NY Police bars pro-Hamas mob from rallying in Hasidic Brooklyn enclave

The stage had been set after hasidim in Brooklyn chased one woman and hurt another near an anti-Israel protest Thursday.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The New York Police Department (NYPD) averted a second clash between Israel supporters and haters Monday night after a pro-Palestinian group called for “flooding” a neighborhood where one woman had been chased and another hurt by Hasidim on Thursday night after a demonstration where an Israeli minister had spoken.

The police outnumbered the approximately 75 antisemitic protestors who showed up at the Barclays Center near Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and attempted to reach the Chabad world headquarters located in the neighborhood where the initial fracas had taken place.

As they marched noisily, wearing keffiyehs and masks and holding signs with messages such as “Zionism out of Brooklyn” and “Free Palestine,” the officers consistently directed them away from the streets they had wanted to enter.

Jewish community news service COLlive reported that two of its photographers were told “We will kill you” as they took pictures of the march,and that police “immediately intervened.”

At the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens train stop, arguments developed between dozens of police and protestors, and one person was arrested at the scene.

The Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee had called for what it hoped would be a massive outpouring of people, posting to social media: “Waiting for the sleeping giant that is Caribbean Brooklyn, who have long suffered abuse and oppression at the hands of the racist Zionist Chabad Lubavitch to rise up against them.”

Labelling the Jews “F**king monsters,” the group said, “Black people in Brooklyn are violently exploited via rents to then feed their genocidal land grabs in Palestine,” and promised, “We will flood the streets of Crown’s Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here.”

The idea that all landlords are greedy Jews is a common antisemitic trope.

The impetus for Monday’s march was a fracas that developed on Thursday night when Israeli Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir visited the Chabad center and synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway. Anti-Israel demonstrators clashed with pro-Israel supporters on the street while he spoke inside and shouted antisemic slogans, including, for example, “We don’t want no two state, we want all of it” and “Judaism yes, Zionism no, the State of Israel has got to go!”

As described afterwards by New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, “Pro-terrorist antisemitic anarchists violently targeted one of the holiest Jewish sites in America, shouting vile antisemitic death chants and attacking Jews as they gathered in peace. This wasn’t a protest—it was a violent attack.”

She decried the “growing trend” of “vicious destructive antisemitism” and called for an immediate investigation into the “dangerous organizations and their funding networks” that lie behind such protests. “Jewish Americans must never feel unsafe in their own communities,” she said.

Videos posted to social media showed that at the tail end of the clashes, a large group of Hasidim chased after a woman who said later that she had not been part of the protest.

As the young white woman wearing a blue bandana over her face was ushered away by a policeman, a mob of mostly young men followed, shouted insults at her, called out “Death to the Arabs,” and one kicked her as the officer walked her down the street while protecting her before eventually getting her into a police car to be driven to safety.

In another incident, a female keffiyeh-clad demonstrator was allegedly bloodied by the Jewish counter-protestors.

New York Mayor Eric Adams criticized the mayhem on both sides, saying in a statement, “None of this is acceptable; in fact, it is despicable. New York City will always be a place where people can peacefully protest, but we will not tolerate violence, trespassing, menacing or threatening.”

The police said one person was arrested and five were issued summonses, and they are continuing their investigation intothe incidents.

anti-Israel protestersChabadNew York CityRep. Elise Stefanik