US lawmaker who said ‘Palestine does not exist’ sacked

A US lawmaker who triggered outrage by tweeting “Palestine does not exist” has been stripped of his position in the immigration committee. Pro-Israel Brooklyn council member Kalman Yeger has been reprimanded by council leaders for making remarks that are widely viewed as racist and anti-Palestinian.

Yeger made the remarks during a heated Twitter exchange with a journalist and doubled down on comments he had made previously by insisting: “Palestine does not exist. There, I said it again. Also, Congresswoman Omar is an antisemite. Said that too”.

Prominent activists denounced his remark. “It’s disgraceful, irresponsible and dangerous for a sitting NYC council member to engage in blatant bigotry and erasure,” Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American community organiser from Brooklyn, said.

New York’s Mayor, Bill de Blasio was also dragged into the row and on Friday he said that if Yeger is “not going to apologize, he shouldn’t be on that [immigration] committee.”

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Yeger however dismissed the criticism and doubled down on his remark. “There is no state by that name; there is no place by that name,” he said on Friday adding “that’s a fact. I did not make it up.” These remarks came hours after Council Speaker Corey Johnson called for him to apologise for what he called “dehumanizing” comments made on Twitter.

The remark of Yeger, along with the notion that “there is no such thing as a Palestinian people,” is a popular trope in the racist narrative of Zionists, which Palestinians believe has been used to deny 11 million Palestinians their right to self-determination.

Palestinians insist that the Zionist narrative and the ongoing occupation of Palestine, which began with the ethnic cleansing of more than half the indigenous population to make way for the creation of the state of Israel in 1948, would not have been possible without the racist narrative that continues to deny their humanity.

With mounting criticism of Yeger, the City Council’s leadership team met yesterday and decided to remove the pro-Israel councilman from the immigration committee. The New York Times, which gained access to details of the meeting, learned that there was “broad consensus” that Yeger’s views were inconsistent with the committee’s mission.

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“I do not believe that someone who engages in the type of rhetoric we heard from Council Member Yeger belongs on the immigration committee, which is supposed to welcome and support immigrants in our city,” Corey Johnson, the council’s speaker, said in a statement.

De Blasio agreed with the decision. “It’s important for people to understand that everyone is valued,” he said in an interview yesterday.

Human rights activists also applauded the decision. “This sends a wider message that saying anti-Arab, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian things comes with consequences,” said Sarsour.