It’s not a one off at a rally it’s a prominent expression of a movement that he has made a part of his political brand. It’s an expression used to justify violence. It would be one thing if he hasn’t been involved since college, but he has, and it’s a loud part of a movement he is part of.
I'm sure someone somewhere has used the expression to justify violence, but you present no evidence that that's its dominant meaning, and I've marched & rallied ~ 10 times for Palestine alongside hundreds of thousands of people and don't recall ever hearing the expression during any of that.
We're not talking about something like "from the river to the sea", which I _have_ heard many many times with my own ears during rallies & marches, and which has _also_ been pointed to as a supposed endorsement of violence and even genocide. A genuinely common slogan like that might feasibly be...
...connected to a politician who speaks at a rally. But pointing to an expression that's clearly far more obscure? I'm afraid that really is guilt-by-straw-clutching.
I’ve heard it many times. The 2 prior intifadas were extremely violent. So I think my experience is different than yours which may shadow some of this. He himself said the word was used by the holocaust museum to describe the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Also he isn’t making the argument it’s obscure.
I've heard it many times, now, from people trying to use it to paint Mamdani as a threat. Which is a different thing. And I'm not claiming _he_ is making the argument it's obscure; _I_ am making the argument that it _was_ obscure (before podcasters & pundits lifted it out of obscurity)...
...because a load-bearing part of your argument is that it's "a prominent expression of a movement". If you're going to walk that back now, OK.
A very quick google search has articles about the phrase, before the last few weeks. I’m willing to take your word you haven’t heard it, you aren’t willing to take mine that I have
Yes, I'm aware that Google has a date-range feature. Pre-June results are the Wikipedia page (citing 3 uses of the phrase worldwide at post-October 7 protests), then mostly a bunch of pages decrying the phrase rather than rigorously documenting its prevalence. As for taking your word...
...I'm not disputing that you have "heard it many times". I merely notice that you don't say _where_ you've "heard it many times". Hearing the phrase from pundits and the ADL condemning it doesn't count; have you specifically heard the phrase "many times" _at the protests_ under contention?
Also: Mamdani made his point about the USHMM using the word "intifada" only a week ago _when it was brought up to him_ on that Bulwark podcast, and the first intifada was not "extremely violent" unless you're counting Israel using it as a pretext to kill over a thousand people.
Intifada specifically conjures those specific acts of violence, and he did the work of associating it with violence, even justifying a phrase. It’s really easy to say - I disagree with the phrase keep that answer and move on, and he won’t
You've decided that a phrase that is, at worst, ambiguous "specifically conjures those specific acts of violence" (which acts, anyway? The IDF's 1000+ bodycount I just mentioned?), so you're big mad at the guy who recognizes the ambiguity. You're entitled to get mad about that...
...I just can't see it as anything but vindication of my original observation that "you're volunteering for the firing squad".