Although a rabbi blessed the wine at this Passover Seder, Jewish Voice for Peace says their emergency seder was organized because they couldn\u2019t celebrate Passover as usual \u2014 with war raging across the Middle East.<\/p>\n
\u201cNever again is now. Never again for anyone,\u201d protesters chanted outside City Comptroller Mark Levine\u2019s office on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
In 2023, then-City Comptroller Brad Lander phased out the city pension fund\u2019s holdings in those bonds by allowing them to mature without reinvesting
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Last year, the Jewish Voice for Peace Seder was held to call for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his participation in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. But this year, Khalil attended the Seder
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Current-City Comptroller Mark Levine said in January that he plans to resume investment in the bond<\/p>\n
Protesters gathered outside Levine\u2019s office to demand that he not invest city funds in bonds tied to Israel, which they say would provide funding for Israel\u2019s bombing of Iran, Lebanon and Gaza.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmidst all this death and displacement we know there can be no seder as usual we cannot tell our liberation story as if it were neutral while our tradition and our tax dollars are being used to wipe Palestinian, Iranian and Lebanese families off the face of the earth,\u201d Danny Kaplowitz, a member and organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, said.<\/p>\n
In 2023, then-City Comptroller Brad Lander phased out the city pension fund\u2019s holdings in those bonds by allowing them to mature without reinvesting. But Levine said in January that he plans to resume investment in the bonds.<\/p>\n
In the past, Levine has said bonds linked to Israel are a sound investment and investing in them is a decision many city comptrollers have made.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou know it would be a disgrace to buy Israeli bonds, particularly at this moment, because are we supporting what he\u2019s [Netanyahu] doing in Lebanon? Are we supporting what he\u2019s doing in Gaza?\u201d Jane Hirschmann of the Jewish Voice for Peace Seder said.<\/p>\n
Last year, the Jewish Voice for Peace Seder was held to call for the release of Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for his participation in pro-Palestinian protests on campus. But this year, Khalil attended the Seder.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust as you prayed for my freedom last year, today let\u2019s all pray together that by next seder, the Israeli occupation, the Israeli genocidal regime will have ended,\u201d Khalil said.<\/p>\n
Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is an outspoken critic of Israel, pushed back in January against Levine\u2019s plans to reinvest in those bonds.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think we should purchase Israel bonds,\u201d Mamdani said. \u201cWe don\u2019t purchase bonds for any other sovereign nation\u2019s debt, and the comptroller has also made his position clear, and I continue to stand by mine.\u201d<\/p>\n
NY1 reached out to the comptroller\u2019s office to get his response to the demands of these protesters. But his office did not respond for comment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Although a rabbi blessed the wine at this Passover Seder, Jewish Voice for Peace says their emergency seder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":190404,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[109,25,75,84,83,9,24,12,63,1174,87,27,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-190403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-app-local-state-politics","9":"tag-app-top-stories","10":"tag-manhattan","11":"tag-manhattan-headlines","12":"tag-manhattan-news","13":"tag-new-york","14":"tag-new-york-city","15":"tag-news","16":"tag-nyc","17":"tag-olivia-leach","18":"tag-politics","19":"tag-top-stories","20":"tag-vod"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190403","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=190403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/190404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=190403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=190403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=190403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}