New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Tuesday dismissed the notion that anti-Semitism exists on the left side of the political spectrum, saying that Jew-hatred is a “right-wing movement.”
At a press conference in Brooklyn, home to 561,000 Jews, he said, “I think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement.”
De Blasio, a candidate for president, disagreed with a claim by a reporter who noted increasing anti-Semitism “on the left in the BDS movement and around the world.”
BDS supporters are predominantly associated with the far-left, belonging, for example, to the Democratic Socialists of America, and are especially active within academia and on college campuses.
The BDS campaign is organized and coordinated by the Palestinian BDS National Committee, with the first Palestinian BDS conference held in Ramallah in November 2007.
“I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological is very much from the right,” said de Blasio.
