New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Letitia James, attorney general of New York, decried the participation of the Jewish state’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, at the Israel Day on Fifth parade in New York City on May 31.
Smotrich, who has been elected to the Knesset, is Jewish. Hochul and James are not.
“Bezalel Smotrich is a far-right extremist, whose hateful and divisive rhetoric is fundamentally at odds with the values we hold dear in New York,” Hochul stated. “Yesterday’s parade was a celebration of Jewish pride, community and unity. I strongly condemn his participation.”
“Islamophobia has no place in New York,” James said. “I unequivocally condemn Bezalel Smotrich’s hateful rhetoric.”
Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City who has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in the Big Apple and whose spokeswoman said that synagogues violate international law when they hold pro-Israel events, told MS Now that he is “offended” by Smotrich’s participation in the parade.
Mandani skipped the parade, which his predecessors have attended for 60 years.
Morton Klein, national president of the Zionist Organization of America, told JNS that the “left wing always talks of unity, yet hypocritically they fight to harm unity by wishing to exclude an elected and effective Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich.”
“The left smears and defames anyone who disagrees with them in order to reduce the target’s credibility to make them less effective,” Klein said. “They can’t tolerate Smotrich’s support for the right of Jews to live in Judea and Samaria, the heart of Israel, yet they would never deny the right of Arabs to live anywhere in Israel.”
“The left are simply frightened appeasers of the Arab enemy,” he added.
Jesse Arm, vice president of external affairs at the Manhattan Institute, stated that “yesterday, Israel’s finance minister got on a plane to march in the UJA-Federation of New York’s Israel parade. New York’s mayor couldn’t be bothered.”
“The former would like to be your friend. The latter wants to spit in your eye,” Arm wrote.
Hasan Piker, a podcaster who has praised Hamas, said that Smotrich attending the parade amounted to having a Nazi there.
“This from the guy who said Hamas is ‘a thousand times better’ than Israel after Hamas attempted to exterminate the Jews,” wrote Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.). “Your Nazi detector might be broken, Hasan.”
