Demonstrator Lilly Ickison: “The city has been overrun with people openly calling for ‘intifada,’ which is Jew-hate.”

By Debra Nussbaum Cohen, JNS

Hundreds of New Yorkers filled the normally quiet and bucolic Upper East Side street adjacent to Gracie Mansion, the official home of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, on Tuesday evening, chanting “Hey, hey, no, no, Mayor Mamdani’s got to go” and “stop Mamdani.”

Lilly Icikson was among the demonstrators—a group of mostly Jews with a few Muslims and Christians—and handed out stickers, which she prints at home and affixes to light poles and other surfaces outside Gracie Mansion and in other neighborhoods daily.

She came to the protest because “anti-Zionism is a sad excuse for Jew-hate,” she told JNS.

“The city has been overrun with people openly calling for ‘intifada,’ which is Jew-hate,” she said. “The city should be safe for everyone.”

The protest was organized by End Jew Hatred, a project of the Lawfare Project, and also involved a coalition of other groups.

In an interview a few hours before the protest began, Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director of Lawfare Project, told JNS that the goal was to have New York Gov. Kathy Hochul remove the mayor from office, which the governor, a Democrat, has the legal right to do.

That legal right has rarely been exercised. Hochul reportedly considered doing so in February 2025, after then-Mayor Eric Adams had been indicted on federal corruption charges. After requests to U.S. President Donald Trump, those charges were dropped, and the governor didn’t pursue removing him before the end of his term that December.

Shortly after Mamdani began his mayoral term, he struck down many of the executive orders that Adams had issued, including those that aimed to protect Jews and Israelis.

Now, amid a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City, and anti-Israel protesters intimidating and harassing Jews all over the city, Goldstein, a Miami resident, told JNS that the governor should remove the mayor.

“We are demanding the removal of Mamdani for his neglect of duty and his refusal to carry out his legal responsibilities,” Goldstein said. “Jews, Christians, Muslims, people of all faiths are coming together, because they are sick and tired of the extremism that has taken over our streets.”

New Yorkers are also “tired of the Islamists and woke radicals committing assault, his failure to enforce the rule of law and to launch investigations into these so-called protests, which are violent pro-terror mobs,” Goldstein added.

The acoustics at the open-air demonstration made it very difficult for speakers to be heard, except by those at the very front, but that didn’t seem to matter to attendees, many of whom carried signs.

There appeared to be a sense of solidarity and common cause in the crowd, in which several Chabad rabbis milled about and asked men if they had already donned tefillin that day.

Hillary Barr, who owns a real estate company in New York and also promotes investment in Israeli properties, came to Tuesday night’s protest wearing an armful of blue and white whistles and carrying a bag full of small Israeli and American flags. She handed those items out to people at the peaceful demonstration.

“The fact that Zohran Mamdani doesn’t protect the Jewish citizens is criminal,” she told JNS. “He makes his opinion very clear. He doesn’t believe that Israel has a right to exist, and he celebrates the day when he thinks Israel should have been destroyed, which it wasn’t, thank God.”

The mayor has also said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York, and he released a video for “Nakba” day, the day that some use to mark what they consider the “catastrophe” of the founding of the modern Israeli state.

“I am here as a tax-paying New Yorker to say we will not tolerate that,” Barr told JNS. “Nothing that this TikTok mayor can do is ever going to intimidate the Jews of New York.”

As she handed a whistle to a woman, Barr advised, “When confronted by the ‘free, free Palestine’ morons, blow it in their face and it makes them crazy, because you’re drowning out their ridiculous statements.”

Goldstein of End Jew Hatred plans to continue organizing demonstrations, as she did recently outside the New York Times building.

“This is the beginning of something big,” she told JNS. “This is going to be sustained protest.”

“There’s going to be a huge show of support for saying ‘enough is enough,’” she added. “The public is not behind this man anymore even though he got elected.”

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ADL: ‘Reports that charges were immediately filed prior to completion of the investigation are concerning.’

By JNS

Scott Hayes, of Framingham, Mass., was charged with assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in Newton District Court on Friday and released on $5,000 bond, after the 47-year-old was arrested the night before at a pro-Israel rally in Newton, Mass.

Video footage, which the Daily Wire obtained, appeared to show a young man, who accused pro-Israel ralliers of committing “genocide,” run across a busy street in Newton, Mass., on Thursday and tackle one of the ralliers. At some point, the latter seemed to shoot the assailant.

At a press conference on Thursday night, Marian Ryan, the district attorney of Middlesex County, which includes the City of Newton, said that Hayes was charged with “assault and battery with a dangerous weapon and violation of a constitutional right causing injury.” The latter charge was apparently dropped on Friday.

