Real #AmericansAgainstAnti-Semitism Call Out Racism and Islamophobia of Fake “Americans Against Anti-Semitism” Front Group

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Sunday, September 22, 2019
Date: Sunday, September 22, 2019
Place : City Hall Park, NYC
Details : Real #AmericansAgainstAnti-Semitism Call Out Racism and Islamophobia of Fake “Americans Against Anti-Semitism” Front Group

Media Contacts :
Andrew Silver: 412-417-6412
Rachel: americansagainstantisemitism@riseup.net

Twitter: @MINYAN2019
Hashtags: #AmericansAgainstAntisemitism #JewishSolidarity
Website: https://americansagainstantisemitism.noblogs.org/

NEW YORK CITY – Americans against Anti-Semitism will gather at 12PM at City Hall Park to stand united with all of the communities directly impacted by anti-Semitic violence and white supremacist terror, oppose a rally led by those who collaborate with the far-right, and to reject anti-black racism and Islamophobia wherever it rears its head in the fight against anti-Semitism.

Hate crimes are on the rise and white nationalists are actively recruiting in all five boroughs. Racial, religious, gender, and sexual minorities are targeted in the streets of cities and towns across the country. Anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, xenophobic, and virulently racist incitement comes from the highest levels of government down to the local police precinct. Yet that violence continues to be met with impunity and indifference by the authorities – and the so-called community leaders gathered here today would have us believe that the poor, the powerless, Muslims, and women of color are to blame.

“They called this demonstration ‘Name It to Fight It!’ — well, we’ve been naming it for years, but when Jews like us are attacked by white nationalists and anti-Semites, these politicians are nowhere to be found. They don’t really care about us, and they don’t speak for us,” said Rachel Glick, a native of Queens and a member of her local synagogue.

“We are on the front lines of the fight against anti-Semitism and white supremacist activity in this city, and we have never seen any of today’s speakers beside us. Where were they when Jews were being attacked in the streets of Greenpoint for wearing a Magen David? Where were they when 200 white nationalists and anti-Semites rallied in Lower Manhattan to denounce Jewish reparations for the Holocaust?” said Moishe Ben Zev, an anti-racist community organizer from the Upper West Side.

Andrew Silver, a member of Americans against Anti-Semitism and a local LGBTQI+
activist, said, “Inviting pundits from Fox News to speak at a rally against anti-Semitism is insulting, and utterly disrepsects the lives lost to the white nationalist ideology to which Fox News continues to give air. More than one of the speakers at today’s rally are outright racists, Islamophobes, and white nationalist sympathizers. These so-called community leaders give cover to those who paint swastikas on our shuls, those who chant ‘Jews will not replace us,’ those who would deny the Holocaust, and those who collaborate with modern-day Nazis.”

The attached dossier offers supporting evidence for these allegations, citing Dov Hikind, Aryeh Spero, Sid Rosenberg, and others on today’s speaker list in their own words. “Yad Yamin,” a hard-line white nationalist organization, formerly known as the JDL NYC, is a co-sponsor of today’s rally. This group openly aligns with those who would exterminate us. In November 2018, they disrupted a Mourner’s Kaddish for the victims of the Tree of Life pogrom held at the Warsaw Ghetto Memorial in Riverside Park. Both former NYS Assemblyman Hikind, a Trump supporter, and NYC Councilman Chaim Deutsch regularly incite attacks against Muslims and women of color.

Americans against Anti-Semitism believe that the struggle against anti-Semitism can’t be fought with other types of racism — and especially not in a city where 1 in 4 Jews is non-white. Calling for a greater NYPD presence in our shuls or bringing armed white militias onto our streets does nothing to douse the flames of virulent white supremacism and Jew-hatred. Instead, it fuels them further.

We don’t change the subject. We are on the frontlines of the fight against anti-Semitism, racism, white supremacy, and fascism in the places we live, work, play, and pray. We don’t attack other ethnic groups. We attack the threat of anti-Semitism in America head on, with New Yorkers of all backgrounds at our side.

From Pittsburgh to NYC, Americans against Anti-Semitism say:
No alliances with anti-Semites! Safety in solidarity!