Mayor Bloomberg, during his recent Israeli tour, visited the underground operations center at Ashkelon and the underground children’s ward at Barziali Medical Center.Excerpts from the Mayor’s remarks:
"...I’m joined by Congressman Gary Ackerman, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly...and Michael Miller from the JCRC...
We wanted to all express our admiration for the courage of the Israeli people in standing up to terrorism.
New Yorkers know what terrorism is about; we’ve certainly suffered ourselves. But when we suffered it was a discrete point in time.
We were struck by al Qaeda twice as you know – once in 1993 and then the terrible attack on the World Trade Center on September 11th, 2001.
The people of Ashkelon face this every day.
Israel has been attacked by Hamas since 2005 when the Israelis pulled out of Gaza, and I think I speak for an awful lot of – almost all – Americans who think that Israel is doing the right thing in defending itself.
It has a responsibility to defend the citizens.
President Bush has said that and President-Elect Obama has said exactly the same thing...
This special bond between America and Israel is something that you see evidenced today by the fact that we’ve come over here.”
The Mayor's press release from NYC.Gov:
http://www.nyc.gov/portal/site/nycgov/menuitem.c0935b9a57bb4ef3daf2f1c701c789a0/index.jsp?pageID=mayor_press_release&catID=1194&doc_name=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nyc.gov%2Fhtml%2Fom%2Fhtml%2F2009a%2Fpr003-09.html&cc=unused1978&rc=1194&ndi=1
The article from Politicker:
http://www.politickerny.com/1292/bloomberg-stars-israel
Bloomberg defends Israeli stance, from the Village Voice:
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2009/01/bloomberg_defen.php
Bloomberg answers critics over his support for Israel, from Newsday:
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/newyork/ny-nymike0612331096jan06,0,4653145.story?track=rss
Outside of Israel, the New York metropolitan area has the largest Jewish population in the world, with Jews comprising as much as 12% of New York City's population.
There are an estimated 230,899 Arab-Americans in New York City, 116,054 in Brooklyn.
