New York – Less than a week after a controversial tweet denying the existence of Palestine, City Councilman Kalman Yeger has been removed from his seat on the council’s immigration committee.
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Yeger’s tweet resulted in a public outcry and The New York Times (https://nyti.ms/2YAs6W2) reported that he was removed from committee after a council leadership meeting that lasted over an hour. Participants said that Yeger’s remarks were incompatible with the committee’s mission.
“I do not believe that someone who engages in the type of rhetoric we heard from Councilmember Yeger belongs on the immigration committee which is supposed to welcome and support immigrants in our city,” said Speaker Corey Johnson.
As previously reported on VIN News (http://bit.ly/2YEvGhY), Mayor Bill de Blasio had said on Friday that Yeger should either apologize for his remarks or be removed from the committee. Yeger had categorically refused to rescind his statement, even as he found himself in the center of a sea of controversy and criticism, still sticking to his guns tonight, even after news of his removal broke.
“I respect the Speaker’s right to run the Council as he sees fit,” tweeted Yeger. “It’s unfortunate that political correctness takes precedence over objective fact. Of course, there are Palestinians. However, the fact remains that there is no Palestinian state.”
A jubilant tweet posted by Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour announcing Yeger’s removal from the committee received nearly 1,000 likes in just over an hour.
“No longer will anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim comments by an elected official go unchecked. It’s a new day,” tweeted Sarsour.
Responses to Sarsour’s remarks ran the gamut with Twitter user Bernie Miller tweeting “He should be thrown out of NYC. We don’t play that [obscenity]”, while Hack4Israel tweeted “Can someone PLEASE share a map of Palestine and prove Yeger was lying?”
Numerous users questioned why Yeger was ousted from his seat while Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has been allowed to remain on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, including Private Citizen who wrote, “Omar gets to keep her committee but Yeger loses. Unreal. The bigoted bias of islamists [sic] is real.”
Those sentiments were echoed by former Assemblyman Dov Hikind who mobilized the Jewish community to rally against a protest in the heart of Borough Park denouncing Yeger.
“A member of the United States Congress who indulged in vile anti-Semitism remains on the Foreign Affairs committee and no one here in New York who called for Yeger to be taken off the committee has called for her to be removed as well,” Hikind told VIN News. “What hypocrisy. What a double standard.”
Hikind called today’s decision outrageous and shameful.
“Nobody wants to deal with the facts,” said Hikind, who often had his differences with Yeger. “There was nothing wrong with what he said, which was absolutely true.”
Yeger is not the first city councilman to have a committee assignment retracted after making a remark that generated controversy.
City Councilman Ruben Diaz Sr. found himself in trouble in February after making a statement that offended members of the homosexual community, with Yeger joining the overwhelming majority of the council voting to dissolve the For-Hire Vehicles committee which he chaired, as reported by NY1 (http://bit.ly/2TOkMT6).
Diaz wasted no time speaking his mind on the latest development in the controversy, responding to a tweet posted by Yeger on the importance of free speech.
“I do agree with kalman [sic] Yeger when he said ‘free speech must reign, even in the Council’ to [sic] bad he did not agree with me when they came after me and speaker [sic] Johnson eliminated my committee.” tweeted Diaz.
Corey Johnson wants to be mayor
Now will congress remove Omar from her committee? I doubt it. Liberals are FEH.
Yeger stand strong and don’t give into the bullies. Us Jews elected you to fight for our cause. Our cause is Israel regardless of whether you are satmar or not
Why would they ever have an immigration committee? A pothole committee I coudl see.
SHAME ON THE NYC COUNCIL PRESIDENT !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tea Party PAC) – Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) seems determined to keep up her reputation as one of the most outrageous members of Congress, and she clearly thought she hadn’t been doing enough to keep her names in the headlines lately.
The notoriously anti semitic freshman congresswoman is blaming “white nationalism” for a border crisis which is undoubtedly caused by the hundreds of thousands of migrants who freely choose to illegally breach our southern borders.
Why? Because border facilities are so overwhelmed, migrants are being kept outdoors.
So…the Dems think it’s racist when we don’t let people in…and racist when they get in anyway and we have to figure out what to do with them?
“This is abhorrent and inhumane. It’s without a doubt a reflection of what white nationalism is doing to our country. As a country, we have to acknowledge that this is how people are being treated here and decide that we are better and we must do better,” she tweeted.
Omar was responding to a photo posted by the Washington Post’s Nick Miroff.
America is back to the time of 1930s with rampant anti semitism being heard all over- Dove Hikind and Yerger , come home to israel the only place for jews today.
Good. Now he will be able to get back to doing that which he was elected to to. Namely, making sure the streets of his district are clean and that people have access to goverment programs.
Just proving once again the “white male privelage” saying is a farce. If he was a woman of color he would have been able to keep his job. #Omar.
Serves him right!
He shouldn’t stick his nose and rattle up people here in NYC, serve your constituents and bring something significant for the average person in the community.
Kalman needs to grow up and think before he shoots his mouth off, no great loss
Hypocrisy at its best!!! And THEY can rewrite history saying that the holocaust never happened…Insane
We (frumme yiddin) are embarrassing ourselves. We are being associated with all the nastiness of the twitter age. Of course Kalman is right, that doesn’t mean we have to be in everyone’s face all the time. Whatever happened to using some seichel. We are going to regret what we have become!!!