How liberals are allowing anti-Semitism to flourish.
Anti-Semitic attacks continue to shake our city and state. Last week, eight attacks — including four in just in 48 hours — sent a familiar shockwave rippling through the Jewish community. Then Saturday came the horrific stabbing in Monsey, New York. The poison of Jew-hatred is spreading.
Like many of you, I’m thinking, “Not this subject again.” How many columns can be devoted to it? I’ve read them. I’ve written them. It’s exhausting, and it’s dreary. Jews are being beaten up, anti-Semitism flows some years and ebbs in others. So what?
But it matters — gravely.
Mayor de Blasio released his usual by-the-numbers statement. “Hate doesn’t have a home in our city,” he tweeted. But hate does have a home here, and it has found it while Hizzoner has mostly looked away.
The mayor added: “In light of recent anti-Semitic attacks, the NYPD will increase their presence in Borough Park, Crown Heights and Williamsburg.” But the recent attacks have spread to Midtown Manhattan and Gravesend, Brooklyn. The problem has gotten worse while inaction paralyzed the mayor.
I first wrote about the uptick in May. The reason the city’s liberal political class was ignoring it, I argued, is that the criminals don’t fit their picture of Evil Bigots. They aren’t, for the most part, MAGA-hat wearing white guys with tiki torches. In fact, many of the attackers are people of color, as investigative reporting by Tablet’s Armin Rosen and others has shown.
Imagine if they were white nationalists. How much faster would the mayor and other city leaders have taken action?