Zohran Mamdani, who won the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City, attends an endorsement event from the union DC 37 on July 15. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Twenty years ago, nearly to the day, I was permanently displaced from my homeland of Gaza as a 15-year-old, just one of the many human tragedies experienced by Palestinians in the wake of the Second Intifada and Hamas’s ascension to power.
Today, in New York City — a place my brothers and sisters in Gaza see as a beacon of hope and freedom — I recognize an opportunity for change, one that could help bring peace and a prosperous future to my beloved homeland.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel of Oct. 7, 2023, I have lost 33 family members to the terrifying war in Gaza. But I choose, amid my grief, to keep cultivating a stubborn hope that we can still opt for a future in which Palestinians and Israelis live side by side in peace. That’s why I was heartened by recent comments from Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate to be New York’s next mayor, acknowledging that the slogan “globalize the intifada” carries real-world consequences that must not be ignored, and committing to discouraging its use.
For many Palestinians who lived through the First and Second Intifada, the phrase does not signal resistance. Instead, it signals disaster. It evokes personal memories of suicide bombings, drone strikes, hardened borders, and lost lives.
Those campaigns were not protests advocating for Palestinians to have rights, safety and autonomy. They were a blueprint for more suffering.
After his explosive rise during the Democratic primary, Mamdani is already the most visible Muslim politician in the United States today. If he ascends further — as a candidate and, eventually, an elected leader — his platform will grow, and so too will his ability to shape the discourse on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
That is why what he says about that conflict matters — even though, as many have pointed out, the mayor of New York City has no foreign policy portfolio. Because when someone with his background and voice begins to question whether the rhetoric of violence is really that bad, it creates space for others to do the same.
The Palestinian cause is not served by glorifying failed strategies. The First and Second Intifadas, especially the latter, devastated the very communities they claimed to liberate.
They empowered extremists and deepened the suffering of civilians. They helped erode the prospect of the two-state solution by damaging the peace movement in Israel and fueling a rightward shift of Israeli politics and society. Lives were lost; physical walls went up; and extremist Israeli political players were given carte blanche to expand settlements in the West Bank — even while withdrawing from all settlements in Gaza — and disregard the Palestinians. The eventual result of the horror and violence associated with the Second Intifada, in Israel, was the idea that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict didn’t need to be solved, but merely managed.
Civilians in Gaza are still paying the price. The Second Intifada is why I lost my hearing in my left ear in 2001. Two of my friends were killed by Israeli bombardment. It was also why I was desperate to get out of Gaza and experience an alternative kind of life; I joined a temporary exchange program, after which I couldn’t return to Gaza due to Hamas’s rise.
That rise was, itself, empowered by the extremism bred during the Intifadas. The First Intifada, even though it started as a non-violent uprising, was when Hamas was formally established, beginning first its reign of terror against Palestinian civilians, and then against Israelis. The Second Intifada provided Hamas with a qualitative leap in its ability to carry out large terror attacks against Israelis, and enabled it to lay an ideological, propaganda, and political infrastructure which directly led to its full takeover of Gaza.
Now, Hamas’s theocratic project has hijacked Palestinians’ national aspirations and helped mire us instead in a permanent state of siege. Its provocations are designed to invite retaliation that leaves entire neighborhoods in ruins and generations traumatized.
When slogans like “globalize the intifada” are adopted by activists in the West, they may be intended as a symbolic gesture. But symbolism has consequences. Language that erases Israeli trauma or valorizes extremist violence does not move us closer to peace.
Instead, it pushes the sides further apart, and strengthens the hand of extremists in both Israeli and Palestinian society.
Mamdani helped co-found a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, an organization that often embraces the kind of maximalist and confrontational posture manifested in that language — language that, during the primary, Mamdani drew fire for refusing to wholeheartedly decry. That path has not delivered freedom.
But now, he has the opportunity to chart a different course — one grounded in dignity, mutual recognition, and the belief that true solidarity means rejecting all forms of dehumanization, whether of Palestinians or Israelis.
Imagine what it would mean to hear a prominent American Muslim leader say:
“I oppose occupation, and I reject rhetoric that legitimizes violence.”
“I believe in two states for two peoples, living side by side in peace.”
“I grieve for Gaza, and I acknowledge Israeli pain.”
Some would call that a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. I call it courage.
I believe it is the kind of moral clarity voters are longing to hear — especially in a city as diverse, global, and emotionally invested in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as New York. And I think that an American Muslim leader modeling that kind of clarity could help the discourse around that conflict in the U.S. stop being focused on recriminations about the past, and start, instead, focusing on productive solutions for the future.
Though I no longer live in Gaza, I remain in close touch with my family and community there. They don’t ask for slogans. They ask for safety. They ask for opportunity. They ask for someone to say, clearly and unequivocally, that their lives matter — and so do the lives of their Israeli neighbors, because the lives of people in Gaza and people in Israel are inextricably intertwined.
Mamdani now has a rare opportunity to lead not just a campaign, but a conversation. He can show how protest shapes policy, and how values influence governance. That’s what leadership looks like.
It starts with telling the truth, even when it’s unpopular. It starts with rejecting extremism, even when it’s cloaked in the language of justice. And it begins with saying clearly: We can do better than bloodshed. We must.
