Posted on 07/15/24
| News Source: JPost
Anti-Israel protesters waved a Hezbollah flag and called for intifada and the destruction of the State of Israel outside a synagogue in Queens on Sunday, according to pro-Palestinian organizations, despite the Israeli real estate seminar they rallied against no longer being held at the site.
Activists led by Palestinian Assembly for Liberation New York and New Jersey (PAL-Awda) had descended on the Congregation Charm Circle in the Kew Gardens Hills neighborhood on Sunday evening to protest a real estate seminar, but according to social media statements by Jewish neighborhood watch group Queens Shmira and New York State Assemblymember Sam Berger, the venue for the event had been changed. Shmira had promised in a Friday statement that the synagogue would remain open for worship.
"The event changed venues, but the protesters didn't care, harassing Jews for the crime of going to pray," said Berger.
Despite Shmira calling on Jewish residents of the area not to counter-protest, the anti-Israel activists were met with demonstrators waving Israeli and American flags. In an Instagram story, PAL-Awda gloated that activists from the over 40 endorsing organizations outnumbered the counter-protesters "in their own neighborhood." Activists chanted, "We don't want no Zionists here" in the neighborhood with a large Jewish population.
Footage of the protests showed physical clashes between the Jewish community members and the anti-Israel activists. PAL-Awda alleged that some pro-Israel activists hurled stones, homophobic slurs, called members of an ultra-orthodox anti-Zionist Jewish sect "Nazis." Police separated the two groups with a buffer zone dozens of meters wide, having been in coordination with Shmira and Berger prior to the protest.
Anti-Israel Activists waved Palestinian flags and Hezbollah flags, chanting slogans that included "long live the intifada" and "there is only one solution, intifada revolution."