City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, with the enthusiastic backing of Mayor Bill de Blasio, just struck a troubling blow for political correctness and against free speech.
Johnson and other council leaders expelled Brooklyn Democrat Kalman Yeger from his seat on the Immigration Committee for tweeting that “Palestine does not exist.”
That comment, critics charged, was “hateful,” “dehumanizing” and “Islamophobic.” Which is utter nonsense.
Yeger made a political argument — one that most people probably don’t agree with, but which is historically justifiable: There has never been a sovereign Arab state called Palestine, including the current Palestinian Authority.
Palestinian nationalism exists, but it’s fairly recent. Before 1948, when people spoke of Palestinians, they meant Jews.
So Yeger’s remark isn’t remotely comparable to Rep. Ilhan Omar’s vile tweets about disloyal Jews buying support for Israel. (Omar, by the way, still sits on the Foreign Affairs Committee after the House refused to specifically condemn her.)
Plus, Yeger’s point was that when the most vocal critics of Israel (the very people who called for his political head) talk about “Palestine,” they mean replacing Israel with a single, Arab-dominated state.
No wonder this slapdown is being hailed by pro-Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour.
You may dislike Yeger’s argument or believe he could have shown more sensitivity. But by no stretch of the imagination is it hate speech — or anything that merits his expulsion from a council committee.
Nor, for that matter, have the speaker and the mayor helped convince anyone that Democrats aren’t abandoning their traditional support for Israel.