New York Mayor Bill de Blasio Plans Visit to Israel
Image by Getty Images
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio will visit Israel to speak about ways to combat anti-Semitism.
De Blasio is to leave Thursday for Jerusalem, where he will be the keynote speaker at a conference of international mayors sponsored by the American Jewish Congress and other Jewish groups.
De Blasio, who has been trying to plan a trip to Israel since the summer, will stay roughly three days and hold several events, the New York Times reported.
The first-term mayor, who is of Italian and Catholic heritage, has made strengthening ties with his Jewish constituency a priority since taking office in January 2014. He has spoken at synagogues of various denominations and loosened restrictions on the controversial metzitzah b’peh circumcision ritual at the request of Orthodox Jews.
De Blasio also flew to France soon after the attack on a kosher market in Paris to “stand in solidarity” with world Jewry.
New York politicians regularly visit Israel, in part because of the city’s large Jewish population.
De Blasio’s predecessor, Michael Bloomberg, made headlines for traveling to Israel during the 2014 Gaza war and saying that the country was still a “safe” place to visit during the conflict.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
