Bronx public defenders get anti-anti-Semitism training in September, support Hamas in October.

This New York Times article is called “How the Israel-Hamas War Tore Apart Public Defenders in the Bronx.” But the article shows that (1) the war has very little to do with the anti-Semitism that plagues the Bronx public defenders office {“the Office”) and (2) the Office is not split on the matter.

During the pandemic (i.e., long before the current war), Debbie Jonas, a Jewish employee of the Office, worked remotely from Jerusalem. When Hamas fired rockets into Israel, Jonas took cover in a bomb shelter.

While in the shelter, she received an email from the Office’s director of equity and institutional transformation. Purporting to find a parallel between Black protesters against police abuse in America and Palestinians, the email stated: “Our struggle for freedom is international and our liberties are intertwined.”

Jonas asked the head of the Office to issue an addendum stating that the email told only one side of a complex story. When the office refused, Jonas contacted a New York assemblyman who is pro-Israel. He sent the “equity” director’s email to The New York Post which covered the dispute in a way that, as it had to, reflected poorly on the Office.

Employees of the Office were incensed. They demanded to know the identity of the “snitch.” When Jonas came forward, her fellow public defenders attacked her. They called her “Karen,” a “snake in the grass,” and “disgusting.” “YOU ARE WORSE THAN THE DIRT FROM THE BOTTOM OF MY SHOES,” one woman wrote.

Jonas resigned, but didn’t go quietly. She hired a law firm and demanded, among other things, an apology from the Office and mandatory anti-anti-Semitism training for the Office. She got all she demanded.

The training was administered by the Brandeis Center in September of this year. How I would have loved to be there.

A month later, Hamas terrorists invaded Israel and butchered approximately 1,500 people. The union representing the Office’s lawyers responded with a statement blaming Israel. The statement was approved by a majority of members, with most of the remaining ones abstaining. Only 30 members out of 283 objected.

One staff attorney called Hamas “freedom fighters.” Another called the Oct. 7 attack an “act of resistance.” As far as I can tell, no one expressed “exhilaration” over the slaughter, but it seems that more than a few experienced it.

Thus, the New York Times’ headline appears to be fake news. The Bronx public defenders office isn’t “torn apart.” It’s solidly anti-Israel and pro-Hamas.

Fortunately, those who deal with the Office are not. According to the Times, some lawyers on the other side of disputes with the Office’s clients are refusing to negotiate with lawyers from the Office.

“No courtesies for antisemitic Jew hating Nazis,” said one landlord’s lawyer in an email to a Bronx Defender in housing court, denying a client information that could have helped remedy a dispute.

Rina Mais, a Jewish lawyer who often faces members of the organization in Bronx Family Court, said in an interview that she could hardly stomach working with them now.

“It has become unbearable,” she said, adding that she was eager to see the organization defunded.

I wouldn’t mind seeing this, either.

It’s true that last month, the directors of the Office finally got around to repudiating the union’s statement because it failed to “recognize the humanity of both Palestinians and Israelis.” But that’s only the folks who have to answer to the public. A majority of the lawyers in the Office still falsl to recognize the humanity of Israelis. A majority still appears to be on Hamas’s side.

Nor should we expect otherwise. These far-leftists view Israelis like evil landlords and Palestinians like oppressed tenants, the kind of people they represent. Never mind that before the war, Israel had no presence in Gaza and, far from extracting “rent” from Palestinians, it transfers money to the Palestine Authority, some of which has gone to Gaza. In the view of the leftist lawyers, it’s all “intertwined,” as the “equity” director said — the Jews and the landlords on one side; Hamas and the Office’s clients on the other.

Let’s stipulate that public defenders can view Israel any way they like. But no part of their job description calls on them, as a group, to issue pro-Hamas statements. Once they choose to do so, they become fair game for reprisals if those who fund the Office — ultimately, the taxpayers — have a very different view.

Such public statements provide a window not just into the political views of the public defenders, but also into how they do their job. Lawyers so radical that they applaud Hamas terrorism can be expected to defend clients rather differently than will more pragmatic (and, frankly, more sensible) lawyers who don’t condone the wanton rape of women and the butchering of children and babies.

I hope that those who control the purse strings in New York City favor the latter kind of defense lawyers over the former. If so, why not defund the Bronx public defenders office and hope that an acceptable alternative can emerge?

I also hope that those who control the purse strings in other jurisdictions will take a hard look at their public defenders to see whether they have issued group expressions of support for Hamas.