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By: Donny Simcha Guttman
According to a recent report in the NY Post, NYC Council Speaker Adrienne Adams’s office directed staff to block pro-Israel constituents from sending messages to representatives. In recent weeks, efforts for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza have resulted in tense negotiations between Israel and third-party countries, including the US and Qatar. During these efforts, progressive liberals have loudly been calling for a ceasefire against “genocide” that they falsely say Israel has been committing. Speaker Adams, in a recent move to appease some of her progressive colleagues, drafted a resolution supporting an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.
However, over a million Jews reside in NYC, and thousands have voiced support for Israel’s defensive war against Hamas who continue to hold over 100 hostages in tunnels in Gaza, a violation of international law. Pro-Israel residents have attempted to share their concerns with the proposed ceasefire resolution that will be voted on in the council by sending in emails to their representatives office. Still, reports have shown, that staff members from Speaker Adams’s office blocked emails expressing pro-Israel sentiments from being sent to lawmakers. In response to the report, Council spokesman Benjamin Fang said, “There is no grand conspiracy. New Yorkers’ ability to email their Council members has not been interrupted — the Council welcomes communication from the public on every side of an issue.
The number of emails received created instability for accounts and servers, and the best way to protect the system from malfunctioning was a workaround that delivered the communication to members in a spreadsheet. Council Members received these communication records and were informed of this approach, which is consistent with past practice by the city government in response to mass email campaigns that destabilized servers and systems.” However, during other periods of political messaging campaigns including the Black Lives Matter riots, no such effort to block the outpouring of emails to city lawmakers were done.
Lawmakers from both sides of the political aisle have expressed concern with the recent report, including from Councilman Kalman Yeger (D-Brooklyn) who commented, “It’s part of a very disturbing pattern on the part of Council leadership silencing Jewish voices. They took the right of these people to contact their officials away from them, and they also are denying the right of elected officials to see the concerns of their constituents.” Councilwoman Inna Vernikov (R-Brooklyn) also criticized the speaker saying in a statement that, “It’s hypocritical and outrageous because we get emails about controversial subjects all the time… They want to pass a cease-fire resolution clearly, and they are interfering with the people’s right to speak up.”
The speaker was also recently involved in another controversy by blocking all political symbols from being displayed on politicians’ desks, including non-political posters of the hostages that were brutally taken by Hamas.
Continued controversy with news on a possible ceasefire has been ramped up in light of the news that Hamas leadership has agreed to a ceasefire with Israel, in exchange for terrorists currently imprisoned in Israel. The deal that is in talks would have three phases where the first phase would free the remaining women and children hostages, with later stages freeing everyone else. The deal has yet to be approved, but many objections from the Jewish community in light of the promise of terrorists being released have made the deal controversial.
