Tablet Mag Worries Charges Against Eric Adams Could Be Used Against The Israel Lobby

We don't yet know the precise nature of the allegations against New York City's mayor, Eric L. Adams, who was indicted last night by the federal government in an unprecedented step. Here's what we do know: New York is a big city with a colorful history of machine politics corruption, dating back to the days of Boss Tweed and Tammany Hall. Not even Ed Koch, the city's larger-than-life, three-term mayor who lived like a monk in a tiny $475 per month rent-controlled apartment in Greenwich Village, was immune to large-scale corruption charges that eventually destroyed his administration.

That's because being the mayor of a city as big and wealthy and fractious as New York City, which is the second home of pretty much every nationality and subnational group of people on earth, requires that you have working connections to the city's neighborhoods. The city's neighborhoods are run by people who get stuff done, which means that being mayor requires at least the pretense of doing favors for the people who do favors for you. [...] The alternative to this crude political math is to elect billionaires like Michael Bloomberg who are rich enough to bribe the city's clashing interest groups into submission with their own personal funds. (Bloomberg is estimated to have donated over one billion personal philanthropic dollars to city interest groups during his mayoralty.) [...]

Prosecuting New York City mayors for their proximity to one form or another of local corruption is like prosecuting bartenders for their proximity to gin.

Adams also struggled to fight crime as his party increasingly deemed the very act of policing inherently racist, and he stood for New York's Jews as his party increasingly snuggled up to their pogromists. The federal government, which has the power to uphold laws and deport foreign students who support terrorism, say, or withdraw funding for universities that coddle antisemitic mobs, many of which appear to have direct links to the foreign terrorist organizations they support, did nothing. Mayor Adams, on the other hand, sprung to action as soon as he could, breaking down the Tentifada encampment at Columbia and repeatedly advocating a zero-tolerance approach to the Hamasniks in our streets.

But even if you don't or can't see the workings of a machinery of power that has corrupted the foundations of our legal, political, and cultural systems in these examples, and even if you don't find it peculiar that the one city official who stood up for law and order and safety and decency and the Jews is now being targeted, you should still support Eric Adams with gusto, because his party-line successor, whoever that may be, is guaranteed to make the city considerably less safe for New Yorkers in general (bienvenidos, Venezuelan gangs!) and Jews in particular (ahlan wa sahlan, Hezbollah enthusiasts!). On that question, I have zero doubt.

Adams may also be the canary in a very deep and very dark coal mine. For here is where the logic of this indictment is leading: Small-scale donations by disfavored political players—like Turks in Queens, or Zionist Jews who support AIPAC, the ADL, or Bnai Brith, let alone those who have a nephew studying in a yeshiva in the West Bank—will be criminalized, with every donation subject to suspicion of a violation of the fuzzy laws governing interactions with foreign governments, followed by federal prosecutors (remember when that term was a synonym for apolitical application of the law?) and SWAT teams. One might reasonably suspect that the sequel to the Adams horror show will be an investigation of a major Jewish organization for "bribing" legislators with fact-finding trips to Israel, and thereby acting as arms of the Israeli government—which will make anything connected to the "Jewish lobby" politically radioactive. [...]

So because I don't want to see the weapons of lawfare turned against the Jews; because I don't want to live in a third-world swamp that prosecutes political enemies and rewards flunkies with impunity; and because I don't want gangs targeting my wife in Central Park or on the subway or savages chanting "from the river to the sea" outside my children's day school or my favorite kosher restaurant; because of all that and more, I stand with Mayor Eric L. Adams, a hero to Jews and New Yorkers. When he is reelected, thanks in part to the support of our community, and of all sane New Yorkers, I will proudly pass out squares of Turkish delight.

Take note of which Trump comments provoke controversy, and which don't. Trump said this week that he "gave" the Golan Heights to Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, his top funders, who came to the White House "almost more than anybody." Not a peep about this brazen admission of graft pic.twitter.com/MaJLFnH7oi

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) September 22, 2024

“It’s despicable that schools would allow another country’s flag to fly in our country.”

- NYC Mayor Eric Adams pic.twitter.com/kmFp5bkKeg

— SZH (@StopZionistHate) May 1, 2024