New York Post columnist Karol Markowicz wonders “Imagine if they were white nationalists. How much faster would the mayor and other city leaders have taken action?”
Indeed, the man who hacked 5 people with a machete during a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey New York last night, Grafton Thomas, didn’t care much about “white nationalists.” He is a black man from Greenwood Lake, a town about 20 miles away from Monsey. When he ran from the scene, he ran to Harlem — hardly a bastion of white supremacy.
But to the good liberals of New York, the source of all this “hate” is the one and only target of their real rage; Donald Trump.
“A lot of folks were told it was unacceptable to be anti-Semitic,” de Blasio said in May. “It was unacceptable to be racist, and now they’re getting more permission.” The message was subtle but unmistakable: De Blasio was trying to pin the attacks in bright-blue New York on President Trump.
Hizzoner didn’t surrender the fantasy for some time. In June, he said: “I want to be very, very clear, the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.”
He left unclear how the Big Apple had come to be populated by ideological far-right types beating up on Jews. His comments underscored his inability to truly counter the type of street-level anti-Semitism spreading through the city.
Will he face the facts now? Or will Jews need to actually die, not just be pummeled, for our leaders to grasp the threat?
Not only is De Blasio misidentifying the direction of the threat, his diversity-besotted ideology won’t allow him to identify the targets!
“Anti-Semitism is an attack on the values of our city — and we will confront it head-on,”
De Blasio tweeted after this latest round of violence against Jews. He has to stop beating around the bush. These attacks aren’t an attack on “our values.” They’re attacks on visibly Jewish people.
De Blasio needs to stop trying to find a “them” to be the opposite of his “us.” His juvenile obsession with having the right adversaries allows anti-Semitism to flourish.
Perhaps De Blasio is incapable of understanding the consequences of his rhetoric.
And it isn’t just his ideological blinders. The mayor has also helped create an anti-police atmosphere, in which the vigilant presence of officers is considered a bad thing. At an anti-police rally last month, there were signs calling for violence against the NYPD.
De Blasio’s response? He insinuated that the idea that there’s anti-police sentiment in our city is, yes, another right-wing plot.
Perhaps de Blasio and other New York city liberals just don’t care.
De Blasio’s ideology has led to apathy, which, in turn, has resulted in injured Jews in our city. It’s time for his administration to take serious action, starting by flooding hot-spot neighborhoods with police officers empowered to act.
In May, I wrote: “The attacks, and the silence of progressive New York, are utterly appalling.” In December, it’s more than appalling. It’s complicit.
We have yet to know what motivated Grafton Thomas to enter a crowded room and start swinging a machete. Thomas lives with his uncle who owns a body shop. He has one previous charge that’s been sealed by the courts. There is certainly nothing in his legal past that would suggest a potential mass killer was trying to get out.
One thing we’re sure of: it wasn’t a white supremacist ideology that motivated him.
Here’s a photo of the man taken into custody:
Here are the first images of the suspect arrested in last night’s mass stabbing targeting Orthodox Jews in Monsey, New York. pic.twitter.com/FkPm4ek7ED
— (((AG))) (@AGHamilton29) December 29, 2019
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