Elliot Cosgrove, the Manhattan rabbi who last fall said from his pulpit that Zohran Mamdani “poses a danger to the security of New York Jewish community,” dedicated his sermon this past Saturday to threatening New York elected officials who didn’t plan to march in the next day’s pro-Israel parade on Fifth Avenue.

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The JCRC meanwhile—which didn’t respond to my request for comment—is saying it didn’t know Smotrich was coming. But even so, the pre-parade list of confirmed Israeli officials included Yitzhak Kroizer, a member of Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Otzma Yehudit party, who last month wrote on social media that “the time has come to get rid of all the mosques and work to construct the Temple.” Also on the RSVP list was Knesset member Ariel Kallner, who in the days after the October 7th attacks said that Israel’s response should be a “Nakba that will overshadow the Nakba of 48.”

The parade itself, meanwhile, was full of floats from US funders of illegal West Bank settlements. The One Israel Fund, which sends US donations to West Bank settlements to pay for “security command centers,” drones, and “patrol vehicles” for settlers, had a float rolling down Fifth Avenue. So did the Hebron Fund, which supports the illegal Israeli settlement of the West Bank city of Hebron. The announcers on the JCRC’s parade livestream said the Hebron Fund “supports and strengthens the Jewish community of Hebron by . . . supporting soldiers and local security needs,” a string of euphemisms serving to obscure a situation in which Palestinian daily life has been made untenable by the restrictions Israel has instituted to defend the settlements. A float from Friends of the IDF, which sends tax-exempt US donations to support the Israeli military, was topped with a larger-than-life cutout of a saluting Israeli soldier. Marchers in green FIDF shirts waved flags of the Israeli military’s combat brigades.

The JCRC on Tuesday was busy pretending all had gone smoothly. In a press release, the group listed more than 30 elected officials who had been in attendance at the parade, including New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Senator Chuck Schumer, Attorney General Letitia James, and many others. It’s a list of the most powerful people in New York State. It’s also a list of people whom the Jewish establishment just burned. Maybe they’ll show some fortitude when the next invitation comes around.