He has also led the fight against BDS, Nadler told Haaretz. “I was the first person to take on the Ford Foundation 10 years ago, and got them to revise their guidelines so they wouldn’t fund organizations which support BDS. Now for people to say that I’m anti-Israel is personally insulting and factually incorrect.”

While he has received emails and phone calls of support, he said, vociferous attacks have come from the religiously and politically conservative precincts of Borough Park in particular. New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind rented a double-decker bus on which he hung a sarcastic banner bearing Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s smiling visage thanking America, and parked it outside Nadler’s Manhattan office.

Hikind has also threatened to raise millions of dollars to fund the primary campaign of someone who can beat Nadler in the next election.

City Council member David Greenfield, who represents the same community, tweeted “BK constituents outraged at his support of Iran deal & believe he lied to us” when he said earlier that his mind was not yet made up.

“Someone said I turned my back on klal Yisroel [the Jewish people] in tweets, in speeches. We are told a rabbi in shul compared me to the rabbis who approached President Roosevelt and told him not to admit Jewish refugees” from the Holocaust to America, said Nadler.