Zohran Mamdani's Links To Academic Who Blamed US For 9/11 Attacks

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is facing scrutiny over his ties to a controversial speaker who once referred to Israel as a greater terror threat than Hamas and said the US brought the 9/11 attacks upon itself.

In 2013, Mr Mamdani was a student at Bowdoin College in Maine, and he co-founded the school's chapter of 'Students for Justice in Palestine' (SJP). That November, the group invited Lebanese-American academic As'ad AbuKhalil to speak on campus about "trends in the Middle East in the age of uprising," as per The NY Post.

Mr AbuKhalil is a professor at California State University, Stanislaus. His most pointed remarks on 9/11 came after his appearance at Bowdoin.

He said in 2021, "We have to remember that the US basically was hit on 9/11 by forces that were reactionary and fanatic and were raised and armed and sponsored by America and its allies in the Middle East."

"People forget that 9/11 is a repercussion of the Cold War when the US made its bed, and clearly with the religious fanatics of the Muslim world," he added.

"This is a time where socialists around the world in Chile, in the Arab world and everywhere were under attack by the US. Reactionary forces in support."

"But there were many earlier 9/11s that the US inflicted on people around the world."

Mr AbuKhalil had already drawn criticism for previous statements.

In a 2006 blog post, he argued, "And if Hamas has practiced versions of indiscriminate and aimless violence-which I personally reject on principle- it should be pointed out that Israeli terrorism-in scale and in magnitude-by far exceeds that of Hamas, but nobody has noticed here in the US."

He also praised George Habash, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a group designated by the US as a terrorist organisation.

"He was a great Palestinian leader," AbuKhalil said in 2012. "Of course if you look at newspapers, he would be seen as a terrorist," he added, calling Habash a man of "tremendous influence" on his thinking.

Mr Mamdani, the Democratic socialist, has taken a consistently strong stance in support of Palestinian rights while supporting Israel's "right to exist". He is a vocal advocate of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which he sees as a non-violent means to hold Israel accountable for "apartheid and genocide" in the occupied territories.

Mr Mamdani has routinely criticised the Israeli government's actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and in 2023 introduced the "Not on our dime!" bill in the New York State Assembly, aiming to block charitable donations from supporting illegal Israeli settlements. Following the October 7 Hamas attack, Mr Mamdani called Israel's continued onslaught on Gaza a "horrific war crime."

He also said he supported the arrest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu if he were to visit New York under an ICC warrant.