Move over Christopher Columbus, it\u2019s Peter Stuyvesant\u2019s turn to get scorched in the monuments war.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

A Jewish activist group is now demanding Mayor de Blasio scrub all traces of the Dutch governor from city property \u2014 even Stuyvesant High School \u2014 as part of his campaign to rid the city of \u201csymbols or hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cPeter Stuyvesant was an extreme racist who targeted Jews and other minorities including Catholics and energetically tried to prohibit them from settling in then New Amsterdam,\u201d said Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, the head of the Shurat HaDin-Israel Law Center.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York, of all American cities, which boasts such important Jewish history and claims such a present day vibrant Jewish community, should take the lead in denouncing Stuyvesant\u2019s bigotry.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stuyvesant did eventually allow the people he described as \u201cdeceitful,\u201d \u201cvery repugnant\u201d and \u201cblasphemous\u201d to settle at the order of the Dutch West India Company<\/p>\n

Erasing Stuyvesant\u2019s name from the city wouldn\u2019t just affect Manhattan\u2019s Stuyvesant Square and its eponymous statue \u2014 there\u2019s also the elite public Stuyvesant High School, and possibly even the entire neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.<\/p>\n

Darshan-Leitner recommends replacing all traces of his name with that of Asher
\nLevy, one of the first Jewish settlers in New Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the New Netherlands Institute, which researches America\u2019s Dutch History, called the idea \u201cridiculous\u201d and said statues of historical figures with outdated views are not the same as those of \u201ctreasonous\u201d Confederates being torn down in the South.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an entirely different case. This was about customs in the 17th century,\u201d said the spokesman, arguing that Stuyvesant opposed any religion outside of his own church to maintain social cohesion and due to ignorant ideas about disease.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Italian-American leaders rallied on Thursday to protest City Hall\u2019s Christopher Columbus statue from meeting a similar fate \u2014 a day after de Blasio said it would be among those studied by his commission into the city\u2019s offensive monuments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe one iconic symbol for Italian Americans was Christopher Columbus. He\u2019s flawed. We\u2019re all flawed. Hey I\u2019m flawed. Does that mean I\u2019m not going to get a rest stop named after me on the Jersey turnpike?\u201d said comedian and radio host Joe Piscopo at the rally outside City Hall.<\/p>\n

\u201cLeave our statues alone. Stop the political correctness. The political correctness is killing us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Jewish activist group is now demanding Mayor de Blasio scrub all traces of the Dutch governor from city property \u2014 even Stuyvesant High School \u2014 as part of his campaign to rid the city of \u201csymbols or hate.\u201d<\/p>\n

asing Stuyvesant\u2019s name from the city wouldn\u2019t just affect Manhattan\u2019s Stuyvesant Square and its eponymous statue \u2014 there\u2019s also the elite public Stuyvesant High School, and possibly even the entire neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6270,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6267\/revisions\/6270"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.israeliworlddomination.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}