New York City is ground zero for the COVID-19 spread. It is disproportionately spreading among the Hasidic and Orthodox Jewish communities because they are refusing to obey CDC social distancing guidelines that people of all religious, racial, and cultural backgrounds have been asked to obey for the sake of public safety. Many people, including many Jews, have followed these guidelines to stop the spread of the disease.
However, the fact that the Hasidic communities have stubbornly refused to listen has resulted in massive outbreaks of the disease among them, including a large number of deaths.
Following the death of a major orthodox rabbi from COVID-19 and the attendance of thousands of orthodox who refuse to social distance, the UK Daily Mail has reported that Mayor DeBlasio is severely cracking down on the Hasids and all communities who refuse to distance. In response, many of the Orthodox have cried “anti-semitism”.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio has instructed police to arrest mourners at funerals and anyone gathering in large groups in a new ‘zero tolerance’ approach to stop the spread of coronavirus – after he drove across New York City to witness hundreds gathered in Brooklyn.
The mayor showed up at an Orthodox Jewish funeral in Williamsburg Tuesday night and threatened mourners with arrest for ignoring social distancing rules.
De Blasio traveled to personally shut down the gathering after images surfaced on social media of a massive funeral for a rabbi who died from coronavirus.
Shocking photos revealed hundreds of people gathered in the streets to pay their respects to Rabbi Chaim Mertz.
The mourners were seen crammed in together much closer than the six feet recommended under social distancing guidelines and many people were not wearing face masks.
The mass gathering is also a violation of New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s executive order banning non-essential gatherings.
De Blasio slammed the mourners on Twitter calling their actions ‘absolutely unacceptable’.
‘Something absolutely unacceptable happened in Williamsburg tonite: a large funeral gathering in the middle of this pandemic,’ he wrote.
‘When I heard, I went there myself to ensure the crowd was dispersed. And what I saw WILL NOT be tolerated so long as we are fighting the Coronavirus.’
The mayor went on to send a stark warning to the community that the police will issue summons and even arrest people flouting social distancing guidelines.
‘My message to the Jewish community, and all communities, is this simple: the time for warnings has passed,’ he wrote on Twitter.
De Blasio slammed the Jewish community in a Twitter rant Tuesday night after he had broken up the gathering with the NYPD
‘I have instructed the NYPD to proceed immediately to summons or even arrest those who gather in large groups. This is about stopping this disease and saving lives. Period.’
De Blasio’s response faced a backlash from some members of the Jewish community who said he was ‘singling out’ the group.
‘This has to be a joke.Did the Mayor of NYC really just single out one specific ethnic community (a community that has been the target of increasing hate crimes in HIS city) as being noncompliant??’ wrote Chaim Deutsch, a City Council member who represents a large Orthodox Jewish population, in a Twitter post.
The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council also Tweeted anger at the mayor’s response. (source)
There is nothing “anti-semitic” about being asked to follow rules instituted for health and safety in the area that is the worldwide ground zero for a major pandemic.
What do many of these Orthodox want? To spread disease and make people sick? It is not enough that many of their own have died?
This is not “anti-semitism”. This is an utter contempt for public safety and the good will of the rest of society, regardless of religion or race, who are trying to work together to make difficult sacrifices for the common good of all.
This is not a small issue either, such as with masks or not, or with a few people. This is thousands of people actively creating conditions that WILL endanger people and they having the arrogance to try to blame people for saying “please do not do this very dangerous thing.”
These people could just apologize and do what everybody else regardless of race or religion has been asked to do and has voluntarily done. If Catholics, Evangelicals, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and many Jews of good will are following these regulations, why is it “anti-semitism” when the Orthodox Jews are asked to do this?
What one is seeing here is the reason why actual “anti-semitism” exists. People do not simply “hate Jews for no reason”, but develop a hatred because of patterns of socially destructive and vulgar behavior in combination with a lack of repentance and aggressive attempts to deflect their own behavior onto others.
Nobody wants to live next to a jerk who is a threat to himself and his neighbors. Is it a surprise then that people see behavior such as this happening among a lot of Jews, and then people start to not like them?
I’m not saying that people should go around hating others. I am saying that people just do not dislike or hate others for “no reason at all”, as many apologists for such behavior like to claim, but it comes from patterns of behavior that are not addressed and resolved.