FACT- Intifada doesn't mean violence against Jews

Even the Arabic Bible mentions intifada and the English Bible correctly says its meaning

Among the many attacks that have been hurled against the Democratic Party’s nominee for mayor of New York was the fact that NY state representative Zohran Mamadani has refused to denounce the popular term that is chanted in pro-Palestinian demonstrations calling for “global intifada.”

Jonathan Greenblatt, the chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, decried the phrase on X as an “explicit incitement to violence.” Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., who is Jewish, said in a statement that the word “intifada” is “well understood to refer to the violent terror attacks against innocent Israeli civilians that occurred during the First and Second Intifadas.” Others have repeatedly said that it refers to “violence against Jews.” Some have even insisted that it means “genocide against Jews.”

As a Palestinian journalist who covered the intifada and had a role in introducing the term in the English language lexicon, I know what is meant and how Palestinian activists used the term.

First, the meaning of the Arabic word intifada, which is simply “Shaking off.”

But since some, especially people of faith in the Jewish and Christian zionist camp, insist otherwise, I decided to turn to the Bible. As a multilingual Arab Christian, I thought that if I could find the word intifada in the Bible and then use the same verse in English, I would be able to definitively put this argument to rest.

The word intifada, both as a verb and a noun, is referred to in the Arabic version of the Old Testament three times. I decided then to take a look at how the term was translated into English. I used the New International Version of the Bible, but other translations make the same reference.

The first reference came from the book of Judges, and the quote is to Samson, whose power was taken away from him. According to Judges 16:2,0, Samson awoke from his sleep and thought, “I'll go out as before and shake myself free.”

Another reference with the exact meaning of shaking off is mentioned in Isaiah 52:2, which states: Shake off your dust; rise up, sit enthroned, Jerusalem. Free yourself from the chains on your neck, Daughter Zion, now a captive.

Finally, the Psalmists make use of the term as follows: "I fade away like an evening shadow; I am shaken off like a locust." This verse is part of a larger section where the speaker describes their physical and emotional distress, comparing their fading life to a fleeting shadow and their shaken state to a locust.

While modern translations using Google Translate and others give a meaning of popular uprising, the exact meaning of the word is shaking off. And when Palestinians began their protest in 1988, it had been 21 years since they were living under a foreign military occupation that was showing no signs of ending and instead was showing signs of building illegal settlements in the occupied territories. For Palestinians, the term referred to the need, as in some of the above biblical verses, to wake up and rise up from your sleep and shake off the chains or the restrictions, and in the Palestinian case, the occupation. It is certainly not an anti-Semitic term, nor is it a term that refers to acts of terrorism against the Jews.

I began noticing the abuse of the term in 2024 when a New York congressperson used it in a congressional hearing. I wrote an article in the LA Times explaining how I had explained the meaning of the term to the Los Angeles Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Dan Fisher, and he once used it in one of his reports. I told him that all Palestinian literature and slogans during the intifada differentiate between two things. The intifada, whose goal was and still is the creation of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel. I told him that the Palestinian intifada was against the Israeli occupation and not the state of Israel. Once Dan Fisher wrote his article, the term took off in the global lexicon.

However, as is often the case during the violent Israeli war on Gaza, the term was warped totally out of its meaning. When New York Rep. Elise Stefanik repeatedly badgered three college presidents about the nuances of free speech last week, she attempted to push her narrative that elite schools are antisemitic by equating “chants for intifada” with “genocide of Jews.”

The three presidents fell for the trap that a Palestinian uprising could be connected to crimes against humanity. In response to Stefanik’s congressional bluster, the three presidents of the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard, and MIT should have stated clearly that genocide against Jews or any other people is unacceptable. They could have added that the intifada is in no way equivalent to that heinous act.

Initially, the intifada included the methods of resistance practiced by Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, and Nelson Mandela. My cousin Mubarak Awad was deported by Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir for crisscrossing the occupied Palestinian territories and distributing the Arabic translation of Harvard professor Gene Sharp’s writings on nonviolence. Mubarak advocated boycotts of Israeli products, work refusals, and building up the Palestinian economy to prepare for independence.

To equate the call for an end to the Israeli occupation with a call for the genocide of Jews is a bizarre reversal that turns victims into aggressors.

Six years of civil disobedience and protest brought about the Oslo Accords and the signing of the Declaration of Principles between Israel and the PLO on Sept. 13, 1993. On the eve of that important agreement, the PLO recognized Israel, and Israel recognized the PLO as the representative of the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, that important event, sealed with a White House handshake between PLO Chairman Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was upended when a radical Israeli settler named Yigal Amir assassinated Rabin in 1995 as he was departing from a peace rally in Tel Aviv.

The courageous Rabin was succeeded by Benjamin Netanyahu in his first term as Israeli prime minister. Then, as now, Netanyahu multiplied illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. Since Oslo, the number of Israeli settlers has quadrupled in the West Bank, the very territory that was supposed to be an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Zohran Mamdani did not mention the term Globalizing the intifada, but he was courageous enough to refuse to denounce the need for the entire globe to shake off its silence to the atrocities taking place in Gaza. His victory in the democratic primary with a strong percentage of New York Jewish votes proves that potentially the new mayor of New York is not an antisemite nor is he willing to denounce a term in Arabic that has been taken out of its meaning and context by individuals who want Palestinians to stay asleep under an foreign occupation and not stand up for their inalienable rights.