“We’re an inch away from pogroms,” says Jewish mother stunned by blatant harassment of children, lack of community intervention.
By World Israel News Staff
Jewish children at a public school in upstate New York were targeted over their religious identity by anti-Israel protesters, while local residents supported the demonstrators, claimed a shocked mother who said the incident has left her shaken.
Bryce Gruber, a Jewish mother of five with two children, aged 5 and 7, enrolled at an elementary school in the small town of Woodstock, said she was rattled after demonstrators gathered near the campus and harassed children commuting to school.
The protesters had blocked the road near the elementary school, preventing parents from dropping off or picking up their kids. The children were forced to stay in the building for the entirety of the day, with school administrators cancelling recess due to security concerns.
“They were screaming at the kids and anyone who tried to get across [the road] or got near them,” Gruber told the New York Post.
“They told my kids that their parents were complicit in genocide, that they’re baby killers.”
On her Instagram account, Gruber posted a video that included a screenshot of an email sent by the school principal, confirming that recess had been cancelled that day “out of an abundance of caution.”
After Gruber became aware of what was happening, she rushed to pick up her children.
“I ran to the schools, grabbed my kids (we all know why) and was faced with these [idiots] ranting about how Zionists and Jews are the problem and America should fall,” she wrote on her Instagram account.
“The neighborhood came out to cheer” for the demonstrators, Gruber wrote. She described those supporting the protesters as “white suburban folk who have never spent a day in the Middle East and certainly can’t point to the region on a map.”
Gruber said that a protester took photos of her, along with her seven-year-old and five-year-old, then threatened to put their images on a public “Zionist watch list.”
The mother said she was shocked by the lack of intervention by local police or authorities.
“This is New York. We’re an inch from full pogroms.”