SWC: DeBlasio’s Stereotyping of City’s Jews During Pandemic Could Fuel Anti-Semitism; Blasts Members of Jewish Community Who Flaunted Rules at Funeral

April 29, 2020

“Mayor DeBlasio has contributed to dangerous stereotyping of all New York Jewry by his outburst. Instead of castigating the world’s largest Jewish community in the world, he should be out in the community—all segments of a diverse community to encourage and cajole every New Yorker to heed the guidelines,” charged Mark Weitzman and Michael Cohen two top senior SWC Officials based in New York, said in a statement on behalf of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish NGO.

“Ever since the virus hit, the SWC has been working directly with  local political and Jewish communal leaders in the Tri-State area to insist on full compliance from everyone, even as we have tracked increasing anti-Semitic hate on social media linked to the Corona virus. Mayor DeBlasio should be doing the same,” Weitzman and Cohen added.

“The SWC denounces those members of our community and all other New Yorkers whose thoughtless and reckless behavior threatens the well-being of us all,” they concluded.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center is one of the largest international Jewish human rights organizations with over 400,000 member families in the United States. It is an NGO at international agencies including the United Nations, UNESCO, the OSCE, the OAS, the Council of Europe and the Latin American Parliament (Parlatino).