NY Mets Refuse to Cave to Anti-Israel Demands to Cancel Chevron Fundraiser at Citi Field

Eleven organizations from the US and Israel have tried to persuade the New York Mets to cancel a November 21st dinner at the Caesars Club at Citi Field for the Brooklyn-based Hebron Fund. The dinner is a fundraiser for the Jewish community in the city of Chevron.

In a letter sent to the Mets on November 3rd, the groups said, “The New York Mets will be facilitating activities that directly violate international law and the Obama administration’s call for a freeze in settlement construction, and that actively promote racial discrimination, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their homes in Hebron.”

The groups added that, “It would be a tragic irony for an event funding Israeli settlers’ violent actions and discriminatory policies against Palestinians to be held at Caesars Club which, according to the Mets, ‘sits directly on top of the Jackie Robinson Rotunda,’ which was named ‘in honor of Jackie Robinson, the… great American who broke baseball’s color barrier.’ The Mets and Major League Baseball promote Robinson’s legacy, including Robinson’s value of ‘Justice: Treating all people fairly, no matter who they are.’ Mets owner Fred Wilpon has explained in the past that, as a 16 year-old, meeting Jackie Robinson was an experience that never left him. ‘As a kid, a nothing, he treated me with all of that dignity that he treated everyone else in his life.’

The signers of the letter include Adalah-NY, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Brooklyn For Peace, Coalition of Women for Peace (Israel), CODEPINK Women for Peace, Gush Shalom (Israel), Jews Against the Occupation-NYC, Jewish Voice for Peace, Palestinian Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions National Committee (Palestine), US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation, and WESPAC Foundation.

The letter was sent to Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Middle East Envoy George Mitchell.

The New York Mets, however, have not backed down at all due to the intimidation tactics and the anti-Israeli propaganda.

One person involved in fighting the anti-Israel rhetoric gave kudos to the Mets organization for “standing up against intimidation by defamers of Israel, posing as ‘civil and human rights’ activists. Left-wing internet activists have whipped up their followers to barrage the Mets players and leaders with demands that they cancel the pro-Israel event to be held at Citi Field. That union of haters includes those who actively encourage boycotts of and divestment from Israel, ardent supporters of Yasir Arafat, and public figures who claime Jewish ‘money’ pushed the US into the war in Iraq.”

The Mets have stood up to those threats.

Activists are encouraging Jews to write to the Mets to thank them for rejecting the request of anti-Jewish and anti-Israel organizations to call of the Chevron event.

NY Mets contact info is as follows:

New York Mets

Citi Field

Roosevelt Avenue

Flushing, NY 11368-1699

(718) 507-8499

[email protected]

The Hebron Fund Dinner will take place on Motzoei Shabbos, November 21, 2009, at the Caesar’s Club at Citi Field in Flushing Meadow Park,  Queens, New York. Couvert is $300 per person .

{Noam Amdurski-Matzav.com Newscenter}