Here Is What Mamdani Won’t Tell You About Israel

You have to admire the confidence. Zohran Mamdani stood at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast Monday morning, used the word genocide in front of the Irish, and waited for the applause.

Then a reporter asked if he supports a united Ireland. The one question that actually matters in that room. He said he hadn’t thought about it enough to have a view.

Governor Hochul, standing next to him, said she does. The progressive mayor of America’s most Irish city had not thought about Ireland. He had, however, thought about Palestine enough to invoke a million Irish dead as a rhetorical device. That part he’d prepared.

The Irish Are a Particular Audience for That Word.

What Mamdani may not have considered, as he prepared his remarks, is what that word carries in a room full of Irish people. They’ve spent over a century debating whether it applies to their own history. A million of their people died in the fields between 1845 and 1852. Another million fled. The ones who left built New York City, the city Mamdani now leads. They built Boston. They built Chicago. They carried their grief across an ocean and built a culture of memory around it. Yeats wrote about it. Beckett carried it. The Irish relationship with Britain was defined by it for 150 years. Cormac Ó Gráda, one of the foremost scholars of the famine, has argued that genocide requires murderous intent and that not even the most bigoted commentators of the time sought the extermination of the Irish. The Irish themselves haven’t settled it. It is not a word they reach for lightly. Mamdani reached for it the way a man reaches for the salt.

Raphael Lemkin Invented That Word. Look It Up.

He coined it in 1948, a Jewish lawyer who invented the term specifically to describe what the Nazis did to six million Jews. The legal definition requires the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. Not civilian casualties. Not a military campaign, however devastating. Documented intent to destroy the group itself. Lemkin knew what he was describing. He’d watched it happen to his own people.

Mamdani used it to describe Israel. In that room. To the Irish. So let’s apply the definition properly and see where it actually lands.

Hamas Wrote Down Exactly What They Want. It’s Not Complicated.

The founding charter calls for the destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. Not the end of occupation. Not a Palestinian state. The destruction of Israel and the killing of Jews. It’s been in writing since 1988. A 2017 political document softened the language but kept the demand for Israel’s elimination and refused to recognise its existence. They haven’t changed what they want. Mamdani is a Columbia-educated politician. He’s read it. He used the word genocide anyway, at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, to describe the country Hamas wants destroyed. Not Hamas. Israel.

The Irish in that room should have said something.

Here’s What “Brutal” Was Describing.

To understand what Hamas did on October 7th, 2023, you need to know about Oded Lifshitz. He was 83 years old, one of the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, a journalist who had spent his career defending Palestinian rights and advocating for peace. Every week he drove to the Erez crossing on the Gaza border, picked up sick Palestinians, and took them to Israeli hospitals. He spoke fluent Arabic. He had friends in Gaza. He’d met Yasser Arafat. His wife Yocheved said at his funeral: “We fought all through the years for social justice, for peace. To my sorrow, we were hit by a terrible blow by those we helped on the other side.” Hamas took him hostage on October 7th. He was murdered in Palestinian Islamic Jihad’s captivity. The IDF confirmed it. The Prime Minister’s Office confirmed it. The National Institute of Forensic Medicine confirmed it. His body was returned to Israel in February 2025, 503 days after he was taken.

Oded Lifshitz was not an exception at Nir Oz. He was the rule. The kibbutz was founded on leftist principles. Its residents were mostly liberal and did not vote for parties associated with Netanyahu’s coalition. They drove Palestinians to hospitals. They meant it. Hamas came anyway. On October 7th, 150 armed fighters attacked from three directions simultaneously. A quarter of Nir Oz’s 400 residents were killed or abducted. The entire Siman Tov family, Tamar and Yonatan, their five and a half year old twin daughters Shahar and Arbel, and their two year old son Omer, were murdered in their safe room. Yonatan’s last message to his sister read: “They’re here, they’re burning us, we’re suffocating.” At the Nova festival, they hunted young people through fields. Women were raped. The UN Commission of Inquiry documented evidence of sexual violence. The ICC has cited evidence related to it, the same court Mamdani invokes when he wants Israeli leaders prosecuted.

