A Washington Post article that reported that New York City responded to anti-Israel protests on college campuses due to pressure from billionaires is “antisemitic in its core,” the city’s mayor told the FOX5 program “Good Day New York.”
“First of all, I think that article was antisemitic in its core,” Eric Adams told the morning TV show. “The mere fact that someone is indicating that we waited as we were supposed to get calls from the college presidents to tell us when to come in.”
“We were clear long before that call took place with those who were advocating their concern about the increase in antisemitism,” he added. “We took action on college campuses.”
The mayor added that “the mere fact that some article is saying some clandestine group came together to pressure us, it’s a lie. It did not happen.”
“We meet with all groups throughout this city of different breakdowns and ethnicities,” Adams said. “That is who I am and I’m going to continue to do so. I thought there was a hint, a hint of antisemitism that was written in that article.”
The Post reported in the article “Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show” on May 16 that “a group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University.”
The Anti-Defamation League wrote that the Post “should be ashamed of publishing an article that unabashedly (and almost entirely on anonymous sources) plays into antisemitic tropes by inferring a secret cabal of Jews is using wealth and power to influence governments, the media, the business world and academia.”
“I was honestly shocked when this inquiry came in,” wrote Fabien Levy, deputy mayor for communications in Adams’s office. “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that The Washington Post should have been ashamed to ask about, let alone actually publish.”
The Post and “others can make editorial decisions to disagree with the decisions by universities to ask the NYPD to clear unlawful encampments on campuses, but saying Jews ‘wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views’ is offensive on so many levels,” he added.
Rabbi Steven Burg, CEO of Aish HaTorah called the Post article “an antisemitic attack on the entire Jewish community.”
“The Jewish community has been vocal in our demand to protect our Jewish sons and daughters on university campuses. This is no secret,” Burg wrote. “To insinuate that we wield unfair influence by begging elected officials to use law enforcement to protect our children on campus from harassment and violence is something that I would have expected in an op-ed in Germany in the 1930s when Jewish students were expelled in mass from university.”
“The Washington Post should join our calls for the protection of Jewish students not ridicule those of us who have been vocal in begging for help,” he added.
“Did the ghost of Henry Ford secretly purchase The Washington Post,” asked Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute. “How else to explain this high-profile story reeking of antisemitism that graces the newspaper’s website.”
“It was bad enough that the Post has published one article after another from its Middle East desk loaded with egregious anti-Israel bias, which has been a focus of my own critique since November,” Satloff wrote. “Now comes something much worse—a truly shameless article that suggests there is something nefarious about private American citizens commiserating with each other in their private communications about the barbaric Hamas Oct. 7 attack.”
“Read this article and try to find anything newsworthy,” he added. “The only news here is that some Post editor convinced his/her superiors that there was something conspiratorial—and therefore newsworthy—in Jews wringing their hands over the terrible fate that befell their co-religionists on Oct. 7 and that they banded together to do something about it.”
