Zohran Mamdani’s recent invocation of the term “Nakba” (https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/mamdani-doubles-down-on-nakba-day-video-as-criticism-mounts/) is not just another progressive soundbite in the endless social media war over Israel. It is part of a rhetorical pattern in American politics, particularly on the activist left, where language once confined to radical anti-Zionist circles is becoming normalized in mainstream discourse. And when this rhetoric comes from a mayor governing the city with the largest Jewish population outside of Israel, it deserves scrutiny, not silence.

For many Jews, the issue is not criticism of Israeli policy. We Israelis criticize our government every day. No government in the world is immune of criticsm by its citizenry.  The issue is the adoption of a political vocabulary that increasingly frames the very existence of Israel as a catastrophe.

The word “Nakba” (النكبة) literally translates from Arabic as “catastrophe” or “disaster.” It was popularized by Syrian intellectual Constantin Zureiq following Israel’s creation in 1948 and the Arab defeat in the war launched against the newly declared Jewish state. Zureiq’s 1948 book, “Ma’na al-Nakba” (“The Meaning of the Catastrophe”), described the broader collapse of Arab military and political efforts to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state.

This historical detail matters.

The original context of the term was tied directly to the failure of the Arab world to destroy Israel at birth. Over time, however, the term evolved. Beginning in the 1960s Palestinian nationalism and........

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