Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is finding himself on the defensive Thursday as backlash grows over his refusal to denounce the controversial slogan “globalize the intifada” — a phrase which incites violence against Jews.

Mamdani, a state assemblyman from Queens and avowed democratic socialist, struggled to clarify his position at a press conference, offering a vague and at times meandering defense. “These words have different meanings for many different people,” Mamdani said, pivoting to affordability issues and insisting he opposed “any incitement of violence.”

But his remarks did little to quell the controversy. Instead, they deepened the political fallout, with even one of his most prominent allies, New York City Comptroller Brad Lander — who recently cross-endorsed Mamdani in the ranked-choice race — publicly expressing discomfort with the phrase.

“I hear it as a violent call,” Lander said on the “Pod Save America” podcast this week. “Maybe you don’t mean to say it’s open season on Jews everywhere in the world, but that’s what I hear.”

The remark came in the wake of recent attacks on Jews in the U.S. tied to pro-Palestinian rhetoric, including the assassination of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., and a Molotov cocktail attack in Colorado.

Lander said he still believes Mamdani is “a person of decency and integrity,” and reaffirmed his second-place vote for him in the city’s ranked-choice primary. “We do not agree on everything about Israel and Palestine,” Lander said on Thursday, “but I do believe that he will protect Jewish New Yorkers.”

Still, Lander’s public unease highlighted a growing divide on the left, where solidarity with Palestinians has collided with concern over antisemitism. Mamdani has argued that the “globalize the intifada” chant — often heard at protests — should be seen as a call for Palestinian human rights. He even attempted to neutralize the phrase by pointing out that the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum once used the Arabic word “intifada” to describe the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising by Polish Jews.

The museum swiftly rejected that framing.

“Mamdani’s comparison is misleading and historically inaccurate,” a museum representative said, pushing back on his attempt to blur the term’s contemporary meaning.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)