A Orthodox Jewish member of the New York City City Council was asked by US officials to remove his kippah during a visit at the U.S. Consulate in Ramallah, reported JP Updates.
Brooklyn Councilmember David Greenfield was part of a NYC Council delegation, headed by Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, on a 8-day visit to Israel funded by the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).
In a series of tweets upon returning home, Greenfield said that in the course of a delegation meeting on Sunday with the US Consul General in Jerusalem, at his Ramallah office, the Consul General's security detail pulled Greenfield aside and “insisted that I not wear yarmulke when leaving US Ramallah office.”
Greenfield asked the security guards if he was endangering the group by wearing the kippah. They said he wasn’t – so he refused to remove it.
“I’m still flabbergasted that a Jew can not wear a yarmulke walking out of the US Consulate in Ramallah, Israel,” he tweeted.
In a conversation with JP Updates, Greenfield said, “We had an amazing trip to Israel. However, I was surprised that in the supposedly “moderate” city of Ramallah, the unofficial capital of the Palestinian Authority, it’s unsafe for a Jew to wear a yarmulke.”
“After all, I wasn’t strolling through the streets. I was simply walking ten feet from the door of our bus to the entrance of the American Consulate’s office,” he added.
Greenfield gave an impassioned speech last month when anti-Israel activists waving flags of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) terrorist group protested against a New York City Council event marking 70 years since the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz. He remarked that the protesters are upset "because Hitler did not finish the job – he only wiped out half of my family."