Coverage of the Turkish bribery case against former New York City Mayor Eric Adams fixated on alleged payoffs — overshadowing a more troubling element: that Turkey allegedly sought to silence him on the Armenian genocide.
In 2022, a Turkish official spoke to a mayoral aide and “asked for assurances that Mr. Adams would not make a statement about the Armenian Genocide” on its official day of remembrance, The New York Times reported.
Adams complied. The Turkish government famously denies the genocide ever happened.
New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted on X on this year’s remembrance day:
Today marks the 111th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide. As we honor the 1.5 million Armenians murdered by the Ottoman Empire across modern-day Turkey, Syria and Armenia, we must refuse to let history repeat itself.
He linked the atrocity to the present day:
In 2020, the military forces of Azerbaijan and Turkey attacked the Armenian population in Nagorno-Karabakh. In 2023, Azerbaijan expelled over 100,000 Armenians from Nagorno-Karabakh, continuing the genocidal campaign that had begun over 100 years prior.
The city’s first Muslim mayor—denounced by the right as a radical and a religious danger—stepped up to recognise the atrocity committed by one of the world’s strongest Muslim powers against a Christian population, a genocide that tactically and spiritually inspired the Nazi slaughter of 6 million Jews. (“Who still talks about the annihilation of the Armenians today?” Hitler reportedly said in 1939.)
The recognition was in line with Mamdani’s statement on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, in which he said that the “unimaginable loss” of the Shoah obligated us “to confront antisemitism wherever it exists and to reject all forms of hatred and dehumanization”.
The right-wing press largely failed to comment on these statements by the mayor. Nor have they highlighted his continued outreach to various branches of the city’s Jewish community.
But when he did not attend this year’s Israel Day Parade in Manhattan, as he had indicated when he was a candidate, the response from the right-wing press was: How dare he?
New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin said Mamdani had “crossed a point of no return.” “As the first mayor in six decades to skip the iconic parade, his pattern of behaviour reeks of antisemitism,” Goodwin charged.
The columnist added that Mamdani “singles out Israel for vile attacks while otherwise steering clear of most international matters”, a standard hasbara response that only Israel is ever subject to public criticism.
A day after the parade, the New York Post front page featured the mayor on his bike that morning, with the blaring headline “Cycle of Hate.”
The subhead: “Zo snubs Israel parade, goes on bike ride instead.”
The Post played up the fact that former mayors were attending despite Mamdani’s absence.
“This is Bloomberg sticking it to Mamdani,” a “source” told the newspaper about the attendance of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
The New York Post story added, “Mamdani’s predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, also proudly announced he’s marching in Sunday’s pro-Israel Parade.”
While cheerleading President Donald Trump’s war with Iran, Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican lawmaker from New York’s northern suburbs, bashed the mayor for his non-presence on Fox Business.
“Everybody believes he’s an antisemite,” he said, which, again, is clearly not true. Lawler added, “By not showing up, you are just reinforcing that view.”
Amidst all this right-wing hyperventilating, more centrist media failed to consider what should be the bigger scandal.
Why did high-ranking Democrats like Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer and Governor Kathy Hochul march in a parade celebrating a state condemned by the most influential human rights groups for perpetrating apartheid and genocide?
The event featured a rogues’ gallery of Israeli government participants in the Gaza genocide, including Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, whom the International Criminal Court is seeking to arrest for war crimes.
The New York Times initially reported that “Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, also marched,” leaving out that he’s not just controversial but an internationally wanted man.
This is in line with official state propaganda. Hochul called him on X “a far-right extremist whose hateful and divisive rhetoric is fundamentally at odds with the values we hold dear in New York”.
Strong stuff, but Smotrich is not famous for believing and saying mean things, but for holding power and being responsible for state terror.
This is like calling former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte, who is awaiting trial in the Hague for “crimes against humanity during his deadly war on drugs,” a merely polarising figure.
By contrast, the Associated Press did plainly state Smotrich’s charges with one paragraph, but devoted the rest of its copy to Mamdani’s decision not to march.
AP’s message to readers is transparent: Both Smotrich and Mamdani are bad, but the New York mayor is worse. So much for objective agency reporting.
Afterwards, The New York Times reported that many of the officials who marched issued statements “condemning Mr. Smotrich and saying they had not known he would be at the parade”.
The article published several quotes from both the parade organisers and the officials, with the latter claiming ignorance and arguing that the parade is simply about “Jewish pride”.
As City Council speaker Julie Menin put it: “I just don’t think a parade should be synonymous with the Israeli government, because it’s not.”
But of course, it’s not called a “Jewish Pride” parade.
The event was started decades ago (as the “Salute to Israel” parade) in order to increase American Jewish support for Israel and continues to this day as a Zionist affair, not a more broadly Jewish one.
The newspaper did not offer any counter-argument to the US participants’ arguments that participating in the “Israel Day” parade does not at least tacitly support the Netanyahu government.
Only in our upside-down media world is it uncontroversial to participate in such an event, yet controversial to decline to celebrate.
Photograph courtesy of nycmayorsoffice. Published under a Creative Commons license.
