Mamdani Likens N.Y. Billionaires to “Heartless” Jerusalem Jews
Plus, New York Times parrots Al Jazeera
The Democratic nominee for mayor of New York, Israel-hating socialist Zohran Mamdani, showed up at St. Paul Community Baptist Church in East New York, Brooklyn, on Sunday morning and gave a speech likening New York billionaires to “heartless” Jews after the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
“I think of Lamentations 4, which reads, ‘Even jackals offer their breasts to nurse their young, but my people have become heartless like ostriches in the desert. Because of thirst the infant’s tongue sticks to the roof of its mouth. The children beg for bread but no one gives it to them. Those who once ate delicacies are destitute in the streets,’” Mamdani said in his remarks, a video of which he posted to X.
“We are not heartless. Now some of our leaders may be,” he said. “It is time for our leaders to do the hard work of nursing the young. It is time for City Hall to quench the parched lips of the thirsty and quiet the grumbling bellies of hungry children. It is time for politics to clean our streets, to house the destitute, and leave cruelty for kindness. We still need to take on those billionaires who do not want to fight that which is wrong if it hurts their bottom line.”
Lamentations is a book of the Hebrew Bible that is read aloud by Jews on the Ninth of Av, a holiday marking the destruction of the Temple in 586 BCE. That holiday, a fast day, this year fell on the night of August 2 and lasted into August 3.
Mamdani, a Shiite Muslim, has called for a boycott of Israel and the arrest of its elected prime minister. The building at 859 Hendrix Street that he spoke in was originally constructed as a synagogue, B’nai Israel, and, like many synagogues in Brooklyn, was eventually taken over by a black church as the demographics of the neighborhood changed. Mamdani concluded his remarks by quoting Malcolm X, another Muslim.
New York Times parrots Al Jazeera: The Qatar owned-and-controlled press outlet Al Jazeera, which Hamas uses as cover, has been pushing a storyline about Israel traumatizing the innocent children of Gaza.
Now the New York Times has taken up the same theme in a top-of-the-front page story.
Ironically, when it comes to the concluding anecdote of the Times story, Al Jazeera is a more complete source of information than the New York Times is.
Under a section headling, “A Childhood Without Parents,” the Times reports, “On one page in his notebook, Sajed al-Ghalban, 10, has drawn a picture of his mother and father at their old home in Khan Younis, in southern Gaza. On another page, there’s a drawing of his mother taking him to a vegetable stand. This is the closest Sajed can get to a hug from his parents. His father, Muhammad, and mother, Shireen, were killed in a strike that also destroyed their home in the third week of the war in 2023. The Israeli military said the house had been used for “terror purposes” and declined to comment on whether Mr. al-Ghalban was the target. One of Sajed’s surviving aunts, Amany Abu Salah, said Sajed’s father had no links to militant groups. It was not possible to verify either assertion.” (The Times also hyperlinks to a website that describes Muhammad al-Ghalban as a civilian casualty.”)
On the claim that “Sajed’s father had no links to militant groups,” Al Jazeera has a report from 2006 that “In the southern Gaza Strip town of Khan Yunus on Monday, gunmen killed a pregnant Palestinian woman and another family member and wounded her husband and his brother, a Hamas member, hospital sources said….Witnesses said armed attackers, whose identities were unclear, opened fire at a local Hamas leader, Muhammad al-Ghalban, as he was travelling in a car with family members after dark in the town. Al-Ghalban and his brother, who was critically wounded, were being treated at a Gaza hospital, medics said. Sami Abu Zuhri, spokesman for the Hamas movement, said the incident was a planned attack. ‘The attack targeted our mujahid [fighter] Yasir al-Ghalban. Two passengers have been killed in the car,’ he said.”
The Times also says “Recently, Sajed, remembering how his father kept a rifle at home, said he wanted to help guard the aid convoys that bring food into Gaza.” The Times doesn’t explore why “his father kept a rifle at home.”
I don’t doubt that Gazan children are traumatized or that it is newsworthy. Yet in assessing responsibility, maybe some of it belongs not to Israel but to parents who choose to become armed leaders of the Hamas terrorist group? It seems careless of the Times to parrot the claim about “no links to militant groups” without mentioning that the fellow (or at least one by the same name in the same place) had been publicly identified as a Hamas leader. Maybe in the intervening years the guy renounced Hamas and became an advocate of peaceful coexistence, but the Times doesn’t say no recent links, it says “no links.”
Comment of the day: From Michael Segal: “We need a contest for Mamdani slogans written by President Obama. My entry is ‘If you like your apartment you can keep your apartment,’ not disclosing that you will need to leave because you will lose your job.”...I have confidence that other readers can do at least as well. Let the entries continue.”
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