When Al Sharpton wants to protest something, then its current mayor supporter of the notoriously anti-Semitic Sandinistas is always on call. But when it comes to Jews taking a stand against terrorism and anti-Semitism, Bill de Blasio is a self-righteous no show.
Mayor de Blasio defended the Metropolitan Opera’s right to show “The Death of Klinghoffer,” and criticized predecessor Rudy Giuliani’s protest against the controversial work.
“I really think we have to be very careful in a free society to respect that cultural institutions will portray works of art, put on operas, plays, that there will be art exhibits in museum,” de Blasio said Monday at an unrelated press conference.
“And in a free society we respect that. We don’t have to agree with what’s in the exhibit but we agree with the right of the artist and the cultural institution to put that forward to the public.”
And yet if the Met were saying putting an opera that portrayed black people as apes who deserved to be enslaved, Bill de Blasio would have a thoroughly different view. And he would be right.
Freedom of speech goes both ways. It means that the Met has a right to glorify terrorism and promote anti-Semitism. And it means that New Yorkers have a right to stand up to them.
Bill de Blasio is too much of a coward to openly endorse The Death of Klinghoffer. So he instead mouths some nonsense about respecting the Met’s right to promote the murder of Jews.
This should come as no surprise considering Bill de Blasio’s own anti-Semitic history.
The New York Times describes Bill de Blasio as one of the first eager subscribers to Barricada, the Sandinista paper. This was the Barricada that denounced the “traditional ‘Jew-style’” of the United States Congress for not immediately providing the money to finance an election in Nicaragua.
“They had a youthful energy and idealism mixed with a human ability and practicality that was really inspirational,” Bill de Blasio said of the Sandinistas. That energy included throwing firebombs at a synagogue during Shabbat services while shouting “Death to the Jews,” “Jewish Pigs” and “What Hitler started we will finish.”
Bill de Blasio worked as a political organizer for a left-wing group raising money to aid a regime that had deprived the Jews of their property, their homes and even their house of worship. The president of the synagogue that the Sandinistas had attacked was forced to sweep the streets, a scene reminiscent of Nazi behavior in occupied Europe, before being forced to leave the country with the clothes on his back.
This is the “free society” that he idealizes to this day.





















