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<\/p>\nThe mounting fight over \u201cbuffer zone\u201d legislation reached a new phase in a contentious New York City Council hearing on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
A number of Jewish leaders and constituents attended the public hearing in support of the bill, which was introduced by Council Speaker Julie Menin in response to pro-Palestinian protests outside synagogues. A handful of other bills, including one that would similarly establish buffer zones outside educational institutions, were discussed as well.<\/p>\n
The reaction was strong on both sides.<\/p>\n
The buffer zone proposal has drawn a split response since its introduction in January. Many pro-Israel Jews have lauded it as a way to curb intimidation in a tense climate, while opponents say it would inappropriately clamp down on constitutionally protected speech, including against pro-Israel events. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has not commented on whether he would sign the bill, instead saying he will wait until a legal review of the bill in its final form is completed.<\/p>\n
That divide was evident during the hearing, both on the speakers\u2019 podium and \u2014\u00a0even more intensely \u2014 outside City Hall and in the audience.<\/p>\n
The main floor was filled mostly with proponents of the bills, some of whom wore Israeli flags on their clothing and had signs with messages like \u201cProtect our houses of worship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The mezzanine, meanwhile, was packed with activists \u2014 including from the anti-Zionist groups Jewish Voice for Peace and Shoresh \u2014 who had protested on the steps of City Hall before the hearing, many of them clad in keffiyehs and watermelon kippahs demonstrating their solidarity with the Palestinians. They\u2019d brought signs with messages like \u201cJews say stop land theft, not dissent\u201d and \u201cProtect our right to protest.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNazis!\u201d one person yelled up from the floor to the mezzanine. \u201cSit down, white supremacists!\u201d another shouted.<\/p>\n
The NYPD\u2019s deputy commissioner for legal matters, Michael Gerber, said during his testimony that the department had \u201cno objections\u201d to Menin\u2019s proposal \u2014 though that was not the case until recently.<\/p>\n
The NYPD had \u201csignificant concerns\u201d about language in the original bill, said Gerber. It was recently updated to remove any reference to distance after initially specifying that buffer zones would be up to 100 feet.<\/p>\n
Gerber said that language would have \u201climited\u201d the NYPD\u2019s ability to assess each protest case by case, and would not have allowed for buffer zones larger than 100 feet if needed. \u201cWe certainly wouldn\u2019t want to have our hands tied,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The bill as currently constructed does not create a blanket policy of buffer zones for protests, its cosponsors say, but rather requires the NYPD to create a transparent plan for preventing intimidation and obstruction of people attending a house of worship.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For some supporters of the legislation, the updates dampened their excitement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think these are watered down, but I do think that there should be buffer zones,\u201d said Ross Glick, a Jewish PR executive in attendance who was affiliated with the far-right pro-Israel group Betar US until 2025. (Betar\u2019s New York chapter was recently dissolved following a settlement with the state attorney general, and Betar US has been labeled an \u201cextremist group\u201d by the Anti-Defamation League.)\u00a0<\/p>\n
But for many, the bill offered a sense of security from experiencing a repeat of the synagogue protest that sparked it.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat happened at Park East Synagogue should not happen again,\u201d Menin said.<\/p>\n
Mark Treyger, CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York and a former City Council member, said in an interview that there would be tangible benefit from codifying internal NYPD guidelines into law. The police would be held to a greater degree of accountability, he said, helping avoid situations like NYPD\u2019s lapse at Park East which Commissioner Jessica Tisch later apologized for.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a big difference between guidance and a law,\u201d Treyger said.<\/p>\n
Eric Dinowitz, chair of Council\u2019s Jewish Caucus, introduced the bill on educational institution buffer zones, and spoke in favor of the legislation package. Five members of the State Assembly, which is working on its own buffer zone law, joined via Zoom to voice their support: Micah Lasher, Jeffrey Dinowitz (Eric Dinowitz\u2019s father), David Weprin, Linda Rosenthal and Sam Berger.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
City Council heard testimony from a number of Jewish institutional leaders, congregational rabbis, students and activists. (Joseph Strauss)<\/p>\n
Opposition to the bills came from multiple angles.<\/p>\n
Justin Harrison, senior policy counsel for the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the bills \u201can affront to the Constitution\u201d because they would \u201cstrip away New Yorkers\u2019 free speech rights,\u201d and criticized the amount left up to police officers\u2019 interpretation.<\/p>\n
\u201cBoth [Menin\u2019s and Dinowitz\u2019s] proposals encourage viewpoint- and content-based enforcement against disfavored speakers and messages in that they offer the NYPD wide latitude to decide when and where, and under what conditions they should set up buffer zones,\u201d Harrison said.<\/p>\n
Nahiyan Taufiq, from the Muslim Community Network, similarly criticized the latitude given to police for interpreting what counts as intimidation.<\/p>\n
Councilmember Inna Vernikov, who drew controversy when she brought a gun to a pro-Palestinian protest, questioned Taufiq as to whether pro-Hamas chants, like the ones chanted across from a Queens synagogue last month, should be considered intimidating. Nahiyan said she \u201cdoesn\u2019t have an opinion on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Multiple speakers criticized the lawmakers for what they said was cracking down on pro-Palestinian protesters who had a gripe with events promoting migration to Israel and the West Bank, which they argue violate international law. (Most of the world, though not Israel or the United States, considers Jewish settlements in the West Bank illegal under international law.)<\/p>\n
\u201cInstead of criminalizing protesters, the city should be targeting illegal events hosted by houses of worship,\u201d said Jonathan Bloom, a Jewish labor organizer.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A testifier named Riley, who is part of the Crown Heights Tenants Union, said, \u201cThe sale of stolen Palestinian land is an explicitly political action. This bill would effectively ban meaningful protest against it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Progressive group Jews for Racial and Economic Justice has previously come out against the bill, and reaffirmed its stance following the updated language.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe still object to the legislation even with the amendments,\u201d JFREJ wrote in a statement. \u201cAt best, the bills change little about existing NYPD protocol. At worst, they contribute to a climate of government repression of protest, and further embolden the NYPD to racially profile and target protests towards which the agency is historically antagonistic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Either way, the statement concluded, \u201cthe legislation fails to accomplish the Speaker\u2019s stated goal of combating antisemitism.\u201d<\/p>\n
Treyger was one of many Jewish leaders to testify in support of the bill. Others included Manhattan JCC CEO Joanna Samuels; 92NY\u2019s director of Jewish life, David Ingber; ADL\u2019s regional director Scott Richman; and UJA-Federation of New York\u2019s community strategy vice president, Hindy Poupko.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The council also heard testimony from congregational rabbis and leaders of smaller Jewish institutions. Multiple students of SAR Academy, a Jewish school in Dinowitz\u2019s Bronx district, spoke, as did the school\u2019s principal, Rabbi Binyamin Krauss. Letters urging parents to testify were distributed to Jewish schools in Dinowitz\u2019s district.<\/p>\n
At one point, hoping to provide a concrete example of how the legislation could work, Dinowitz pointed out that there had been a protest outside City Hall before the meeting.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat. That\u2019s fine,\u201d he said. \u201cYou know what else there was? A buffer zone.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The mounting fight over \u201cbuffer zone\u201d legislation reached a new phase in a contentious New York City Council…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145738,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":{"0":"post-145737","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-city","8":"tag-new-york","9":"tag-ny","10":"tag-nyc","11":"tag-nyc-headlines","12":"tag-nyc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145737","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145737\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}