Mamdani called all of that “brutal” at San Sebastian in 2024. One word. Then spent the rest of his remarks demanding Israel be prosecuted.

The murders got an adjective. Israel got a campaign.

The Mayor’s Dinner Guest Last Week.

The week before the breakfast, Mamdani invited Mahmoud Khalil to Gracie Mansion for Iftar dinner. Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been direct. “Being a supporter of Hamas and coming into our universities and turning them upside down,” Rubio said, “if you told us that’s what you intended to do when you came to America, we would have never let you in.” The Department of Homeland Security stated Khalil “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization.” Mamdani hosted that man at the official residence of the Mayor of New York City. Then went to a breakfast and talked about genocide. That’s the judgment of the man entrusted with the word.

And Then There’s the First Lady.

Rama Duwaji, the Mayor’s wife, liked Instagram posts on October 7th showing Hamas fighters breaching the border fence captioned “breaking the walls of apartheid.” She liked posts calling for “resistance.” The Free Press found over 70 radical anti-Israel posts she’d liked in total. One of them, reported by both The Free Press and Jewish Insider, called the New York Times investigation into the sexual violence at Nova a “mass rape hoax” that was “fabricated.” The women hunted through fields that morning. The women the ICC has cited evidence of being raped. A hoax. Liked by the First Lady of New York City.

When asked about it, Mamdani said his wife is a private person. The New York Times ran the story with this headline: “After Social Media Scrutiny, Mamdani Says His Wife Is a Private Person.” That was the headline. Not what she liked. Not what it meant. His explanation. She is the First Lady of the largest city in America. He didn’t condemn a single post. He changed the subject. The man who lectures the Irish on genocide changed the subject.

The Genocide Nobody in That Room Mentioned.

Over a million Uyghur Muslims are in Chinese detention camps right now. The US State Department has formally classified it as genocide. The Canadian House of Commons has done the same. The UK Parliament passed a motion classifying it as genocide. A Muslim population is being systematically erased. Their language suppressed. Their mosques demolished. Their children taken. It’s happening today, documented, with intent. And if the Uyghurs don’t move him, perhaps Sudan will, where over 12 million people have been displaced and the Rapid Support Forces have committed documented ethnic cleansing against the Massalit in Darfur. Mamdani hasn’t said a word about any of it. No Iftar dinner for a Uyghur activist. No genocide speech at a Chinese New Year breakfast. He uses the word genocide for one conflict. The one involving Jews.

The Mayor’s Record, Since We’re Keeping One.

He wore a keffiyeh at his inauguration. He’s called Israel a genocidal state. He hosted a man the Secretary of State said was a supporter of Hamas for Iftar dinner. His wife liked 70 posts celebrating October 7th and called the documented mass rapes a hoax. Then he stood at a breakfast and invoked genocide in front of the Irish.

Arab citizens of Israel serve as Supreme Court justices, members of parliament, doctors, and military officers. It’s the only country in the region where an Arab citizen can vote out their government, argue before an independent court, and win. The residents of Nir Oz drove Palestinians to Israeli hospitals every week. They meant it. Hamas murdered them in their safe rooms. Mamdani invokes genocide about the country they loved and died in. He has not mentioned Oded Lifshitz once.

At the Goya Awards in Spain last month, a Spanish actor named Aldo Comas broke ranks with the room. “I haven’t heard anyone talk about the people dying in Iran,” he told reporters. “I see lots of pins about everything else, but not about that. Maybe we should also be ending theocratic regimes that murder their own people.” Nobody answered him. Not the room. Not the cameras. Not the Mayor of New York City.

Every atrocity on earth that doesn’t involve Jews calls for nuance, context, or silence. The one involving Jews calls for a genocide speech at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast.

Raphael Lemkin invented the word genocide to describe what happened to the Jewish people. The Mayor of New York City misused it, at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast, to describe the Jewish state. In front of the Irish, who know exactly what the word costs and haven’t finished arguing about whether it applies to their own history.

They didn’t come to that breakfast to be used as props. Neither did the word. Neither did the dead.

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