📰 The New York Times and the Art of Grieving Selectively
✍️ By Malik Mukhtar
📍 ainnbeen.blogspot.com
📅 July 2, 2025
Bret Stephens is upset.
Again.
Apparently, he’s still recovering from Café Moment. And Passover in Netanya. And that one horrific morning in 2004 when he saw carnage on Azza Street. And he has every right to grieve those losses. Every human does.
But here’s the thing: Some corpses get columns. Others get erased.
Stephens, perched on the prestigious opinion page of The New York Times, just spent a full-length sermon condemning Zohran Mamdani—not for what he said, but for what he refused to denounce: the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
According to Bret, refusing to ritually cleanse your political career with the holy water of pro-Israel respectability is now akin to blessing bus bombings.
What “globalize the intifada” really means, Mr. Stephens, is refusing to accept a world where genocide is livestreamed, and the world just shrugs.
It means daring to "shake off"—the actual meaning of the word intifada—the enforced silence around Gaza. It means refusing to apologize for opposing occupation, apartheid, and mass death.
But let’s get real.
Bret’s trauma is sacred. Gaza’s trauma is “regrettable.”
Rachel Levy, tragically killed in a supermarket, deserves paragraphs of memorial. But what about 12-year-old Layan, crushed under rubble in Deir al-Balah, who died screaming into a phone that “the tank is right next to me, Mama”?
What about the 15,000+ Gazan children killed since October 2023? Don’t they deserve at least one paragraph?
No, because their bodies weren’t convenient.
Because their flesh wasn’t torn by the “right” kind of bomb.
Because they weren’t Israeli.
Instead, we get this:
“There are rich and legitimate debates to be had about Gaza…”
Yes, thank you, professor of nuance. But when exactly does a child burned alive in an Israeli airstrike become “legitimate” enough for your outrage?
🎯 Why They’re Coming for Zohran Mamdani
Let’s not pretend this is just about a phrase. The attacks on Mamdani—vicious, coordinated, and bipartisan—are about who gets to speak, who gets to resist, and who gets to run for office without apologizing for their identity.
Mamdani is everything the establishment fears:
- A Muslim socialist,
- The son of immigrants,
- A bold voice against Zionist apartheid,
- And someone who refuses to grovel to AIPAC, Wall Street, or corporate Democrats.
He doesn’t dance around settler colonialism. He doesn’t “both-sides” genocide. He doesn’t preface every sentence with “of course Hamas is bad.”
He breaks the mold—and they hate him for it.
So they’re throwing the full weight of the political machine at him:
🧨 Corporate media hit pieces
💸 Billionaire-funded ad campaigns
📺 TV pundits foaming at the mouth
🕴️ Democratic operatives pretending to be “concerned moderates”
🗞️ And now, Bret Stephens invoking suicide bombings to make Zohran sound like a terrorist-by-association.
This is not just fear. It’s panic.
Because Mamdani doesn’t just oppose the system—he exposes it.
And the system would rather incite hysteria than admit it's complicit in a 20-month-long campaign of ethnic cleansing, siege warfare, and starvation in Gaza.
📢 “Globalize the Intifada” = Globalize the Conscience
Stephens accuses Mamdani of giving “moral comfort to people who deliberately murder innocent Jews.”
Meanwhile, Israel’s army—funded by U.S. tax dollars—has murdered aid workers, bombed bakeries, decapitated children, starved entire neighborhoods, and obliterated UN schools. But that, Bret assures us, is complicated.
Let’s be honest: this isn’t about violence. It’s about who is allowed to resist.
“Globalize the intifada” is not a dog whistle—it’s a siren. It’s a call to conscience. A refusal to let the bombs fall silently.
It frightens the Bret Stephens of the world not because it glorifies terror—but because it refuses to sanctify Israeli violence with euphemisms like “self-defense.”
And so, Mamdani is publicly flogged—not because he lit a match, but because he refused to become another fireman for empire.
He didn’t say “death to Israel.” He said nothing. And still, it was too much.
Because silence—unless it’s the right kind—is violence, right?
🚨 Final Thought: If This Is Radical, Then Morality Is Extinct
So let me spell it out:
If “globalizing the intifada” means refusing to normalize genocide, refusing to apologize for Palestinian resistance, and refusing to bow before the gatekeepers of selective morality—then yes, globalize it. Intensely. Unapologetically. Universally.
Because if naming oppression is violence, but funding it isn’t—then we don’t need more centrism.
We need more shaking.
🔗 Read more at www.ainnbeen.blogspot.com
📣 Share this if you're tired of selective grief, political cowardice, and weaponized narratives.
🕊️ End the genocide. Globalize the conscience.
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