Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

New York GOP Chapter Vows To Re-Air Anti-Semitic Campaign Ad

The leader of the Republican Party chapter in Rockland County, New York vowed to re-air a campaign ad that it deleted from its Facebook page after being criticized for anti-Semitism, the New York Post reported Thursday.

The video, titled “A Storm is Coming,” claimed that local legislator Aron Wieder, who is an Orthodox Jew, and his “bloc” were plotting a “takeover” of the area, which would threaten “our homes, our families, our schools, our communities, our water, our way of life.” The video was condemned by New York Attorney General Tish James and the Republican Jewish Coalition before being removed from Facebook.

“The Video came down for 2 reasons: first accomplished its goal of highlighting the issues that face our county. And second, took it down because the controversy stopped adding to number one above,” Rockland County GOP chairman Lawrence Garvey wrote on Facebook. “However,” Garvey added, “the video will be back, because this conversation is important to Rockland.”

Rockland County has been the site of tensions for years between longtime locals and Orthodox, who now comprise around one-third of the population. A 2015 Rockland County GOP ad was also condemned as anti-Semitic for its use of footage of Jews.

The recent ad was previewed and approved by multiple local Republican Party officials in February, the Post previously reported.

Aiden Pink is the deputy news editor of the Forward. Contact him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.