About 200 supporters of Hamas and fellow Jew-hating allies provocatively targeted an event in the heavily Jewish Borough Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, Feb. 18, but got an unexpected surprise. They were outnumbered by opponents of Jew-hatred.
The anti-Jewish provocation was called by the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation-Palestinian Right to Return Coalition (Pal-Awda). They said their goal was to “Flood Boro Park to stop the sale of stolen Palestinian land,” a deliberate echo of the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” the name Hamas gave its Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Jewish pogrom in Israel.
Pal-Awda said their target was an event organized by the Israel Real Estate Expo, which offers apartments, houses and land in Israel. The Jew-hating groups falsely claim that all of Israel is “stolen Palestinian land.”
A similar event planned in Brooklyn last year was cancelled at the request of the police after pro-Hamas thugs threatened disruption, but this time the organizers refused to back down.
Several Jewish groups called for a counterprotest under the slogan “Antizionism=Antisemitism.” Some chanted, “Nazis go home!”
The pro-Hamas group chanted “Zionists go to hell!” and “Settlers, settlers, go back home, Palestine is ours alone,” and made obscene gestures to passing buses full of Jewish students.
In the face of the harassment, growing numbers of young Hasidic Jewish men from the community joined the counterprotest. Many of the chants were in Yiddish, a common language in Borough Park.
Some Hamas supporters provocatively tried to enter the pro-Jewish protest. They were rebuffed. The police did little to prevent recurring clashes between Hamas supporters and members of the Jewish community.
“Stay in Palestine and there’ll be more October 7s,” one woman who supported Hamas yelled at the Jews. “We were dragging your soldiers on October 7.”
After several hours, and taking some lumps, the outnumbered Hamas supporters decided to leave. New York Police Department Deputy Chief Richie Taylor, the highest-ranking Orthodox Jewish police officer in the city, urged a crowd of young Jews to stop following them. “They’re leaving,” he said.
The assault by Hamas supporters “won’t be the last and sounds an early alarm,” said Paul Mailhot, Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York, in a statement distributed in Borough Park and elsewhere. “Working people and our unions should stand with the Jewish community in Borough Park and say no to Jew-hatred.”