New York Democrats Marched With Israeli Fascists Last Month
Democrats say they are a bulwark against rising authoritarianism. Why, then, did some of New York’s most powerful Democratic leaders like Gov. Kathy Hochul and Sen. Chuck Schumer march with war criminals and self-described fascists from Israel on May 31?
Democratic voters increasingly look on Israel’s war crimes with horror. Not so for New York Democratic leaders like Kathy Hochul and Chuck Schumer, who marched with some of Israel’s most fervent defenders of genocide last month. (Bauer-Griffin / GC Images via Getty Images)
As over 1.3 million Palestinians live in tents and makeshift shelters due to Israel’s mass bombings, destroying at least 92 percent of Gaza’s residential infrastructure, New York Democrats who voted to supply those same bombs smiled and waved down Fifth Avenue, with blue-and-white sashes around their torsos proclaiming them honorary grand marshals of the Israel Day Parade.
On Sunday, May 31, they marched in the largest annual display of US solidarity with the Israeli government alongside self-proclaimed fascists and architects of the genocide in Gaza. The politicians’ choice, amid expanding regional wars in Lebanon and Iran, highlights their disconnect from the American public who overwhelmingly oppose Israel’s war crimes.
Beforehand Mayor Zohran Mamdani chose to act on his principles in boycotting the affair. In direct retaliation, the Israeli government sent the highest-ranking delegation since the parade’s inception in 1965.
Speaker of the Knesset Amir Ohana, who refused Palestinian prisoners vaccinations at the outbreak of the pandemic and espouses full Israeli annexation of the West Bank, led the parade. He was joined by Israeli Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, a self-described “fascist homophobe” who has bragged about presiding over a genocide, proclaiming “Gaza will be completely destroyed” and that it would be “moral” to starve Gaza’s citizens.
Not to be outdone, Gov. Kathy Hochul began the day of the parade signing legislation deliberately overriding Mamdani’s veto of the controversial “buffer zone” bill, which restricts protest outside houses of worship. The new statewide law will crack down on demonstrators who oppose illegal sales of land stolen from Palestinians in the West Bank happening in New York synagogues.
With the ink still wet on this attack on New Yorkers’ right to protest, she announced, “Today, we march in defiance.” Marching in defiance to injustice is a storied tradition, but this is not what the governor had in mind. She seemed to be referring instead to marching in defiance of the mayor’s act honoring the sanctity of Palestinian life, disregarded by those the governor chose to march alongside.
Top New York Democratic officials, including Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Letitia James, New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, New York City Comptroller Mark Levine, Representative Dan Goldman, and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin joined Hochul in literally marching in lockstep with senior ultranationalist Israeli officials — including Smotrich, who allegedly has a warrant from the International Criminal Court for his arrest.
They made this decision as Israel continues to murder Palestinians with impunity. Israel has killed more than 933 Palestinians since last October’s “ceasefire” deal, with the death toll in Gaza surpassing 75,000 for the past three years of the US-funded genocide. Israel’s recently expanded military campaigns in the region have killed over 3,637 people in Lebanon and 3,468 people in its broadly unpopular joint war with the US on Iran.
The very next day, these same politicians were backpedaling. While they initially misleadingly claimed the parade was a “celebration of Jewish pride,” the Israeli delegation cut to the chase. They likened the event to the Jerusalem Day Flag March, an annual ultranationalist celebration of the illegal occupation of Jerusalem where Israelis carry out state-sanctioned violence against Palestinians. This year, Israelis marched through Palestinian East Jerusalem chanting, “Death to Arabs,” “May your villages burn,” and “Gaza is a graveyard.”
Gov. Hochul issued a statement denouncing the parade’s most senior-ranking Israeli official who made the comparison between the East Jerusalem and New York marches: “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.” Attorney General James was quick to follow: “Islamophobia has no place in New York. I unequivocally condemn Bezalel Smotrich’s hateful rhetoric.” Speaker Menin chimed in too, saying she “fully condemns his views.” Rep. Goldman, who has repeatedly voted to send arms to Israel and censured his one Palestinian colleague, Representative Rashida Tlaib, for advocating for the liberation of her people, said, “I am disgusted that he was there.”
Smotrich, however, is not just the one bad apple New York politicians who marched beside him make him out to be. As much as Minister Smotrich is an extremist, he is firmly embedded in the leadership of the Israeli government. His views are entirely consistent with the politics that have guided Israel since the Nakba in 1948, defending ethnic cleansing of the land and rooted in blatant disregard for Palestinian life.
