Mayor Bill de Blasio on Friday said a Brooklyn lawmaker under fire for denying Palestine’s existence should apologize or be removed from the City Council committee that oversees immigrant issues.
“If you’re asking my personal opinion, yeah, I think someone who has the ability to say that about Palestinian people by definition should not be on the Immigration Committee,” the mayor said during his weekly segment on WNYC radio.
The mayor said he’d cut Councilman Kalman Yeger some slack if he did apologize.
“Now, if he comes out and he apologizes, and says, ‘Look, I was wrong and I realize what I did was hurtful and I’ve got to change,’ different discussion. But if he’s not going to apologize, he shouldn’t be on that committee,” de Blasio said.
Council Speaker Corey Johnson, who has final say on committee assignments, is also on the long list of pols who’ve called for Yeger to apologize.
Johnson said Thursday he feels “uncomfortable having someone” with Yeger’s views “on a committee that is supposed to welcome all immigrants.”
Yeger did not return messages, but on Thursday doubled down on his anti-Palestine remarks.
When asked whether he plans to apologize to those he offended, he bluntly said, “Nope. For what?”
“There is no state by that name; there is no place by that name,” added Yeger, a Democrat who represents Midwood and other neighborhoods with large Jewish populations.
“That’s a fact. I did not make it up.”