The antisemitism crisis in New York City escalated to new heights last week, with a wave of serious incidents demonstrating the danger that the violent rhetoric will soon turn into violent and tragic action.
On Monday, June 10, a demonstration was held in Manhattan in which anti-Israel demonstrators protested the existence of an exhibit that teaches about the hundreds of innocents who were murdered at the Nova music festival on October 7.
Like brainwashed zombies, the crowd robotically repeated the chants of a protest leader who justified the massacre and stated that the victims had it coming for holding a music festival anywhere near Gaza.
Protesters chanted "Long live the Intifada" and "Kill another Zionist now." Banners that read 'Long live October 7' and 'Jihad of Victory or Martyrdom' were unfurled. In one incident, a protester was filmed telling a group of Jews, "I wish Hitler was still here. He would have wiped all you out."
Later that same day, a group of masked thugs took over a subway car in Manhattan and demanded to know if there were any Zionists on board. The masked activists yelled, "Raise your hands if you're a Zionist! This is your chance to get out!"
A day later, pro-Hamas activists vandalized the home of the director of the Brooklyn Museum director and other Jewish members of the museum’s board with red paint. The vandals hung a sign that read 'Anne Pasternak Brooklyn Museum White Supremacist Zionist' and spray-painted an inverted red triangle, a Hamas symbol used to identify Israeli targets, on Pasternak's door along with other red graffiti.
This is just the tip of the iceberg of recent antisemitic incidents in New York, which has seen synagogues, elderly Jews, and Jewish children targeted by vandals and attackers.
This has led to growing calls for the reinstitution of a centuries-old law that banned the wearing of masks at political rallies.
For 200 years, New York State had a law that banned the covering of one’s face at rallies. This law was used against groups like the Ku Klux Klan, whose members sought the freedom to spread their bigotry without consequence, just as today's antisemites do.
The law was repealed in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, as New York officials sought to accommodate the protests that erupted following the death of George Floyd while encouraging the wearing of face masks in the hope that the masks stop or slow the spread of the disease.
In 2024, there is no longer any reason not to bring back a law that served New York well for two centuries. Today’s masked bigots cover their faces so that they cannot be identified no matter how illegal, hateful, or violent they become. Columbia University has closed an investigation into an activist who held a sign calling on Hamas to murder Jewish students because the activist covered her face while calling for the murder of Jewish students, making it difficult for the school to identify her.
With Jewish leaders in New York warning that the situation has deteriorated to levels reminiscent of 1930s Germany, it is only a matter of time before one or more of these so-called activists put their genocidal rhetoric into action and someone dies as a result.
Restoring the mask ban would go a long way towards protecting the millions of Jewish people who call New York home. It would empower the police to take action sooner before these rallies spiral out of control and compel the bigots to tone down their open lust for genocide for fear of being arrested or publicly shamed for their Nazi-like behavior when they cannot hide their faces.
As long as bloodthirsty mobs are allowed to control the streets and the subways, no one is safe. The more they are allowed to hide their faces, the more they are allowed to get away with calling for violence, murder, and genocide, the more they go unpunished for actual violence, the bolder they become, and the greater and greater the risk that groups of them will begin to emulate the Hamas butchers they love so much.
New York’s leaders, from Mayor Adams to Governor Hochul and everyone in between, must move from words to action before the antisemites do and bring back the mask law now, before the situation deteriorates any further. When people target Zionists on subway cars, when people paint Hamas targets on the homes of Jews, when people profess their love for massacres like October 7 and their desire to see Jews murdered, it is only a matter of time before they start killing people. We cannot count on the Jew-haters’ cowardice continuing forever, especially when they are allowed to hide their identities by covering their faces.
Get rid of the masks now, before someone is killed.