Quite simply, if you celebrate an apartheid state enacting a genocide, you will find yourself in fascist company.
Other featured guests of the Israel Day Parade included Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu, who has called for using nuclear weapons against Palestinians in Gaza; lawmaker Yitzhak Kroizer, who defended the Israel Defense Forces’ murder of a family in the village of Tammun because “in Jenin, there are no innocent children”; and Knesset Member Ariel Kallner, who called for a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.”
It is horrifying that leaders of any stripe would march alongside these fascist politicians, much less Democrats in a diverse, progressive city like New York. Instead of issuing a selective condemnation of Smotrich, they should be issuing apologies for celebrating an apartheid state that has directly harmed their constituents, many of whom have had members of their family killed or displaced by the Israeli officials who presided over the parade.
Turning Tides
The presence of violent extremists on our streets is a cause for serious alarm in itself. The fact that they would be accompanied by top elected leaders is a disgrace to our community and leaves all New Yorkers less secure. As Jewish New Yorkers, we continue to say, as we did when we shut down Grand Central Terminal and took over the New York Stock Exchange with Mamdani: supporting a state that is enacting a genocide, using starvation as a weapon of war, displacing Palestinians, and ruthlessly committing war crimes does not support Jewish communities or make any of us safer.
Mayor Mamdani realized that you cannot tants af tsvey khosenes, or “dance at two weddings,” as the Yiddish saying goes. It is impossible to champion Zionism, as was the parade’s theme, while also denouncing anti-Palestinian racism and Islamophobia. Democratic leaders cannot march in support of openly fascist leaders of a government enacting war crimes and expect their constituents to trust them to fight fascism and human rights violations within our own country.
Indeed, the same day that top New York Democratic leaders marched in the Israel Day Parade, New Yorkers’ neighbors, family members, and friends were on hunger strike inside and protesting outside of Delaney Hall, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center where immigrants are held without due process, refused medical care, and beaten for opposing harsh and unsanitary conditions. There is a direct line between Israel’s treatment of Palestinian prisoners and the US government’s treatment of illegally detained immigrants, including their specific targeting of those speaking up for Palestinian human rights like Mahmoud Khalil.
Public opinion is waking up to these connections. The vast majority of Democrats do not want their leaders arming the Israeli government with bombs used to decimate children in Gaza. Mamdani’s leadership, coupled with his immense popularity, opens up a new horizon of possibility for elected leaders choosing justice for Palestinians without compromise.
The mayor’s position is rooted in a long-standing commitment to speaking up for justice for Palestinians, while working in coalition alongside anti-Zionist Jewish New Yorkers. One of us, Jay, was with then Assemblymember Mamdani in a small room in Albany years ago, when, with the Not on Our Dime coalition, he introduced the first-of-its-kind legislation in the country to revoke the nonprofit status of New York organizations that funnel money to support illegal settlement expansion and violence against Palestinians. Many of these same organizations had floats in this year’s Israel Day Parade.
At the time, even the senator who lent chairs from her office for the announcement didn’t feel she could publicly support the legislation. Today it’s a different story. With the support of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the bill has just been relaunched in the New York State Legislature. Basel Adra, the Palestinian who testified in Albany when Mamdani first introduced the bill, would go on to win an Oscar for telling the story of Israeli settler violence at length in No Other Land. And the person who first introduced the legislation now resides in Gracie Mansion, not in spite of but because of his unwavering commitment to Palestine.
We have seen this transformation locally and across the nation. Former Comptroller Brad Lander, who also boycotted the Israel Day Parade, divested New York City’s holdings in Israel Bonds. Public Advocate Jumaane Williams has joined with Mayor Mamdani in pressuring current Comptroller Levine not to reinvest.
On the eve of the April 15 vote on Sen. Bernie Sanders’s legislation to block the sending of thousand-pound bombs to the Israeli military, we organized a protest of hundreds, including whistleblower Chelsea Manning and actor Hannah Einbinder, who shut down Senator Chuck Schumer’s office and took over the surrounding streets. The NYPD arrested nearly one hundred of us.
For the first time in the history of Congress, the following day, nearly every Democrat voted to block the bombs used to carry out genocide in Gaza and the transfer of bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank. Schumer, the Democratic leader of the Senate and honorary grand marshal of the Israel Day Parade, broke with the overwhelming majority of his party to continue to fund war crimes.
The tides have turned and there is no going back. In boycotting this year’s Israel Day parade, Mamdani no longer marches alone.