Zohran Mamdani’s Dad Compares Israel To Apartheid-Era, Calls Holocaust Survivors ‘Today’s Perpetrators’ In Resurfaced Video
A newly rediscovered video from 2002 has thrust Mahmood Mamdani — father of NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — into the spotlight, revealing a series of incendiary accusations against Israel and Holocaust survivors. In the footage, the Columbia University professor likens Israel to apartheid-era South Africa and labels Holocaust survivors as “today’s perpetrators,” igniting a fresh round of outrage.
The remarks come from a Nov. 16, 2002 lecture delivered at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, where Mahmood Mamdani framed both South Africa and Israel as examples of oppressive settler regimes targeting native populations. Speaking about white Afrikaners, he claimed they feared how Black South Africans might treat them once the system of apartheid collapsed.
“That same specter must also haunt the survivors of the Holocaust in Israel — yesterday’s victims turned today’s perpetrators,” he asserted, tying Jewish survival after the Shoah to modern political conflict with Palestinians.
During the same address, the scholar — known for his work on colonialism, anti-colonial struggles, and decolonization — went further, invoking Adolf Hitler while arguing that European outrage over Nazism was selective. “The European bourgeois cannot forgive Hitler the fact that he applied to Europe the colonial practices that had been previously applied to the Arabs in Algeria, the Koulis in India and the Negroes in Africa,” Mahmood Mamdani said. “The Holocaust was the imperial chickens come home.”
He claimed that Israel operates with unchecked authority and American backing, asserting that Israel acts “with impunity” and “without accountability.” He continued: “There is one state that stands in defiance to practically every UN resolution that affects it. That’s the state of Israel.”
Two decades later, similar talking points have become common among anti-Israel activists, particularly since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre triggered the current war in Gaza — a conflict followed by a surge in antisemitic threats, protests, and harassment, including incidents targeting Jews on their way to shul.
The resurfaced recording was uncovered by Canary Mission, an organization that documents antisemitism and anti-Israel agitation on college campuses. The watchdog said, “Zohran Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, is one of the most antisemitic voices in academia by spewing lies and distortions uninterrupted.” They added, “If not for his son’s fame, we might not know that this hateful rhetoric was infecting impressionable students’ minds year after year after year @Columbia.”
The revelations arrive at a sensitive moment for Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist who has already faced criticism for backing the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, labeling Israel an apartheid regime, and declaring that he would seek to arrest Israel Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu as a war criminal if he ever entered New York City.
{Matzav.com}
