The following letter was shared with Mondoweiss:
An Open Letter to Mayor Bill de Blasio:
We are Jewish residents of New York who read, in the leaked transcript of your private speech to a meeting of AIPAC leaders, the following:
“City Hall will always be open to AIPAC. When you need me to stand by you in Washington or anywhere, I will answer the call and I’ll answer it happily ’cause that’s my job.”
We understand that the job of mayor of New York is a complex one that often calls for your participation on the international stage, and we would not presume to define your job for you. But we do know that the needs and concerns of many of your constituents–U.S. Jews like us among them–are not aligned with those of AIPAC, and that no, your job is not to do AIPAC’s bidding when they call you to do so. AIPAC speaks for Israel’s hard-line government and its right-wing supporters, and for them alone; it does not speak for us.
Sincerely yours,
Ruth J. Abram
Karen R. Adler
Arlene Alda
Anita Altman
Esther Ann-Asch
Emanuel Ax
Peter Beinart
Andrew Berger
Loren Bevans
Martin I. Bresler
Kenneth David Burrows
Howard Clyman
Rabbi Rachel Cowan
Barbara Deinhardt
Barbara Dobkin
Eugene Eisner
Laurel W. Eisner
Daniel Engelstein
Eve Ensler
Danny Goldberg
Sally Gottesman
Linda Gottlieb
Laurence Greenwald
Jane Hirschmann
Erica Jong
Peter A. Joseph
Alice Kessler-Harris
Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum
Gil Kulick
Martha Weinman Lear
Bobbie Leigh
Jonathan Leigh
Alan H. Levine
Rabbi Ellen Lippmann
Rabbi J. Rolando Matalon
Marilyn Kleinberg Neimark
Donna Nevel
Kathleen Peratis
Letty Cottin Pogrebin
Bertrand B. Pogrebin
Michael Ratner
Anne Roiphe
Betty Rollin
Al Ruben
Marlene Sanders
James Schamus
Dan Silverman
Beverly Solochek
Carla Singer
Rabbi Felicia Sol
Alisa Solomon
Gloria Steinem
Herbert Teitelbaum
Rebecca Vilkomerson
Rabbi Burton Visotzky
Peter Weiss
Jack Willis
Eugenia Zukerman
Thanks to those who organized this letter. Please make it possible for other New Yorkers to sign on as additional signatories. I’d sign in a NY minute. The universities must be full of people — faculty and students — who’d sign. Etc.
We need to sign. And deB needs to have us sign and publicly. Anti-AIPACism is no good in the closet.
Open letter from money in bank accounts of Jewish onepercenters in NYC
We are the dollars of Jewish onepercent residents of New York and Miami who cannot read but we heard in the leaked transcript of your private speech to a meeting of AIPAC leaders, the following:
“City Hall will always be open to AIPAC. When you need me to stand by you in Washington or anywhere, I will answer the call and I’ll answer it happily ’cause that’s my job.”
Good boy. That’s the way we like it
And if you dare change we’ll break your ass.
Great people! Thank you!
Where was this open letter published at first?
It’s a positive development that de Blasio’s first political blunder and first political lesson is that there are limits to the extent to which one can suck-up to the Lobby. It’s only recently that limits appeared on the scene. Let’s hope that Cory Booker is given the same lesson.
It is very notable that there are not many more signatories to this letter. It means that mainstream Jewish Americans, even progressive and/or entitled New York Jewish Americans, believe that AIPAC speaks for them, no?