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.”
Anti-Semitism isn’t just Jews getting punched in the face.
It’s videos like this, that paint religious Jews as the “other”. I am shocked that the Rockland County GOP approved this ad.
This video says a lot more about the people who made it than the people it seeks to condemn. pic.twitter.com/43LNeh1ygu
— Councilman Deutsch (@ChaimDeutsch) August 29, 2019
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 pink@forward.com or follow him on Twitter @aidenpink
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO