The Political Consequences of Spiritual Aimlessness

How is it that Jewish progressives often tolerate or rationalize the slogan “globalize the intifada,” particularly when it provides the soundtrack for violent demonstrations in which Jews are assaulted and their institutions vandalized and defiled? 

According to published reports, socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani received twenty percent of the Jewish vote in the recent New York Democratic mayoral primary. Though some Jewish Democrats expressed alarm over Mamdani’s victory, others deflected when confronted with his record of anti-Israel rhetoric and signified their endorsement, including Congressional leaders from the Senate and House of Representatives. And they did so despite Mamdani’s involvement with the radical Students for Justice in Palestine (“SJP”) when he attended Bowdoin College (he co-founded the campus chapter) and his refusal to repudiate the slogan “globalize the intifada.”

While he finally announced he would “discourage” use of the phrase (without actually condemning it), this came only after his unwillingness to do so had become a political liability (though apparently not enough to prevent his primary win). Moreover, to date he has not renounced SJP.

There is no dispute that “globalize the intifada” is a call to destroy Israel and harm Jews. But if, as Islamists and their progressive allies argue, the slogan simply refers to ending the supposed occupation of a country – “Palestine” – that never existed and the liberation of a people – “the Palestinians” – who are not historically indigenous and who are oppressed only by their own leaders, why internationalize the conflict? Clearly, globalizing the intifada would endanger Jews worldwide, which is consistent with the Hamas Covenant advocating their total annihilation. Indeed, Article Seven contains the following hadith:

“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdullah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews. (Related by al-Bukhari and Muslim.) Sahih Muslim, 41:6985.”

Equally troubling is Mamdani’s connection to SJP, which can hardly be described as a benign human rights organization. As has been widely reported, SJP’s national body (NSJP) referred to Hamas’s atrocities on October 7th as “a historic win for Palestinian resistance” and advocated for more “armed confrontation with the oppressors,” while individual chapters praised the “action” against Jewish civilians, which included murder and kidnapping.

Though such stances and relationships should be disqualifying, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin apparently thought otherwise when he stated: “There’s no candidate in this party that I agree 100% of the time with, to be honest with you. There are things that I don’t agree with Mamdani that he said, but at the end of the day, I always believe…that you win through addition.” So, using this logic, Democrats apparently can “win through [the] addition” of radicals who hurl false blood libels at Israel, disseminate classical stereotypes and conspiracy theories, or legitimize calls for violence against Jews – which essentially is what the term “globalize the intifada” means or implies.

Hmm.

Would Democrats be so magnanimous regarding candidates who incite violence against blacks, Hispanics, women, or gay people? Or who embrace the alt-right or establish local chapters of the Ku Klux Klan? Their failure to see the symmetry between hatred on the right and left bespeaks gross ignorance or moral vacuity – and an extremely high tolerance for one particular kind of prejudice.

As succinctly articulated by the ADL, “[globalize the intifada] is generally understood as a call for indiscriminate violence against Israel, and potentially against Jews and Jewish institutions worldwide.” The ADL also noted that “in the days following Hamas’s October 7 invasion of Israel, NSJP and many of the organization’s campus chapters explicitly endorsed the actions of Hamas and its armed attacks on Israeli civilians…”

So, why do Democrats fail to understand – and why do many continue to (a) tolerate radicals and Islamists for whom “globalize the intifada” is a call to violence, and (b) contextualize the abhorrent ideology of SJP? It is unnerving to see Jewish leftists chanting the slogan – along with other genocidal mantras like “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – while falsely accusing Israel of apartheid and sacralizing the myth of Palestine.

If one were to associate a major political party with tolerance for antisemitism these days, it would be the Democrats, not the Republicans. Indeed, by welcoming antisemitic hatemongers into their ranks and elevating them to positions of authority, they demonstrate partisan myopia and skewed moral values.

There can be no doubt that slogans like “globalize the intifada” refer to the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews – just as there was no doubt about the meaning of antisemitic shibboleths from past generations. For liberal Jews familiar with the history of such rhetorical attacks over the centuries, their blindness today is all the more astounding.

The chant of “Hep! Hep!” for example, served as a rallying cry during the antisemitic riots in Bavaria that came in response to Jewish emancipation in 1819. The phrase was later adopted by Hitler’s SS as it tormented and murdered Jews in Nazi Germany. Some believe the slogan is an acronym for the Latin expression “Hierosolyma est Perdita,” or “Jerusalem is lost,” shouted by the Crusaders as they ravaged their way across Europe to the Land of Israel, raping and murdering Jews along the way and in Jerusalem. Regardless of etymology, the antisemitic meaning of “Hep! Hep!” is still recognized to the extent that Jews typically will not even utter the derivative expression, “hip, hip, hooray.”

Nobody questions the hateful meaning of terms like “Shylock,” courtesy of William Shakespeare (who never met a Jew in his life), which falsely suggests Jewish greed and venality, or “rootless cosmopolitan,” which is grounded in the soviet propaganda myth of Jews as defilers of Russian culture. Likewise, there is no dispute that the term “money lenders” was used to falsely imply a penchant for charging usurious interest to gentiles, or that “blood suckers” referred to the blood libel that sparked massacres throughout medieval Europe.

Even the term “Old Testament” is anti-Jewish, as it implies Christian supersessionism (i.e., replacement theology) and Church denigration of Judaism (and which coincidentally evidences fundamental ignorance of Hebrew scripture by Christians who ironically concede its truth as a matter of faith).

So how is it that Jewish progressives often tolerate or rationalize the slogan “globalize the intifada,” particularly when it provides the soundtrack for violent demonstrations in which Jews are assaulted and their institutions vandalized and defiled?

It certainly seems pathological when they espouse political dogmas that disparage traditional Judaism, demonize Israel, and glorify genocidal ideologies. Though such advocacy might stem from ignorance, it could also be attributed to self-loathing, which has plagued fringe elements of Jewish society for centuries.

As observed by cultural and literary historian Sander Gilman: “One of the most recent forms of Jewish self-hatred is the virulent opposition to the existence of the State of Israel.” Though Gilman wrote this in the 1990s, his words harken back to those of psychologist and author Kurt Lewin, who in the 1940s wrote that the self-hating Jew “will dislike everything specifically Jewish, for he will see in it that which keeps him away from the majority for which he is longing. He will show dislike for those Jews who are outspokenly so, and will frequently indulge in self-hatred.”

When I recently discussed this phenomenon with a colleague, he opined – correctly – that self-rejection is not limited to the political left, citing as proof the “Association of German National Jews” formed in Weimar Germany by assimilationists who identified as Germans first and foremost. Staunchly anticommunist and contemptuous of Jewish national identity, the association initially believed that antisemitism was a political tool that Hitler would shed upon achieving power. This group, representing a minority of German Jews, was outlawed by the Nazis in 1935, after which there was little doubt about their ultimate fate under the regime.

Today’s Jewish left, however, differs in the continuing support of many for radicals and Islamists who are unabashed regarding their violent antisemitic goals. Whereas ultra-nationalist German Jews were certainly delusional, they ceased rationalizing Hitler after their organization was outlawed, and its leaders arrested. In contrast, Jewish leftists today continue to justify Islamists, including Hamas, who openly preach the destruction of Israel and murder of Jews.

What kind of spiritual void causes some to elevate such radicalism over their ancestral beliefs, traditions, and history? It may be that post-enlightenment secularization produced successive generations that were increasingly desperate for outlets to express the passion and commitment once served by allegiance to G-d and Torah. But there is absolutely nothing noble about misdirected fervor that encourages mystical and physical self-destruction.

©2025 Matthew Hausman, J.D. All rights reserved.

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