Linda Sarsour gets NYC Jewish Democrat Councilman kicked off committee for saying “Palestine does not exist”
Linda Sarsour sic’d the mob on Kalman Yeger, after he tweeted: “Palestine does not exist. There, I said it again. Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too.”
New York City Councilman Kalman Yeger (D) engaged in a series of tweets about Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and the non-existence of Palestine last week.
They generated such an uproar from The Usual Suspects that he has been tossed off an immigration committee at the insistence of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio and influential anti-Semitic figure Linda Sarsour.
It all started on March 26th, in a response from him to a tweet from Omar about AIPAC and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu:
You're an antisemite and a member of Congress. It's not strange that you'd be mentioned. Anyway, what are you complaining about? It's what you want. https://t.co/e5XTRixub5
— Kalman Yeger ונשמרתם מאד לנפשותיכם (@KalmanYeger) March 26, 2019
For stating the obvious, outrage ensued, but he was undeterred:
And, if you can stomach it, read through the vile garbage her tweetstorm has elicited. Those replies are what she wants. She is on a deliberate mission to breed and grow antisemitism.
— Kalman Yeger ונשמרתם מאד לנפשותיכם (@KalmanYeger) March 27, 2019
Palestine does not exist.
There, I said it again.
Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too.
Thanks for following me. https://t.co/apM565HoEV— Kalman Yeger ונשמרתם מאד לנפשותיכם (@KalmanYeger) March 27, 2019
After Sarsour spoke out against Yeger’s tweets, radical left wing protesters converged on his Brooklyn office just a day later (note: they originally planned to protest at his home, but changed their plans):
“Brooklyn is home to one of largest Palestinian communities. It’s irresponsible & dangerous to engage in this blatant bigotry. I’m Palestinian, I exist & so does my community,” left-wing activist Linda Sarsour said. “Yeger needs to be removed from the Immigration Committee & apologize publicly to Palestinian New Yorkers.”
[…]
Pro-Palestine groups, including Bay Ridge for Social Justice, Jewish Voice for Peace, New York Progressive Action Network and NYC Democratic Socialists of America, organized a protest outside of Yeger’s [office] Thursday night.
Counter-protesters made their voices known, too:
Cops providing a wall of officers Btwn Yeger protesters and counter protesters. pic.twitter.com/6vqmzSdK1O
— Ivan Pereira (@IvanPer4) March 28, 2019
The New York Times reported Monday that the anti-Yeger outrage mob was so vocal that the city council made moves to punish the councilman:
New York City, home to the largest Jewish population outside Israel, has often served as a proxy battleground for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
[…]
But as more Palestinian immigrants have settled in New York, the political calculus has grown slightly more complicated…..
[…]
On Monday, the City Council’s leadership team met for more than an hour and decided to remove Mr. Yeger from the immigration committee, The New York Times has learned. There was “broad consensus” that Mr. Yeger’s views were inconsistent with the committee’s mission, participants said.
“I do not believe that someone who engages in the type of rhetoric we heard from Council Member Yeger belongs on the immigration committee, which is supposed to welcome and support immigrants in our city,” Corey Johnson, the Council’s speaker, said in a statement.
Sarsour celebrated the news:
Breaking News: NYC Councilman Yeger gets kicked off of the Immigration Committee. No longer will anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim comments by elected officials go unchecked. It’s a new day. ??✊? https://t.co/tJ72ih5YTi
— Linda Sarsour (@lsarsour) April 1, 2019
Michael Leon said this about what happened:
You don’t need to agree with Kalman Yeger to acknowledge that what happened to him was wrong, and the full embrace of Linda Sarsour’s conflation of the view that Palestine doesn’t exist with Islamophobia by city politicians is frightening. It also comes at a time when members of Kalman’s constituency are facing spikes in antisemitism. This was a power play. It’s a wake up call. The next target won’t be Kalman. It will eventually be anybody who expresses an Israel-positive view. That’s what these activists are ultimately going for.
And I say that as somebody who has decried views like Kalman’s for years and can acknowledge that his attempt to hedge and say that he was only referring to Palestine the state is probably less than genuine given his past comments about so-called Palestinians; it doesn’t matter, and it wouldn’t have saved him from this mob made up of activists who probably don’t acknowledge that Israel has a right to exist.
But I know how this will play in his community. It will not advance understanding or dialogue. It will cause everybody to dig into their positions. And the contrast between the treatment of this young, inexperienced Jewish religious politician, who was given no leeway, no benefit of the doubt, no understanding and Ilhan Omar, a considerably more experienced religious politician, who was given every benefit of the doubt by her defenders, who repeat her bogus apology in the same breath as they tell us it was not necessary, could not be more stark.
