Andrew Cuomo’s anti-Semitism and science denial collide in Jewish school closures
The map of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s shutdown in Brooklyn can be perfectly correlated to the Orthodox Jewish community in the borough, and that is by design. In a video appearance, the governor has pegged spiking cases on the shoulders of only one community within the city: Orthodox Jews, and he linked the surge in the virus to the religious practices of Orthodox Judaism. In a public address, Cuomo explained, "We’re now having issues in the Orthodox Jewish community in New York, where, because of their religious practices, we’re seeing a spread.”
Through words and actions, the governor has shown that he views Jews as vectors of disease, and his mitigation strategy for the virus rests on shutting down the religious practices of Orthodox Jews.
Infection rates in the area are going up, and so the governor has decided to shut the entire area down: schools, stores, etc. Despite the fact that retail and education have not been tied to these spikes in cases (which have not resulted in nearly the numbers of hospitalizations and deaths we saw in the spring), the state punitively took action against only one entire area, those populated by Orthodox Jews, locking it down in its entirety.
In a recently
released half-hour audio clip of a private phone conversation between Cuomo and rabbis in the community, we hear Cuomo say this:
