A New York Suburb Uses Zoning to Keep Jews Out

Even before its formal incorporation as a municipality, the town of Airmont in Rockland County, New York has sought to keep Orthodox Jews from moving in by manipulating its zoning laws to make their lives difficult. Hiram Sasser, who has represented local Jews’ anti-discrimination claims in court, writes:

Airmont was born in bigotry. In the mid-1980s, an organization called the Airmont Civic Association (ACA) pushed for [its] incorporation, which came in 1991. Almost immediately, the federal government filed suit against the new town, alleging it had been formed for the purpose of excluding Jewish citizens through zoning restrictions on their places of worship.

In 1987, legal testimony revealed that ACA’s original president, James Filenbaum, had openly stated that “the reason [for] forming this village is to keep people like you out of this neighborhood.” He was directing his comments toward Jews.

Over the past several months, attorneys . . . who have been investigating claims of discrimination by Airmont’s Orthodox Jewish residents confirmed that, indeed, village officials are up to their intolerant tricks again. In fact, their zoning ordinances, approval process, and associated fines are so egregious, it will likely take multiple lawsuits to sort through them fully. . . .

One, filed this week, seeks to recover the thousands [of dollars] rabbis have spent trying to get permission to pray with others in their own home, along with punitive damages to prevent this [kind of discrimination] from happening again. The other, filed late last month, seeks $25 million in damages from the village for the discriminatory impact its zoning scheme has had on the local school. . . . One rabbi even faced the prospect of a year in jail for simply welcoming his neighbors into his home for prayer.

Read more at New York Post

More about: American Jewry, Anti-Semitism, Orthodoxy, Politics & Current Affairs

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF