisemitism of the white supremacists eight years earlier.
On May 13, 2017, there was a demonstration of about 800 white supremacists that was part of the larger protest against the removal of statues honoring Confederate Civil War fighters. The white supremacists chanted: “We will not be replaced, Jews will not replace us.” Subsequently, they tried a few additional demonstrations nationally, all with much fewer participants, often dwarfed by counter anti-racist demonstrations.
When President Trump said that there were good people on both sides, referring to the broader statues issue, it was seized on by liberals, claiming that he was being an apologist for the white supremacists. At the time, many liberal organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), were making every effort to associate anti-Jewish hatred with the right-wing.
The Daily Beast reporter Jay Michaelson falsely claimed, “The vast majority of anti-Semitic attacks in this country are carried out by right-wing white supremacists.” The ADL source referenced highlighted the murders in Poway (CA) and Pittsburgh (PA). In its comprehensive report on antisemitic incidents, the ADL reported: “In 2018, 249 acts of anti-Semitism (13 percent of the total incidents) were attributable to known extremist groups or individuals inspired by extremist ideology.” However, it noted that putting up flyers in public places or making robocalls comprised 229 of these incidents.
Thus, outside of the murders, virtually none of the assaults or direct harassments were perpetrated by white supremacists.
This liberal approach became increasingly difficult to sustain when there was an upsurge in antisemitic acts over the next couple of years. In December 2019, there was unprecedented violence against orthodox Jews throughout the NYC metropolitan area: killings in Jersey City, knifings in Monsey, and the whack-a-Jew Hanukkah actions in Brooklyn. (RELATED: Schumer and the Democrats’ Antisemitism Problem)
While it was white supremacists who chanted, “We will not be replaced by Jews,” it was individuals with informal ties to an anti-Jewish black nationalist sect that carried this out in Jersey City. They killed the owner and two customers inside a Jewish business that was at the center of a group of orthodox Jews who had been moving into the Jersey City community. After the murders, a trustee of the Jersey City public schools, Joan Terrell-Paige, wrote that Jews “brazenly came … wav[ing] bags of money. Resistance was met with more threats of WE WILL BRING DRUG DEALERS AND PROSTITUTES TO LIVE NEXT DOOR TO YOU.”
Sympathizing with the murderers, she claimed, “Are we brave enough to explore the answer to their message? Are we brave enough to stop the assault on the black communities of America?” When elected officials called for her resignation, Carolyn Oliver Fair, the executive director of the North Jersey Chapter of the Al Sharpton-led National Action Network, defiantly defended Terrell Page: “She said nothing wrong. Everything she said is the truth.”
Even after the Monsey knifings by a black antisemite, de Blasio still saw Trump’s rhetoric as the driving force. Indeed, the ADL’s executive director, Jonathan Greenblatt, was unwilling to combat anti-Jewish beliefs within the black community when, in response to de Blasio’s proposal to increase police presence in afflicted Jewish neighborhoods, he worried about “the adverse consequences that ramped-up policing have often had on communities of color.”
More so than a few years ago, antisemitic acts have become dominated by leftwing activists, often under the banner of “globalize the intifada.” The phrase energizes them to harass Jews both verbally and physically, everywhere they can. Typical was their May actions at the Brooklyn College Hillel, where I am a board member. They kept both members and daycare families that use the building trapped inside for 30 minutes until police belatedly cleared an exit. (RELATED: The Madman Cometh — And There’s Apparently No Stopping Him)
The liberal reaction to the killings in D.C. and Boulder, Colorado, has stretched this liberal apologist narrative. New York Times columnist Masha Gessen argued that “violence that looks antisemitic may — even when it very effectively serves to scare a great many Jews — be something else.” Instead, it was politically driven. This, I would argue, helps rationalize Mamdani’s stance.
Fortunately, a few Democrats have been very direct in their criticism of Mamdani. He has failed to condemn “blatantly antisemitic” rhetoric, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said in an interview with Jewish Insider. “You have to speak and act with moral clarity, and when supporters of yours say things that are blatantly antisemitic, you can’t leave room for that to just sit there,” Shapiro said in the interview. “You’ve got to condemn that.”
Comptroller Brad Lander, representing the dominant wing of NYC Democrats, immediately pushed back. He said, “Josh Shapiro won’t help keep Jews safe in NYC or Pennsylvania by feeding Trump’s narrative about our Democratic nominee for mayor.” Even if something is true, it is out of bounds if it feeds a Trump narrative. This is one more example of how the deep animus towards Trump infects liberal thinking, and it should be rejected.
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Robert Cherry is an American Enterprise Institute affiliate and author of the forthcoming book, Arab Citizens of Israel: How Far Have They Come? (Wicked Son Press, Fall 2025).