“He looked terrible but he stood tall. They treated him like a criminal and kept referring to the ‘alleged victim,”” a source at the court room told Kassy Akiva, of Daily Wire, who first obtained and released the footage of the incident. (Akiva is a former JNS editor.)

“Regrettably, the answer to most of the questions you’re going to have is, ‘We are working on that,’” the county district attorney said at the Thursday evening press conference.

“What we do know at this point is that at approximately 6:40 tonight, the Newton Police responded to calls at Washington and Harvard Street, just a short distance from the station,” Ryan said. “There was a small group of individuals—pro-Israeli demonstrators, who were demonstrating on one side of the street. There was an individual, apparently completely randomly walking down the other side of the street. Words were exchanged back and forth across the street.”

The man across the street “at some point began crossing the street. Appears to have gone back to his side of the street. Ultimately came across and jumped upon one of the demonstrators,” the district attorney said. “A scuffle ensued. During that scuffle, the individual who had come across the street was shot by a member of the demonstrating group.”

The man who crossed the street “has sustained life-threatening injuries and is being treated at a local hospital,” she added.

In response to a question, she said that the attacker came “very rapidly” across the street and “tackled” the other man. “It’s our understanding that that was his gun and that he legally possessed that gun,” she said, of Hayes.

Asked to characterize the man—who had reportedly called the pro-Israel ralliers “sick” and accused them of “genocide”—as either “anti-Israel” or “pro-Palestinian,” the district attorney said, “I think it’s too soon to to get into that.”

George McMains, acting chief of the Newton Police, said that the department “will be providing extra patrols at the houses of worship over the next several days as well as beyond if we feel that’s appropriate or necessary.”

Ruthanne Fuller, the Newton mayor, called the incident “frightening.”

“The Newton Police Department acted quickly and immediately took a person into custody,” she said. “I have two asks. First, let the Newton Police do their work and get the facts straight. Second, I ask everyone to remain calm.”

The New England branch of the Anti-Defamation League stated that police appeared to act too “immediately.”

“ADL is aware that an anti-Israel protester was shot after charging across traffic and violently tackling a pro-Israel demonstrator to the ground,” the ADL wrote. “Reports that charges were immediately filed prior to completion of the investigation are concerning.”

“We encourage Newton Police and the Middlesex district attorney to conduct a thorough investigation of the entire incident,” the ADL added. “We are concerned about escalating tensions and remain in contact with law enforcement and community officials.”

Alan Dershowitz, a professor emeritus at Harvard Law School, told JNS that there is no question that the man who crossed the street and tackled the pro-Israel rallier committed a crime.

“I think the first thing that’s clear is that the person who assaulted the veteran should be arrested as well,” Dershowitz said. “The fact that he hasn’t been arrested raises some serious questions.”

The legal scholar told JNS that the question whether the shooter acted in self-defense “will be determined based on all the evidence.”

“The shooting raises questions that require a deep investigation as to precisely when the shot was fired, what the circumstances were, what the feelings and beliefs of the person who shot were,” he said. “That requires an extensive investigation.”

Dershowitz told JNS that he is concerned that the alleged shooter was charged before the investigation was complete.

“It seemed to me that the first person to be arrested should have been the person who did the initial assault, because there’s no doubt about that. That’s on videotape. You can see it,” he said. “So the fact that the person was not arrested, charges were not filed against the person making the original charges, raises serious questions about the fairness of the entire process.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston stated on Friday that “last night, at a small demonstration in support of the Oct. 7 hostages in Newton, Mass., there was a violent altercation and an individual was hospitalized.”

“While the details of what happened are still being investigated, there should be no question that violence of any kind in our democratic society is abhorrent,” the JCRC said. “People’s right to gather in civil, non-violent public demonstrations must be sacrosanct.”

“We take this moment to note that over the last 11 months, across our region there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of standouts for the hostages taken on Oct. 7. These rallies, demonstrations, runs and walks for the victims, a ‘hostage tunnel’ exhibit at Boston City Hall Plaza, and other ways in which our community and allies have come together to demand the return of the hostages to their families have all been peaceful and without incident,” the JCRC said.

“Regardless of motive or his role in the initiation of the violence, we pray for the full recovery of the individual who was injured last night,” it said.

The Combined Jewish Philanthropies stated on Friday that there was an “altercation” that “turned violent.”

“We denounce and condemn all forms of violence and support the right to assemble in ways that are peaceful and uphold our values as a people and as a community,” the CJP said.

At press time, a fundraising page for Hayes—which called him “an American Iraq war veteran” and said that he is not Jewish—had raised more than $120,000 from some 1,600 donations.

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