New York City’s Mayor Vows to Crack Down on Anti-Semitic Assaults

Feb. 17 2022

Following a recent spate of attacks against Jews in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has pledged to devote serious effort to finding the perpetrators and restoring security. Governor Kathy Hochul has promised to assist in the investigations.

Over the weekend, vandals scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti across a dental lab, while others smashed the windshield of a school-bus with Hebrew lettering on the side. Upon learning about the graffiti, Adams released a statement saying that “this would be disgusting anytime but it’s especially outrageous as we come to the end of Shabbos. We won’t let this vicious hatred go unanswered in our city.” Luke Tress reports:

A slew of anti-Jewish incidents in the New York region in recent weeks has included numerous acts of vandalism such as spray-painting swastikas, verbal abuse, blasting Jews with snow, spitting on children, and physical violence. On Sunday in Crown Heights, an assailant hit a Jewish man in the face while passing him on the street, knocking off his hat. He was detained by a volunteer patrol group and then arrested.

Saturday reports said a police crossing guard in Manhattan’s Upper West Side was fired earlier in the month for making anti-Semitic comments against Jewish parents and children.

“Push your Jewish kids into the street and get hit by a bus,” she told one parent.

Read more at Times of Israel

More about: Anti-Semitism, Eric Adams, New York City

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023