TEANECK, N.J. — Joanne Kuniansky, Socialist Workers Party candidate for governor of New Jersey, joined a protest of some 25 people defending Israel’s right to exist as a refuge from Jew-hatred and pogroms held outside the Marriott Hotel here March 10.
The action was called to counter some 50 pro-Hamas supporters who had mobilized against a conference being held at the hotel by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a group that assists people looking to emigrate to Israel. Kuniansky told conference staff the SWP backed their right to hold the event. Her sign said, “Join the fight against Jew-hatred! Support Israel’s fight to defeat Hamas.”
“Jew-hatred is a reality today,” Miriam Bildner, a yoga instructor and former student at Teaneck High School, told Kuniansky at the protest. She descibed how she was attacked outside that school. She had been carrying a placard condemning antisemitism when students walked out Nov. 29, 2023, demanding Israel end its fight to disable Hamas. From that moment on, Bildner said, “I knew I had to stand up and join protests defending Israel.”
Kuniansky told her about the 50,000-strong demonstration of trade unionists and others called by the SWP in 1939 in New York to counter a Madison Square Garden rally of the fascist German-American Bund.
“That’s what we need today,” Bildner said.
“SWP campaigners find widespread abhorrence toward Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom when we campaign among working people,” Kuniansky said.