Adams slams Washington Post story on business leaders Gaza protest pressure as anti-Semitic

In the wake of a published Washington Post report claiming business leaders privately pushed Mayor Adams to crack down on pro-Palestinian college protests, the mayor Monday called the story “anti-Semitic” while not explicitly denying he met with the powerful execs.

“I think that article was anti-Semitic in its core,” Adams said on Fox5’s Good Day New York of the report from last week. “That some article is saying some clandestine group came together to pressure us, it’s a lie. It did not happen.”

While objecting to the story, the mayor did not address whether he held a private Zoom meeting on April 26 with the prominent business leaders, who reportedly pressed him to send police to disperse the protests at Columbia University. The meeting was not listed on the mayor’s public schedule.

The Post reported that during the call, participants discussed political donations to Adams and continued pressure on Columbia to summon the NYPD. The paper said it reviewed thousands of WhatsApp chat messages and verified the information with some members of the group.

“We meet with all groups throughout this city, of different breakdowns and ethnicities,” Adams said. “That is who I am, and I am going to continue to do so.”

The call purportedly was held after students at Columbia set up a new Gaza solidarity encampment after the NYPD dismantled the original tent city.

As the pro-Palestinian encampments spread at Columbia and other universities across the city, concerns abut escalating anti-Semitic rhetoric and actions were growing. Columbia began offering online classes as some Jewish students felt unsafe going to campus and Jewish campus leaders warned of a hostile environment.

On campus, college officials and student protesters advocating for divestment from Israel were in the midst of negotiations. The day after the call, Columbia president Minouche Shafik vowed not to call the NYPD again, claiming that police intervention would only inflame an already tense situation.

But a few days later, the calculus changed when a group of mostly students at Columbia and its affiliate institutions, such as Barnard College and Union Theological Seminary, took over a storied academic building for campus protests, Hamilton Hall. On April 30, Columbia officials summoned the NYPD to reclaim the building and clear the new tent demonstration.

In response to a Daily News inquiry, a rep for the Post said the paper regularly covers people with power and wealth working to influence public opinion and policy. They pointed to several other examples, including how a Catholic group spent millions on app data that tracked gay priests and conservative doctors influenced abortion and transgender rights.

Adams’ comments echoed Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy’s statement in the original article that “the insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope.”

The prominent business leaders and financiers had been communicating in a WhatsApp chat since mid-October titled “Israel Current Events,” according to The Post. Some chat participants attended private briefings with top Israeli officials including former prime minister Naftali Bennett and centrist war cabinet member Benny Gantz, while others helped screen footage of Hamas’ Oct. 7 atrocities in New York,  the report said.

The group had reached about 100 members — including more than a dozen who appear on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires and prominent executives such as hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, a prominent critic of colleges’ responses to the Israel-Hamas war, and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother to Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

Members Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb and billionaire Len Blavatnik reportedly participated in the April 26 call.

Adams on Fox5 also reiterated that he only deployed NYPD on the Columbia and City College campuses after the schools’ leaders asked for police assistance. Since the raids, Adams and top NYPD brass have alleged the student protesters were goaded by “outside agitators” with no ties to the local colleges.

“We waited, as we were supposed to, to get calls from the college presidents to tell us when to come in,” he said.

The Columbia chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which helped organize many of the demonstrations on campus, said in a statement on social media that members of the group were “the real outside agitators,” who have no affiliation with Columbia but encouraged the NYPD be used on protesters.

With Chris Sommerfeldt