New York Uproots the Anti-Zionist Garden

We’re glad to hear that New York City’s Parks Department is uprooting the anti-Zionists cultivating hatred at the Sunset Community Garden at Ridgewood, Queens. The garden’s license was revoked for requiring members to sign a list of “community values” defining Zionism, along with homophobia, transphobia, and racism, as “expressions of hate.” The city finds that this “ideological litmus test for membership” violates park guidelines. Let’s hope that sticks. The eviction order is for September 3. It has been a long time coming. In April, the Parks Department sent the garden operators a notification. It reminds them of their obligation to make membership “available to the public.” Parks officials also clashed with the gardeners over a memorial they had staged to honor a transgender activist. The city said that the group failed to receive permission to display the art installation. By May, after the garden “repeatedly failed,” the city said, “to comply with Parks’ directions to appropriately and timely respond to numerous violations of the License,” parks officials terminated their lease and gave the gardeners 30 days to vacate. The gardeners accused the city of unlawful discrimination and First Amendment rights violations and took the matter to New York supreme court. They won a temporary restraining order against the city in June. For a moment it looked like the city was angling to settle the matter outside of court. A source close to the case told our Novi Zhukovsky that Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s surprise mayoral primary victory may have inspired city officials to cut the anti-Zionist garden some slack. The Democratic Socialist candidate is a critic of Israel and a supporter of the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement. It appears the city has since resolved to take another route. The Parks Department last week broke the news to the community gardeners that the restraining order on their eviction had been lifted and directed the group to vacate the greenspace. Mayor Eric Adams, branding the group’s exclusionary practices “reprehensible,” said that the city is seeking new leadership for the floral oasis. A federal discrimination lawsuit filed by the garden in July is still pending. The garden’s ousting marks a victory for a Queens local, Christina Wilkinson, who secured the space’s funding but distanced herself when the group became increasingly political. “The garden was my idea and for nine years I was the only local person advocating for its creation. To see it be consumed by hatred breaks my heart,” she told the Sun. After she spoke out against the gardeners’ avowed Jew hatred last year, they retaliated by doxxing her online. If Voltaire urged “we must cultivate our garden,” the eviction can be seen to stand for more than the 9,500-square-foot plot on Willoughby Avenue. The move signals that New York City, home to the largest Jewish community outside of Israel, rejects bigotry, and that America’s “melting pot” still safeguards the freedoms of its inhabitants. Those are “community values” Americans of all stripes can agree to nurture, and not only in gardens.

New York Uproots the Anti-Zionist Garden

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