Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on December 30, 2021

Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo is backing up a Jewish congressmans incendiary claim that he heard protesters scream Jew! at him during a September event in New Jersey.

Garden State Democratic Rep. Josh Gottheimer caused a stir during a Dec. 13 speech at Rutgers University in which he said he was set upon by anti-Semitic protesters on Sept. 20 as he and Raimondo made a series of stops in Bergen County promoting President Joe Bidens infrastructure bill.

The pair were greeted by around 100 hecklers in Glen Rock most of whom, Gottheimer claimed, came from the local chapter of the Working Families Party. The situation was intense enough that Raimondos security detail insisted the pair travel in the commerce secretarys vehicle.

They were going from store to store protesting and as we were going into the bakery someone from the crowd derisively screamed Jew!' Gottheimer said, adding that Raimondo heard the remark too and reacted with disgust. She couldnt believe it. I remember looking at her.

Raimondo told The Post this week she too heard the hateful jeers.

Anti-Semitism is wrong, reprehensible and unacceptable. I join Congressman Gottheimer in condemning these hateful attacks that have absolutely no place in our politics, Raimondo said.

Though a Democrat, Gottheimer is among his partys most moderate voices and his attacks on The Squad and progressives has long drawn activist ire. WFP endorsed his unsuccessful 2020 primary opponent Arati Kreibich who was at the protest herself.

The WFP refuted Gottheimers claim.

There is no place for antisemitism at WFP, and to be clear, if that ever happened at a WFP event, the person would have been rebuked instantly and asked to leave, said Sue Altman, the partys New Jersey state director. We have reviewed video footage from our protests and interviewed many, many participants in them, including Jewish WFP members. All the footage has been made available to the press. We found no sign of such an outburst. No one we spoke to witnessed any anti-Semitic speech, and most volunteered that theyd have shut down such behavior immediately.

The congressman had come to campus to voice his displeasure over a decision by the the part-time faculty union at Rutgers to support Hamas during their most recent round of hostilities against Israel.

Not long ago, I held an event in my district to talk about the benefits of the bipartisan federal infrastructure bill, only to have members of the Working Families Party disrupt the event by screaming Jew at me. What has our country come to? Gottheimer told students.

InsiderNJ, which covered the protest at the time, noted that things had been a bit impolite and that verbal insults were hurled at the congressman.

The Rutgers speech, nevertheless, circulated in Jewish circles and won praise from Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League.

Congressman Gottheimer spoke movingly about the threat of anti-Semitism facing students on campus, and we applaud him for highlighting it.If the Congressman says he was the victim of an anti-Semitic remark we take him at his word, an ADL spokesman Jake Hyman said.

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Rep. Gottheimer says progressive protesters shouted 'Jew ...

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