Former NY Gov. Paterson: Jewish Community Deserves ‘Support’ After Marching with MLK

Former New York Gov. David Paterson (D) said the Jewish community deserves “some kind of support” after they supported and marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he fought for civil rights.

During an interview on WABC 770 AM radio’s The Cats Roundtable, Paterson pointed out that sixty-five percent of the “whites who marched with Dr. King were Jewish.”

“To clear up the confusion, what I think the problem is, is those who are in support of the people in Palestine, who many of them are starved and they have very, very difficult lives to lead at this particular time, but this has been going on for a long time. And, even with this problem, the Palestinians voted for Hamas to actually be, in a sense the government that would run that particular area,” Paterson explained during his interview on Sunday.

Paterson added that the “purpose” of Hamas, a U.S.-designated Islamic terror group, is to “destroy the state of Israel.”

“How much more clear can you get that they are the enemy, but yet on the campuses of some of these schools, the Jewish students are reporting that they are being called Zionists and companies are making money off of the war,” Paterson continued. “At this particular time, for those of us who are Americans, that try to waive the situation and be fair to both sides, you can’t come up with any other conclusion than this was an outrageous attack on Israel. It killed 1,200 people, there are hostages that haven’t been seen since that day, October 7, of 2023. And, they deserve some kind of support.”

The former governor of New York and a graduate of Columbia University added, “Back in the sixties when Martin Luther King was marching on Washington and he was fighting for civil rights, and he was challenging many of the segregation policies that still existed in this country, and you would’ve thought that he was a terrorist the way they referred to him at that particular time, sixty-five percent of the whites who marched with Dr. King were Jewish.”

Paterson’s interview comes as anti-Israel encampments and protests have sprouted up on college and university campuses across the nation within the past week, calling for a ceasefire and for universities to divest from doing business with Israeli companies.

The anti-Israel protests and encampments come after an initial encampment was established at Columbia University. Since then, students have been suspended and those involved have been arrested, and graduation ceremonies have been canceled.

Anti-Israel encampments have sprouted up on campuses such as George Washington University, the University of California Los Angeles, New York University, and Northwestern University.