Rich Jews Form Secret Group to Run New York City and the World

Q: Is that story from "Deutschland Today" circa 1938? A: No, it's from the May 16, 2024 Washington Post

I don’t know whether this report is more astonishing, more depressing, or more ominous, but here it is:

The Washington Post published a news story on Thursday suggesting that a group of wealthy Jewish donors used their influence to push New York City Mayor Eric Adams to send the NYPD onto Columbia University’s campus to clear out protesters.

The article alleges that a group of prominent business leaders privately voicing their concerns about growing pro-Hamas sentiment and instances of antisemitism on college campuses in a WhatsApp group chat “offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor.”

Wanna guess how those “prominent individuals” with their “money and power” get identified? If you said that it’s by the Post’s noting that they all have hooked noses, you’d be wrong — but not by much. Not for nothing does the sub-head of the report on the Post’s story say, “New York City’s deputy Mayor Fabien Levy accuses the paper of advancing antisemitic tropes.”

The group chat eventually led to a Zoom call with Adams, where members mused about how they could press Columbia University leadership to allow NYPD forces onto campus to clear out the encampment. Days earlier, protesters’ antisemitic harassment led the Biden White House to condemn “physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community” taking place on Columbia’s campus.

As I noted a couple of days ago, quoting Heather Mac Donald, Biden’s speech was a study in hypocrisy, given his moves severely to handicap Israel in its fight for survival. But let’s take a pass on that for the moment.

The report on the Post’s story continues (emphasis added):

The story claimed that the group “pressed” Adams to “send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University,” though the mayor had already been openly pleading for days with Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to allow his cops on campus. 

Fabien Levy, a spokesperson for Adams, condemned the Post for the line of questioning in the first place, saying in a statement: “Let’s be very clear: Both times the NYPD entered Columbia University’s campus — on April 18th and April 30th — were in response to specific written requests from Columbia University to do so….

“Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false, and the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print,” Levy said. 

That, however, would assume that the Post is capable of shame. The fact that it no longer is — indeed, that there’s a realistic possibility the Post no longer even recognizes the anti-Semitic undertow of its reporting — may well be more ominous than the slanted reporting standing alone.

Levy went on to condemn the Post for the article’s framing and language choices in a series of posts on X, formerly Twitter, writing that the paper and “others can make editorial decisions to disagree with the decisions by universities to ask the NYPD to clear unlawful encampments on campuses, but saying Jews ‘wielded their money & power in an effort to shape American views’ is offensive on so many levels.”

It’s not just offensive. Its portentous. It should set off loud alarms about how far Brownshirtism has advanced in the mainstream media and the Democratic Party (forgive my redundancy). But the chances we’ll hear such alarms are next to zero.

A staffer for billionaire real estate mogul Barry Sternlicht set up the group chat, which had reportedly grown to over 100 members from across the business community, in the wake of Oct. 7. The report suggests that the group chat’s “activism has stretched beyond New York, touching the highest levels of the Israeli government, the U.S. business world and elite universities.”

No, it’s not 1938 Germany, but the echoes of 1938 Germany are grimly and shockingly unmistakable.

While not all of the members of the chat are Jewish, the only ones mentioned in the piece are. Aside from Sternlicht, the Post references Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire businessman Len Blavatnik, real estate investor Joseph Sitt, former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, and businessman Josh Kushner….

The story was co-bylined by Hannah Natanson and Emmanuel Felton, the latter of whom retweeted a post from The 1619 Project author Nikole Hannah-Jones earlier this month that Black Americans experience more hate crimes than Jewish Americans and shouldn’t be compared to one another.

Perhaps Jesse “Hymietown” Jackson could chime in here. But for however that may be, why is the Post handing this sort of reporting off to proven race hucksters?

Reached by JI [Jewish Insider] about the story, and asked about the thinking behind publishing a story arguing a group of wealthy Jews are influencing leading public officials, a Washington Post spokesperson declined to comment.

New motto for the Post: “Democracy dies in no comment.”