Bill de Blasio surrounds himself with hawkish supporters of Israel. The likely next mayor of New York City appeared with the Jewish Community Relations Council last month to laud sanctions aimed at Iran and said that nobody would be fooled “until we see Iran move away decisively from the acquisition of nuclear weapons.” On October 9, he extolled the virtues of a rabbi who once called for God to strike Palestinians with a “plague” at a fundraiser populated by Syrian Jews.
But it wasn’t always this way. De Blasio used to be surrounded by critics of the Israeli occupation. He was a member of a Latin American solidarity group that was critical of Israeli human rights abuses in statements and flyers. While he was likely aware of the statements, he did not necessarily agree with them–activists I spoke with don’t remember him saying anything about Palestine back then. But the contrast between who his allies were in the early 1990s and who they are today couldn’t be more stark. full: http://mondoweiss.net/2013/10/blasio-learned-israel.html _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
