“It is sick that anyone should show up at an exhibit like this to protest,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

By JNS

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) were among the New York City politicians who issued statements condemning Monday’s protests outside the Nova music festival exhibition in the city’s financial district as antisemitic on Tuesday.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Schumer described visiting the exhibit on Friday and his disgust at seeing images from Monday’s protest, which included explicitly pro-Hamas messages.

“It is sick that anyone should show up at an exhibit like this to protest,” Schumer said. “The protest and the vitriolic rhetoric outside the Nova exhibit were nothing short of despicable, inhumane and antisemitic.”

“Antisemitism, like what occurred outside the Nova music festival exhibition has no place in our city, in our state or in America,” he said.

The exhibit describes itself as “an in-depth remembrance of the brutal Oct. 7 attack” that “sets out to recreate an event dedicated to peace and love that was brutally cut short by Hamas’s attack on Israel from Gaza on that fateful day.”

The organizer of the exhibit announced that the show, which was scheduled to close this week, will remain open until June 22 due to “overwhelming demand.”

Adams issued a three-minute video on social media saying that he had a “moral obligation” to speak out after seeing a video of a protester saying that “I wish Hitler was still here, he would have wiped all of you out.”

“These are reprehensible and foul comments,” Adams said. “I and every New Yorker who stands for peace, stands united against them.”

Adams promised to arrest protesters who break the law, and said that since Oct. 8, the New York City Police Department has made more than 2,850 arrests at Israel and Gaza-related protests.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) visits the Nova exhibit in New York City. Credit: Office of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer.

Other New York politicians who condemned the protests on Monday and Tuesday included House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y) and Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.), Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), Grace Meng (D-N.Y.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), representing the full spectrum of opinion about Israel from staunch supporters of the Jewish state to some of its fiercest critics.

Schumer’s office told JNS that his remarks were not coordinated with any of the other statements and that he decided to speak in the Senate after learning about the protests.