NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
FIRST ON FOX: A resurfaced interview by New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani highlights his commitment to BDS and sanctions against Israel, as he runs for mayor in a city with the highest Jewish population in the United States outside of Israel.
“I’m very excited about being a member of DSA, specifically the New York City chapter,” Mamdani told SAAG Interactive in June 2021.
“Within the questionnaire when you submit to be considered a candidate to be endorsed by the organization, you’re asked what your views are on BDS and I think that has also brought what it is typically thought of as a separate issue into the sphere of local politics where we create a bench of candidates. We’re not legislating on BDS on a daily basis, but it’s clear that our commitment is unabashed to justice.”
Mamdani was interviewed in the clip by a journalist named Naib Mian, who has a social presence littered with anti-Israel posts, including accusing Israel of benefitting from “manufacturing antisemitism” and defending the phrase “from the river to the sea.”
NYC COUNCILWOMAN WARNS MAMDANI VICTORY WILL DRIVE AWAY KEY VOTING BLOC: ‘AFRAID TO LIVE HERE’
Mamdani went on to speak more about BDS, an acronym for Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, in the interview, saying that “the ways in which we can marry our struggle to our day-to-day life and show our solidarity in that life, I think that’s critical to winning this fight because it can’t all be, as you’ve very well stated, just kind of exclusively considered a legislative battle. It has to be a society-wide battle.”
“And I think there is no thing that’s too banal to stand up against the brutality of the occupation and apartheid. And so, you know, if it’s a shipping container, or if it is a university that is being funded, a university that helped to develop IDF’s weapons technology, or it is an event with an Israeli ambassador, whatever it may be, I think that we have to showcase what that solidarity looks like.”
Dating back to his college days, Mamdani has expressed support for BDS, which Influence Watch describes as “an international campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel as the expression of the Jewish people’s right to national self-determination by isolating the country economically through consumer boycotts, business and government withdrawal of investment, and legal sanctions.”
MAMDANI’S FORMER DEM COLLEAGUE RAILS AGAINST HIS SIGNATURE CAMPAIGN PROMISE: ‘NAIL IN THE COFFIN’
Mamdani, who founded the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at the prestigious Bowdoin College in Maine, wrote about the importance of an academic boycott of Israel in the school paper, Fox News Digital previously reported.
“It also helps to highlight just how intertwined this oppression is, and just how much it relies on us normalizing it and saying that, you know, my convictions stop at the point when it becomes inconvenient, and we have to showcase that convenience means nothing in the face of these things,” Mamdani said in the interview. “On a personal level, I am very much committed to actively working to stop any additional anti-BDS bills that come through the Assembly.”
Mamdani told Mian that he has been working on a letter to “circulate to support proactive measures that we can take to stop apartheid and to hold Israel accountable.”
Mamdani continued, “My predecessor was somebody who very much marched in support and showed up at press conferences in support of the Israeli state. And I am somebody who is unabashedly in support of Palestinian liberation. My constituency hasn’t changed that much in between our terms. But it’s very clear to me that my constituency now, after I’ve said these things, the response that I received is just overwhelmingly in support. And so there are so many other people, so many other districts in New York City where people are just waiting to be given the go-ahead to express that solidarity.”
Mamdani said that it is “my job” to give those people he previously mentioned “as many opportunities as possible and to push as many other colleagues of mine and people in any place of power to do the same.”
“I really do believe that we have not yet hit the ceiling of support for the Palestinian people’s fight for justice,” Mamdani said.
Fox News Digital reached out to the Mamdani campaign for comment.
Mamdani’s support for BDS has drawn criticism from Jewish groups in New York and his father, Mahmood, has also voiced support for BDS while sitting on the advisory board of a tribunal that has routinely called for sanctions against Israel,” Fox News Digital previously reported.
Mamdani has defended his support of BDS on the campaign trail, including in May where he said, “My support for BDS is consistent with my core of my politics, which is non-violence.”
Read the full article here