Jewish News Syndicate editor in chief Jonathan Tobin put the events of the past three months involving Omar, Tlaib, Sarsour and then later Yeger in perspective in a recent column:
But the reason why “Palestine” isn’t a country isn’t a function of prejudice. De Blasio is a supporter of Israel and AIPAC, but he still chided Yeger, saying that denying the right of the Palestinians to a home is a form of prejudice. The trouble with that argument is that Palestinian identity has been inextricably tied to denying the right of the Jews to a state in the same country. Those who advocate, as the New York City mayor does, for a two-state solution to the conflict assert that there is a way for both peoples to have a home alongside each other. However, when people like Omar, Sarsour, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and the BDS movement they support—let alone the leaders of Fatah or Hamas movements—say “Palestine,” they are not referring to a separate state next door to a secure Jewish state. They are, instead, referring to their hope of replacing the State of Israel with a Palestinian state that will deny the right of the Jews to self-determination.
Opposing that ambition—as Yeger clearly intended in his original tweet—is not Islamophobic or even necessarily rooted in hate against Palestinians. While Yeger’s willingness to oppose Israel’s foes in this manner was not the sort of thing that will bring Jews and Arabs together in an ethnically diverse borough, it’s also not the same thing as Omar’s anti-Semitic statements or her support of a BDS movement that aims at Israel’s annihilation.
Foreign policy has long been a theme of New York politics, and in years past, mayoral hopefuls often felt they had to demonstrate their support for the three “I’s”: Israel, Ireland and Italy. But if support for “Palestine,” whether alongside or replacing Israel, is now a requirement, Sarsour is right about a sea change in the city’s politics and that of the Democratic Party that dominates it. Now that the same party that shielded Omar has punished Yeger, it certainly won’t strengthen the Democrats’ efforts to be considered a pro-Israel party.
Indeed.
–Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter.–
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Comments
Kind of typical – lose your position for stating a very obvious truth.
Another struggle meeting, another victim of the red guard.
(..)”a form of public humiliation that
was used in the Mao era, particularly during the Cultural Revolution, to shape public opinion and humiliate, persecute those deemed class enemies.”
Denounce your neighbor on Twitter or Struggle your boss on Facebook.
Predigital Twitter Image:
https://rusmiln.files.wordpress.com/2014/10/bigcharacterposters.jpg
Yes, but not a victim of the “Red Guard” but of the battle for the helm of the DNC. It’s Islam versus… everything else.
Islam is winning. They are strong, they are cohesive and they have the global support of billions. The reason you are seeing the DNC’s inability to control antisemitism is because antisemitism is fundraising gold to them.
Call it the green guard. Or the red-green guard.
Factual statements can be tough for Social Justice Warriors to take. It hurts their feelings.
But as more Palestinian immigrants have settled in New York, the political calculus has grown slightly more complicated…..
Conquest? Abject surrender? Dhimmitude? These aren’t complicated.
Not enough American Jews know why their friends are in this fight. Can’t explain why more haven’t found us.
“Palestine” was a Roman invention. Hadrian changed the province’s
name from Judaea to Palestine following the second Jewish Revolt in the early 2nd Century.
The demo outside his office was maybe 40 of his opponents countered by several hundred of his supporters.
(Most of the opponents were from the crazy cult that has hijacked the once-proud name of “Neturei Karta”; the original NK was against Israel but refused to make common cause with its enemies. This new group was founded by a paid agent of Yasser Arafat, but pretty much every one of its members is clinically insane. They’re rejected even by the anti-zionist Satmars.)
Here’s a sign seen at the counter-demo. It’s true, too.
Excellent but often-overlooked point about the NK. Another overlooked point – the loudmouth NKs who demonstrate with Israel’s enemies are a tiny faction even within NK. Most of the NK, as their name implies, focus on safeguarding the kedusha of Yerushalayim against prtitzus and secularism, not on defaming the State of Israel and strengthening its enemies.
The problem is that the “mainstream” of NK has almost disappeared, since people are reluctant to identify with them lest they be mistaken for supporters of the Hirsch cult (the crazies).
I hope this on hindsight is identified as the critical moment when Jews defect from the Democrat party in huge numbers.
*in hindsight
The dumb bass is a democrat, what did he think, the other leftists wouldn’t fillet him first chance they got?
Dumb bass.
It’s Brooklyn; the only way to get elected is as a Democrat. In private I’d bet he votes Republican, at least in federal elections.
But it doesn’t exist.
Well, now we can put Di Blasio in the category of antisemite Sarsour.
This ain’t pre-War Germany. We are armed.