Giuliani to Newsmax: Shocked at Pro-Palestinian Protests in NYC

Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Newsmax on Friday he has never seen anything like the recent pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests that have occurred in the Big Apple.

The protests arose following Israel’s response to Hamas’ terrorist attack Oct. 7 that killed more than 1,400 Israelis. Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip with an unprecedented aerial bombardment, and began a ground operation Friday into Gaza to root out Hamas terrorists and rescue hostages.

Earlier this week, about 50 Jewish students were locked inside a library at Cooper Union in Manhattan as a pro-Palestine protest invaded the school, with protesters banging on doors while screaming.

New York City is home to the nation’s largest population of Jews, an estimated 1.1 million.

“This is a total shock to me,” Giuliani told “Rob Schmitt Tonight.” “This city has always been considered a Jewish city, the same way that it’s considered an Irish city. A lot of the traditions of Irish or Italian. Polish. Black. Harlem is the Black capital of America.

“It’s something very special about this city. Things like this don’t happen here, and now they’re happening at a level at which I have never seen before.”

Giuliani pointed to one “disgraceful” period in New York’s history, the Crown Heights race riots in August 1991, when a Chabad motorcade struck and killed a 7-year-old Guyanese immigrant, prompting three days of destruction and looting by Black residents against Jewish businesses in the neighborhood. 

Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Jewish University of Melbourne student in the U.S. to research for his doctorate, was killed during the riots the next day.

Crown Heights still has a large Orthodox Jewish population, and on Saturday, a pro-Palestinian group is scheduled to hold a rally in front of the Brooklyn Museum — just down the road from the Jewish Hasidic Lubavitcher headquarters, the New York Post reported.

“We’ve had antisemitism, of course, but nothing like this,” Giuliani said. “This is hateful, violent antisemitism. And we have to just stand up against it. Even with all this romanticism about, we have to help the Palestinians, of course I don’t want to see them die, but they don’t love us at all. Anytime they can, they’ll carry ‘Death to America,’ ‘Death to Jews’ signs.

“Jordan doesn’t want them. Egypt doesn’t want them. We’ve got a real problem here when our citizens are so ill-informed, so brainwashed, that they’re protesting and want to destroy and hurt the wrong people. Our friends. Our allies.”

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