New York City mayor and longshot presidential candidate Bill de Blasio on Tuesday denied the left’s role in the rise of anti-Semitic hate crimes, claiming that Jew-hatred is strictly a “right-wing movement.”
According to New York City Police Department data, hate crimes are up 64 percent since 2018. De Blasio’s office acknowledged Tuesday that 60 percent of such crimes were motivated by anti-Semitism, but the mayor declared, “I think the ideological movement that is anti-Semitic is the right-wing movement.”
De Blasio dismissed the notion that the far-left, anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement is a significant source of rising anti-Semitism, arguing, “I want to be very, very clear: the violent threat, the threat that is ideological, is very much from the right.”