Paterson NJ store’s swastika flag, aimed at Israel, provokes outrage

For a few months, the banner hung outdoors a Paterson tobacco store, with a concept intended to provoke. 

“Stop the New Nazis,” it proclaimed, with a blue swastika emblazoned above an Israeli flag and a image of longtime Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defaced with a Hitler-like mustache. 

The indication at last detonated over the weekend just after images have been posted online, stirring anger among local people who condemned it as antisemitic and insensitive. 

By Monday, the house owners of Clifton Hookah experienced taken the banner down. It was intended as a critique of Israeli government policy toward Palestinians, but the argument was obtaining misplaced amid the controversy, said Layla Samara, an employee whose loved ones owns the keep.

A swastika on a Paterson store's banner was condemned as antisemitic and offensive. The store's owners insisted they were criticizing Israeli policy toward Palestinians but not all Jews.

“When we put it up, we understood it would spark controversy,” she claimed in an interview. “It was intended to make persons awkward. Talks like this need to have to be going on.”

Samara said she was seeking to attract a comparison with Israel’s harsh cure of Palestinians, including expelling families from their longtime properties and killing and injuring protesters and civilians in the West Lender and Gaza.

Critics observed the banner in another way, particularly coming amid a surge in anti-Jewish assaults all-around the planet and the uncooked emotions that followed previous month’s 11-day war concerning Israel and Palestinian militants in Gaza. 

“We are horrified to see such an obscene banner comparing the Jewish nation and former PM to Nazis,” stated Liora Rez of StopAntisemitism.org, a nonprofit whose Saturday

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