Ira Stoll writes for the Washington Free Beacon about a negative response to the New York City mayor’s proposals for addressing antisemitism in the Big Apple.
The mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, a boycott-Israel activist since his college days who as recently as this month was denouncing the Israeli prime minister as a war criminal who should be arrested and prosecuted, rolled out a “strategy to combat antisemitism” that was immediately met with withering derision from the very Jewish community the strategy was ostensibly intended to protect.
The UJA-Federation of New York, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York, and the New York Board of Rabbis issued a joint statement denouncing Mamdani’s plan. “It fails to address a central issue that the mayor himself has perpetuated: rhetoric that demonizes and delegitimizes Israel inevitably leads to the targeting of Jewish New Yorkers,” the statement said. “Those who truly seek to address antisemitism must unequivocally reject such rhetoric and help ensure that Jewish New Yorkers are never made to feel suspect, excluded, or unsafe in their own city.”
The Anti-Defamation League of New York and New Jersey also laced into Mamdani. “This mayor does not treat the hate facing Jewish New Yorkers as an emergency and refuses to acknowledge the different shapes it takes. Since he took office 271 days ago, ADL has recorded hundreds of antisemitic incidents in NYC, nearly 40% of which were related to Israel,” the league said. “He has looked the other way as flags glorifying terror groups have been flown outside synagogues, a deliberate act meant to intimidate families walking in to pray, and as crowds gathered outside houses of worship voicing support for the same groups. At the same time, he continues prioritizing his anti-Israel agenda over the basic promises he made to Jewish New Yorkers.”
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