New York: Breaking decade old New York tradition, Mayor Zohran Mamdani skipped Israel day parade. Mamdani according to sources skipped the event because of his pro-Palestine ideologies. However, ex-New York mayors were seen at the event.
It must be noted that, the Israel Day parade has always been a must-attend event for mayors, governors and other political leaders.
The decade long political custom, an annual one was organized on Sunday at the Fifth Avenue drawing huge crowds. The parade is organized to honor Israel. Every year, huge number of people gather to celebrate the birth of the Jewish state in 1948.
The move comes just week after the Mamdani administration released a video commemorating the Nakba-an Arabic word for “catastrophe” that is used to describe the displacement of an estimated 700,000 Palestinians during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war that followed Israel’s establishment.
“I said on the campaign trail that I wouldn’t be attending the parade, and I’ve made my views on the Israeli government abundantly clear,” Mamdani said at a news conference on Thursday. But he also promised a robust police presence to make sure it went off “seamlessly and peacefully.”
Mamdani’s absence from the event has been attracting heavy criticism. Opponents are criticising him for not attending the Israel Day Parade. Rabbi Marc Schneier, founding senior rabbi of the Hampton synagogue on Long Island and president of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which advocates for better relationships between Jews and Muslims, called Mamdani’s decision to not attend the parade “a slap in the face to all Jewish New Yorkers,” reported local media.
He also, slammed Mamdani’s Nakba video as “propaganda,” echoing concerns from other Jewish leaders who said it excluded context about Jewish peoples’ displacement during the period.
City mayor, featured the story of a woman who was displaced at 9 years old, interspersed with text about the Nakba, as she described a feeling of missing home, saying “it’s the soft hills of Palestine that actually touched me.”
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