Victims at the Vanguard

SMALL MERCY THAT ZOHRAN MAMDANI won’t popularise the war cry “Globalise the Intifada.” He won’t disown the idea behind it either—the idea being the rage against Israel’s actions in Gaza. We get it. Mamdani’s concession to the pinstriped sceptics during an interaction with New York’s CEOs could have been prompted by his eagerness to sound inclusive despite his bestselling extremism. A linguistic pause is still not enough to distract anyone from the trajectory of the war on terror in the political patois of the left. And Mamdani is more than the frontrunner in New York’s mayoral election; he has already won the title of progressive radicalism’s crown prince, selling revolution to the so-called urban snowflakes. Mamdani’s stump fusillade may mobilise the Right fearing an ideological insurgency, and that’s not all that bad for the Republicans who consistently lose New York.

Is it that the idea of the nation or the politics that is built on it only adds to the new radicals’ sense of shared victimhood? Is it that the right-wing project on the restoration of national greatness, in the progressive storytelling, procures its raw material from a made-up past, that the future it promises is a fantasy meant to intoxicate the wretched? For an evangelical Left that fetishises victimhood, taboos are a prerequisite for bringing the victim to the Empathy Square. The war on terror is a war on humanity, the children of Gaza at the food queues will testify; and whatever happened on October 7, 2023, in southern Israel is not something that required a national reaction but an introspection, a trip to the beginning of an unjust history—and that is how the inversion of morality is achieved by the streetfighters and their ideological allies.

Israel is the nation that feels the isolation most amidst the war of slogans— and acts undeterred for its right to live. When the campaign of terror against Israel prompts trainee revolutionaries like Mamdani to come out with a slogan as anti-Semitic as Gobalise the Indifada, it just shows how stump rhetoric can turn the existential struggle of nations into terror against humanity. Israel’s permanent defence against those who deny it the right to exist is a rejection of a popular version of international morality. No other nation, despite being caricatured as a terror state by cause junkies and jihadists, has made the idea of nation the only reason in the battlefield. The intensity of the defence and the ever-increasing extension of its brief have certainly caused a serious humanitarian crisis in Gaza. The story Israel tells about the national struggle against terror is larger than the narrative width of the anti-Semitic campaign and the undying romance of the Palestinian struggle. The tenacity of Israel has not allowed Intifada an easy border crossing.

ARGUMENTS TOO CAN HELP THE WAR ON TERROR. India has been making one for the nation under attack with all the credibility of a victim state. Our story of living with terror may be as old as an independent India but since 2014, when Modi came to power on the plank of national redemption, the urgency of the message has been matched by the doctrine of quick reciprocity. The messaging has never got full acceptance, partly because of the misreading of Kashmir prevalent in certain parts of the world, which also is susceptible to treating the India-Pakistan tension as a historical inevitability. There is the wall of Islamophobia too, erected by the Left which can’t tolerate an honest argument on Islam and global terror. What happened in Pahalgam, in its style and savagery, was as faith-motivated as the Hamas attack within Israel two years ago. The world stood by India in its hour of loss and sorrow. The world was not as forthcoming in endorsing India’s rejoinder, the national resolve to strike back with precision, and the restraint it has shown once the punishment was meted out. India had to amplify its story and press the point that the world should take it as its own.

That is the message Modi carries to the world, and it comes from a leader who knows what it takes to win the argument against terror with Islamist legitimacy. As the war on terror again becomes isolated national acts instead of a united global reaction, it takes a leader with a democratic mandate as solid and enduring as what Modi alone enjoys in the world today to make the messaging credible and urgent. Globalisation of the Intifada is a terrifying imagery, but unknowingly or not, India’s prime minister offers a counterpoint from every international stage available to him: what the world needs is a united stand against terror.

Gazageopoliticsglobal supportleadershipNarendra ModiPahalgam terror attackterrorismvictimhoodZohran Mamdani