Daniel Kraushaar started last week’s board meeting in South Blooming Grove by asking for a moment of silence for Jews murdered in Israel, but the attorney quickly got off-topic in front of a crowd of people there for issues pertaining to their local government.

“The United States is a mess right now. It is almost beyond redemption,” said Kraushaar. “Our universities are a cesspool of antisemitic bigots."

Kraushaar’s comments were recorded last Thursday on Facebook Live by Bonnie Rum and posted to the Preserve Blooming Grove Facebook page. The attorney is seen in the video passionately speaking for roughly five minutes at the village board table with other village officials sitting quietly nearby.

"Seventy-eight percent of the Jews in Germany voted for Hitler. In 2020, that exact percentage of Jews in the United States voted for Joe Biden. Why am I saying this? We keep on making the same mistakes,” said Kraushaar. “I think that we better wake up really quickly in the United States and figure out who are our friends and who are our enemies because we made some really bad choices. The majority of leftist Jews supported Antifa. Where is BLM and Antifa in supporting these very Jews that support them? They’ve done the opposite. They’ve come out with virulently antisemitic statements congratulating these terrorists for what they did to our people.”

Kraushaar continued to say that Arabs want their own people to die for media attention.

“There are millions of Arabs that are also affected by this. They don’t care about their own people. They won’t even let their people escape Gaza,” said Kraushaar. “They don’t want them there. They want them to die. They want the pictures. They want the media, the complicit media, to support them and they’ve gotten that, that’s for sure.”

Rum, who is Jewish and has family in Israel, spoke out at the end of the public figure’s surprise speech and is heard saying the official was out of line.

“It makes no sense. It’s offensive,” says Rum. He was out of his mind. Why is he bringing politics in this country to statements going on with Hamas and Israel? I don’t know what he was doing but it had no place where he put it.”

The Orange County Jewish Federation had no comment on the remarks. News 12 viewers on social media were divided on the remarks, expressing both criticism and support for what was said.

NAACP representatives, however, say the remarks are divisive, offensive and untrue.

“I don’t understand how a leader could even think like that. For someone in that position to even speak so reckless and so divisive, it’s just mind-boggling to me,” says NAACP Orange County Chapter President Ray Harvey.

“He should have sad ‘allegedly.’ He has not spoken, I don’t think, to leaders of Black Lives Matter to determine what their view is pertaining to the situation,” says Wilbur Aldridge, president of the Rockland NAACP chapter.

News 12 reached out to Daniel Kraushaar and the Village of South Blooming Grove for comment but hasn’t heard back.

Kraushaar eventually concluded his remarks with a moment of silence.

“I ask we take a moment of silence, and really think deeply about what happened, who’s wrong and what we can each individually do to make sure that never again really is never again,” Kraushaar said.