John Galliano and Anna Wintour attend a cocktail reception ahead of The Fashion Awards 2021 at Royal Albert Hall on November 29, 2021, in London, England. Dave Benett/Getty Images See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add The New York Post on Google The collapse of the Met Gala’s outrageous plan to honor antisemitic fashion designer John Galliano marks an important victory in a major battle. But there is no sign that triumph is at hand in the larger war against the explosion of Jew hatred in America and around the world.
On the contrary, the outbreaks are numerous and growing in boldness.
One of the lessons of the Galliano affair is that many of the haters feel safe enough these days to come out of the closet and publicly express their loathing.
Wherever you look, from politics to the media to the United Nations and now the fashion world, the scourge is shockingly bold in its emergence.
Hundreds of students and pro-Palestine activists protest in New York City. Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images A common trait among many of the guilty is the use of Israel as a fig leaf for their sickness. A sure-fire sign is the habit of judging the lone Jewish state by a set of double standards never applied to other nations.
Oppressive regimes are given seats on UN human rights panels, where they are encouraged to demonize Israel without fear they will be called to account for their misdeeds.
And when Israel is attacked by Muslim neighbors that vow to destroy it, the victim is routinely accused of war crimes for daring to defend itself and take the war to the attackers’ turf.
As the Hamas invasion of Oct. 7, 2023, demonstrated, the Holocaust would be repeated if Israel were foolish enough to permanently lower its guard.
Wherever the place and the particulars, the battlefield is encircled by enablers and cheerleaders, giving rise to dark suspicions about their motivations.
The first lady of fashion, and the haughty inspiration for “The Devil Wears Prada,” she was the longtime editor of Vogue and is now chief content officer of corporate parent Condé Nast.
She has run the Met Gala extravaganza for three decades and turned the event into a global spectacle and a gold mine for the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
And this year she turned it into a global and financial disaster. Reports in The Post say Wintour was repeatedly warned by associates and friends, including board members of the Met, that Galliano’s history of antisemitic outbursts made him unworthy of the honor, especially in New York, the Jewish capital of America.
But Wintour’s eyes and mind were closed, and she ordered the operation to rush full speed ahead through the flashing red lights.
It is impossible to believe she would have done the same if Galliano had a history of racist comments toward blacks, Latinos or Muslims. Then the project would not have gotten to first base, but in certain elite quarters, Jews are still fair game.
Perhaps the rise of antisemitism among many Democrats, and especially the election of Israel-hating Zohran Mamdani as Gotham’s mayor, gave her false comfort in thinking the climate was right for a celebration of Galliano.
Hindsight is usually 20/20, but even there Wintour is falling short. She lacked the wisdom to stop the train wreck, but after Galliano withdrew, she fawned over him as if he were a war hero instead of a Hitler-loving jackass.
“John’s decision that the exhibition devoted to his work should not take place at this time is very courageous and a measure of the man he is,’’ she said in a statement.
Her words compound the sense that she remains clueless about her warped judgment and moral blindness. A mea culpa would have at least suggested she is not as soulless as she appears.
But basic decency is apparently not yet required among the fashionable jet set.
Mamdani had no known role in the event planning or its cancellation, but he has certainly played an outsized role in validating a growing climate of antisemitism. For many New Yorkers, especially young and miseducated ones, he gives a larger meaning and context to their own bigotry.
The mayor’s intense focus on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and an aborted plan to arrest him when he comes to New York this month, has encouraged hatred of the Jewish state and, by extension, Judaism and Jews.
Gov. Hochul, as usual, is trying to see how long she can stay hidden and silent on the Met debacle. It is a fool’s errand to look to her for leadership unless there is an obvious political advantage to taking a stand.
Applauding the cancellation might cost her votes among Mamdani’s zealous followers, so she stays silent.It is noteworthy that neither she nor Mamdani has said peep about the Met disaster and its economic impact, as though it’s none of their business.
In fact, it’s very much their business because of the black eye it is giving New York.
Their failure to take a stand is a dereliction of duty, given how large the Met event has been in helping make New York look like a golden place to visit and live. But now that the curtain has been lifted on the filthy bigotry behind the scenes, the pols have nothing to say.
Where, too, are the voices of Catholic and Protestant religious figures? Their silence on this public outbreak of Jew hatred is also unacceptable.
New York is crawling with cheap political opportunists, but City Council Speaker Julie Menin was the lone public official to complain to the Met about the Galliano gala before it was called off. Her comments struck exactly the right points and tone.
“In a time of rampant antisemitism in our city, I believe honoring John Galliano is a serious mistake,” she said. “I urge the Met to reconsider this decision as choosing to bestow the highest honor the museum has to someone who has a history of antisemitic and anti-Asian slurs only serves to fan the flames of hate and sends the message of a normalization of this type of conduct.”
Meanwhile, growing numbers of leftists on the national political stages are afflicted with the Jew-hating virus during this election season. Virulent members of the congressional progressive caucus, such as Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Talib, have a new hero in Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrats’ Senate nominee in Michigan.
He pals around with rabid anti-semites like Hasan Piker, and tried to turn a fellow Arab’s attempt to slaughter Jewish schoolchildren into a blame-the-Jews issue.
“Hurt people hurt people,” he said after the incident last March in suburban West Bloomfield, about 20 miles from Detroit.
It turns out the attacker had at least one brother who was a member of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and was slain in an Israeli attack.
El-Sayed in front of a group of Jewish voters recently called his comment “a mistake” but did not apologize.
See, there’s no need to. Michigan’s Jew haters know exactly what he initially meant, and many leftist Jews will forgive anything from any Dem who is anti-Trump.
