Exclusive | College group Zohran Mamdani co-founded welcomed radical speaker who later blamed US for 9/11 attacks: ‘Made its bed’

Mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani co-founded a college club that invited a radical speaker who called Israel a bigger terror threat than Hamas – and boasted he was greatly influenced by a Palestinian leader nicknamed the “godfather of Middle-eastern terrorism.”

The professor, As’ad AbuKhalil, also later claimed that the US brought the Sept. 11 attack on itself and accused the government of inflicting “many 9/11s” on the world.

In November 2013, Students for Justice in Palestine at Bowdoin College — which Mamdani helped launch — welcomed the controversial Lebanese-American academic to campus.

AbuKhalil was invited to speak to SJP about “trends in the Middle East in the age of uprising” while Mamdani was still a student.

Years after the invite, he hadn’t tampered down his inflammatory rhetoric.

“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,” Abukhalil said in 2021.

“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 also said. “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.”

While AbuKhalil stressed it’s “heart-wrenching remembering all these people who came from 80 nationalities, the ones who died on 9/11 here in the United States,” he also argued, “but there were many earlier 9/11s that the US inflicted on people around the world.”

The questionable invite was one of several inflammatory actions the students group has taken in the past decade after Mamdani helped launch the small liberal arts school’s branch of the activist organization.

The democratic socialist who won big in the crowded Democratic primary for Big Apple mayor, has faced a wave of criticism for his association with leaders accused of antisemitism and past comments.

AbuKhalil’s most eyebrow-raising 9/11 comments came after he was invited to Bowdoin but he made several shocking statements leading up to the event.

In 2006, AbuKhalil claimed Israel committed more destructive terrorism than Hamas and slammed Americans for not acknowledging that.

“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. Fatah is facing a dilemma, and it does not know how to respond,” he wrote in a blog post.

AbuKhalil said he was “honored to have known” George Habash, the leader of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which has been designated a terror organization by the US since 1997.

“He was a great Palestinian leader,” said AbuKhalil in 2012 to an audience in Edinburgh that was pointed out by Canary Mission.  

AbuKhalil also commended Habash as a figure who had “tremendous influence” on the academic.

“Of course if you look at newspapers he would be seen as terrorist,” he said.

A Time magazine story in 2008 about his death assailed Habash as “the godfather of Middle East terrorism.”

“The PFLP was founded in 1967 by a group of radical socialists led by George Habash and became infamous in the 1970s for airplane hijackings,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.

An email seeking comment from AbuKhalil, who teaches at California State University Stanislaus, was not immediately returned.

Longshot mayoral candidate Jim Walden slammed Mamdani for his past ties to the student.

“Mamdani needs to come clean with voters on his support for Islamic radicals and terrorists while at Bowdoin,” said Walden, an attorney.

Mamdani’s campaign did not immediately reply to a request for comment. It’s unclear if Mamdani was involved in getting AbuKhalil to campus or if he attended the talk.

While Mamdani graduated from Bowdoin in spring 2014, the SJP chapter has had other instances in which it was a hotbed for radical activism.

SJP occupied a first floor of a campus building earlier this year tied to protesting the school’s investment practices and President Trump hinting at taking control of war-torn Gaza, according to the Bowdoin Orient.

“As Israeli aggression obliterates Palestinian homes and guns down children in Jenin, as unspeakable suffering continues in Gaza, and as America descends further into fascism, we ask –  what type of institution does Bowdoin want to be?” the group argued in a press release.

“One that cowers to authoritarianism, that chooses cowardice in the face of injustice? The choice is Bowdoin’s.”

Scrutiny into Mamdani’s background has only intensified since he easily coasted to victory in the Democratic Party primary last month, clobbering former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and a slew of other candidates in the ranked-choice vote.

In resurfaced tweets Mamdani appeared to defend al Qaeda fiend Anwar al-Awalaki, who was later killed in a drone strike approved by then-President Barack Obama.

It was also revealed last week that Mamdani, who was born in Uganda, claimed he was “African American” along with “Asian” in a college application to Columbia University that was ultimately rejected.

The far-left darling still needs to get past the general election in which he’ll face GOP candidate Curtis Sliwa as well as Mayor Eric Adams, Cuomo and Walden each of whom are appearing on minor ballot lines.

Big Apple moderates are in a frenzy in a bid to stop his ascension to City Hall while prominent Democrats in New York have yet to endorse his candidacy despite Mamdani clinching the most votes ever in a city primary.