On October 10, 2023, the New York Times columnist Bret Stephens wrote about a rally which took place in New York's Times Square on October 8th--one day after Hamas (joined by others, including members of the Palestinian group Islamic Jihad), conducted its massacres and kidnappings in Israel.
At the time of the rally, it was known that several hundred people in Israel had been murdered. Ultimately it would be learned that 1200 people had been killed in the sadistic rampages--in addition to the 250 people who had been taken to Gaza as hostages. Those murdered, and those kidnapped, included babies, children, adults, and the elderly.
In his October 10th column, Bret Stephens wrote the following, in part:
On Saturday morning in southern Israel, Hamas murdered hundreds of people
at a music festival and kidnapped others at gunpoint to serve as human
shields in Gaza. On Sunday afternoon in Midtown Manhattan, a speaker at a
rally of pro-Palestinian and left-wing groups celebrated that atrocity...
“As
you might have seen, there was some sort of rave or desert party where
they were having a great time, until the resistance came in electrified
hang gliders and took at least several dozen hipsters,” a speaker said. “But I’m sure they’re doing very fine despite what The New York Post says.” He was met with cheers.
I
went to see the rally for myself: Would there be even perfunctory
condemnation of Hamas’s methods? A brief nod of sympathy to Israel’s
anguish? Some banal nod to the cause of peace and nonviolence? Not that I
heard. What I saw was giddiness and gloating, as if someone’s team had
won the World Cup. Hamas had perpetrated the largest single-day massacre
of Jews since the Holocaust, and the crowd was euphoric.
Similar
scenes unfolded across the world. In London, an estimated 5,000
demonstrators gathered near the Israeli embassy and shot off fireworks
toward the building. At a rally at the Sydney Opera House in Australia,
chants of “Free Palestine” gave way to the underlying emotion: “Fuck the Jews.” At Harvard, almost three dozen campus groups issued a joint statement holding “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” A statement from Yalies4Palestine insisted that “Breaking out of a prison requires force, not desperate appeals to the colonizer.”
Whatever
else might be said about these demonstrations and declarations, give
the protesters and manifesto writers points for honesty.
“Pro-Palestine,” to many of them, is pro-Hamas. “Anti-occupation” is
opposition to Israel’s right to exist in any form. Israelis are guilty
by virtue of being Israelis, so their murder and humiliation is
something to laugh at. When “Zionism Is Genocide,” as placards at the
demonstration put it, then no means are too awful to put a stop to it.
If
twice as many Israelis had been murdered on Saturday, would it have
chastened the demonstrators or made them doubly glad, by the algorithm
in which the terminally self-righteous become cheerleaders for
slaughter?
The rally was condemned widely, including by such left-oriented figures as U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The New York chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, which had posted a tweet about the rally before it occurred, subsequently distanced itself from what took place.
One of those attending the rally was Darializa Avila Chevalier--who is on the ballot tomorrow in New York City's 13th Congressional District primary; the district includes Upper Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx.
Ms. Avila Chevalier, the daughter of Dominican immigrants, is a community organizer, an educator, and a Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at the City College of New York. She is a Democratic Socialist, and has been endorsed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
Her opponent is five-term incumbent Congressman Adriano Espaillat. Mr. Espaillat is also Dominican-American, and is the Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He is also a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, but is regarded, particularly in comparison to Ms. Avila Chevalier, as being more moderate, which includes the subject of Israel. The Congressman has been endorsed by such Democrats as House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
Ms. Avila Chevalier has had to defend herself concerning old tweets, reposts, and statements. In one tweet, from 2021, she posted: "Fuck Kamala Harris," concerning comments the then-Vice President made about immigration. In 2019, she posted this: "I forgot to get napkins so I just wiped my hand on the American flag behind me." The post, one newspaper noted, was accompanied by a smiling-face emoji. In 2020, she criticized Senator Bernie Sanders's "liberal Zionism."
In a debate with Rep. Espaillat this month on New York public radio station WNYC-FM, she was asked the following, by host Brian Lehrer:
Brian Lehrer: According to CNN, for example, during a three-day period in September
2021, you reposted now-deleted messages, declaring, "Yes, literally
abolish the border," and that, "All deportation is wrong." The [tweet a caller to the show] referenced, F--using the full word--Kamala Harris, after she told
Guatemalans not to come to the US illegally in 2021. And, on policing in
2020, that abolishing the police, "Means ending the police full stop,
period. No more police at all, ever." And, I know you've said you've grown
considerably in the years since these tweets....
Darializa Avila Chevalier: So, as you've noted, I've grown considerably
since that. And I'm not interested in relitigating the politics of my
tweets, which are politics of the past. I'm interested in representing
this district on the issues that they face day in and day out, and the
fact that we've seen so much, quite frankly, obsession with these
tweets, as opposed to the substance of what we're fighting for and the
substance of this campaign and what the people, the working people of this district
deserve, I think is more of the same type of politics that refuses to
actually engage with us, that refuses to actually acknowledge the needs
of our communities.
Ms. Avila Chevalier, however, continues to defend her participation in the October 8, 2023 rally in Times Square.
This month, as reported by the New York-oriented website "City & State," she said, in part, of the rally:
“At the core of it all for me is human dignity. And I think so often we
get lost in the ‘well on this date, and on that date’ when it's all
cyclical, if we don't get to the core of how we disregard the human
rights and dignity of some people over others,” she said.
Yeah--this date, and on that date. Actually, the date is germane. Just a thought: maybe participating in an anti-Israel rally, one day after the large-scale massacres and kidnappings in Israel took place, wasn't such a good idea.
As recently as this March, one notes, she would not condemn Hamas and its 2023 attacks.
As reported by the "City & State" article:
At a March forum with the Broadway Democrats political club, she declined to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, when asked directly.
“The
premise of that question, to me, ignores the 75 years of occupation
that the Palestinian people have been subjected to and the conditions
that folks were were living under before this genocide began,” she
responded in part. “Palestinians have been living under a state of
dispossession, of exile, of apartheid for 75 years.”
The article also noted this:
But Avila Chevalier may be changing her rhetoric as she gets closer to
election day. Asked on WNYC [on June 4th] she said “yes, I do condemn Hamas,”
but noted that “As far as I know, the U.S. does not send a single dime
to Hamas. What we fund is the Israeli military.”
Pardon my skepticism about the sincerity of her Hamas-related condemnation.
(Please note: a detail, above, about New York Congressman Adriano Espaillat, was edited on June 28.)
