How much more are Jews in New York City expected to take?
Earlier this week, a protest in front of the Nova Music Festival Exhibition on Wall Street, which commemorates those slaughtered at a music festival in Israel during the October 7 attacks, waved Hezbollah and Hamas flags and a “Long live October 7th” banner, lit flares and chanted “long live the intifada.”
On Tuesday, a mob took over a New York City subway car and chanted, in a call and repeat fashion, “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. This is your chance to get out.”
Two nights ago, the homes of Brooklyn Museum’s director Anne Pasternak and several of the museum’s Jewish board members, were defaced with fake blood and a sign that accused Pasternak of being a “White-Supremacist Zionist.”
I’ve been writing in these pages about the growing antisemitism in New York for years.
But this is the worst it has ever been. It’s no longer random attacks, that could be blamed on the mentally unwell.
There is now a coordinated threat to Jewish presence in this city.
“Hate doesn’t have a home in our city,” former mayor Bill de Blasio said in 2019 after eight attacks on Jews within one week happened in New York.
De Blasio had famously blamed Trump-supporters for these increased attacks saying “I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.”
He never explained how the shadowy MAGA fans existed in such large numbers in his deep blue New York and were able to disguise themselves so well.
To his credit, Mayor Adams visited the Nova exhibit after the hateful protest outside.
But he said similar words to his hapless predecessor, “Hate has no place in our city,” when it is clear “hate” has developed quite a foothold in New York where Jews are concerned.
It’s gotten so bad that even Comptroller Brad Lander and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, both normally good friends to Jew-haters, feigned alarm at the open antisemitism they helped to foster.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, meanwhile, is looking to stoke these flames of antisemitism further by working on a completely pointless cease-fire resolution.
The war in Gaza won’t stop because some City Councilwoman says so.
But violence against Jews in her city will increase as she pushes the lie that Israel is committing genocide.
Jews in New York find themselves in a very hard place.
The city had long been a haven for the Jewish population.
Antisemites existed elsewhere, out there in the hinterlands, not in the city home to Zabar’s and Seinfeld.
The last few years have exposed something else.
Now it’s hard not to notice that the worst eruptions, the vilest hate, is happening in New York specifically.
The mob is masked to conceal their identity and able to be violent then disappear into crowds.
It’s worth noting that when the regular attacks on Jews were happening during de Blasio’s terms, with hundreds of attacks caught on video, only one perpetrator ever served a day in prison.
Jews are getting the message that no one will protect them and they’re largely not allowed to protect themselves.
At the Nova exhibit, Mayor Adams told influencer Lizzy Savetsky “We have the largest Jewish population outside of Israel right here in New York. This is not going to be a city where you’ll have to take off your yarmulke, be afraid to walk inside a synagogue,” but then added “or church or mosque” as if anyone is afraid to walk into those.
He seemed to want to cut off the obvious criticism that Jews have largely been left exposed in his city saying “A minority of those who want us to live in fear, who want us to say ‘police departments you’re not doing enough,’ who want us to turn on our allies, we can’t turn on each other.”
What would Mayor Adams do if he were on that subway without a security detail?
Would he raise his hand as a Zionist?
What does he advise his city’s Jews do?
It’s not turning on each other to demand more than words.
Hate has no home in New York? Prove it.