Weiner Gets Mixed Reception at Israel Day Parade

As he marched on Sunday in his first Israel Day Parade since resigning from Congress, Anthony D. Weiner encountered plenty of fans, as well as the first real sustained display of hostility toward his New York City mayoral ambitions.

Mr. Weiner, who is the only Jewish candidate running, was cheered by many marchers and onlookers, several of whom wished him luck in the race. But many also booed him or heckled him about the scandal that forced him to give up his Congressional seat, after he was discovered to be sending sexually explicit messages to women over Twitter.

“Tweet me a picture, Weiner!” one man yelled repeatedly, as Mr. Weiner marched by, ignoring the heckler.

One woman simply gave him a thumbs-down as he passed her. An older man shouting “Am Yisrael Chai” - a Hebrew phrase meaning, roughly, “The people of Israel live” - approached Mr. Weiner looking as though he wanted to shake hands with him. But as he got closer, he stopped abruptly, and asked, “Are you Weiner?”

The older man then shook his head, withdrew his hand, and backed away quickly. Mr. Weiner looked startled and let out a loud, awkward laugh.

Henry Gerber, an officer worker who was volunteering with the organizers of the parade, muttered as Mr. Weiner went by, “God bless morality - please don’t run.”

“He doesn’t have a tremendous amount of common sense based upon what he did over the Internet,” Mr. Gerber said when asked his thoughts on Mr. Weiner. “And if he doesn’t have enough common sense to control his own personal affairs, what is he going to do as an elected leader of the City of New York?”

He also said that he was concerned about Mr. Weiner’s in-laws, who are Muslim, saying that he believed Mr. Weiner’s mother-in-law had connections to the Muslim Brotherhood. Last year several Republican members of Congress, including Michele Bachmann of Minnesota, accused Mr. Weiner’s wife, Huma Abedin, a top aide to then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, of having ties to the Brotherhood through her father. Senator John McCain at the time defended Ms. Abedin on the Senate floor, calling the accusations “ugly” and unsubstantiated, and a spokesman for the State Department, Philippe Reines, called them “vicious and disgusting lies.”

Mr. Weiner, who was dressed in light blue pants and a white shirt, the colors of the Israel flag, said in a brief press gaggle before he started marching that he was “hawkish” on Israel and glad to be walking in the parade again.

“This is home for me,” he said.

Just then, a fellow marcher called out, “Best of luck, Anthony!”

“Thank you, sir,” Mr. Weiner responded.