A Crown Heights woman said Monday that she wandered into the aftermath of a protest last week and was surrounded by a furious pro-Israel crowd that abused her verbally and physically, an episode that Mayor Eric Adams has said was under investigation.
On Thursday night, pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where Itamar Ben-Gvir, the Israeli security minister, was to speak. The headquarters is an important religious site in the Hasidic community, and intense clashes erupted between protesters and counterprotesters outside, videos posted on social media by members of both sides show.
Police officers arrived at the headquarters to quell the crowd. At one point, hundreds of men and boys, most of them Jewish, surrounded a woman, according to the police and videos of the episode. It was unclear what prompted them to close in around her.
In a statement to The New York Times, a woman identified herself as the victim but asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution. She said she was not involved in the protest but had been watching with neighbors and pulled a scarf over her face when people began filming. She said she was quickly encircled by an angry crowd, who shouted abuse at her, and moved near a line of police officers for protection.
The crowd began to chant “death to Arabs” in Hebrew and followed her and an officer who had begun escorting her, video shows. Many also shouted racist, sexist and anti-Arab profanities as others shoved her. At least one hurled an orange construction cone at her head before the officer was able to put her in a police vehicle, the footage shows.
The woman said she was terrified as members of the crowd kicked her in the back, spat at her and threw objects at her head.
The woman said apart from the lone officer who steered her through the crowd, the police did not do enough to keep her safe. She said she was scared of leading protesters to her doorstep and that she was now frightened to live in her neighborhood of nearly a decade.
The Police Department said in a statement that the officer escorting the woman saw her surrounded and pushed through the group to bring her to safety. She was taken home in a department vehicle, the statement said.
In another incident, pro-Israel counterprotesters harassed a second woman, who was separated from fellow pro-Palestinian demonstrators and injured, Mr. Adams said.
Six people at the protest were taken into custody on Thursday night, the police said. Of those, five were issued court summonses and released, and one, Oscar Vidal, 28, of New Jersey, was charged with assault, harassment and criminal mischief, the police said. It was unclear which sides of the protest they represented.
“None of this is acceptable — in fact, it is despicable,” Mr. Adams said in a statement posted on X hours after another protest broke out on Sunday near a Brooklyn synagogue where Mr. Ben-Gvir had been expected to speak. Mr. Adams urged the two women to aid the police investigation.
Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad Lubavitch World, said the organization condemns “the crude language and violence of the small breakaway group of young people” that followed the first woman.
“Such actions are entirely unacceptable and wholly antithetical to the Torah’s values,” Mr. Seligson said in a statement on Monday. “The fact that a possibly uninvolved bystander got pulled into the melee further underscores the point.”
But he also denounced the protesters who he said had “called for the genocide of Jews in support of terrorists and terrorism — outside a synagogue, in a Jewish neighborhood, where some of the worst antisemitic violence in American history was perpetrated, and where many residents share deep bonds with the victims of Oct. 7.”
Several days of demonstrations preceded the visit of Mr. Ben-Gvir, whose appearances brought pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel groups face-to-face in heated exchanges and troubling episodes — some of them in Brooklyn neighborhoods with large Orthodox Jewish populations.
Mr. Ben-Gvir’s visit is his first official trip to the United States since March, when he rejoined the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.
He has been considered a political extremist in Israel for decades. Because of his far-right views, he was barred as a teenager from serving in the Israeli army, a rare occurrence in a country where military service is mandatory. In his home, Mr. Ben-Gvir had kept a portrait of a man who had fatally shot 29 Palestinians in 1994 at a mosque in the West Bank.
On Wednesday, Mr. Ben-Gvir appeared in New Haven, Conn., at Shabtai, a private Jewish discussion society that is based at Yale University but not affiliated with the school. Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside, and as Mr. Ben-Gvir left, some threw water bottles at him while others waved Israeli and Palestinian flags.
On Thursday, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the longest-serving Jewish member of the House, appeared outside a restaurant in Manhattan where Mr. Ben-Gvir was speaking. Joined by several rabbis and Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a mayoral candidate, Mr. Nadler announced that he would introduce legislation designed to impose economic sanctions on Israeli settlers who commit violence in the West Bank.
In an interview on Sunday, he said the protests were important, even if they have little effect on Mr. Ben-Gvir himself.
“It’s the message everyone else should take that we don’t support this,” Mr. Nadler said. “Whatever he may say, there are major Jewish groups who are opposed to this, who support a democratic, peaceful Israel and are opposed to the kind of racism and violence that he represents.”
The Israeli consulate could not immediately be reached for comment.
On Sunday morning, another protest erupted in front of the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue in Gravesend, Brooklyn, according to the police and video footage. That synagogue is across the street from Congregation Shaare Zion, the synagogue where Mr. Ben-Gvir was expected to speak, according to members of both synagogues. His talk, which was scheduled for around 9:30 a.m., was canceled, the members said.
As word of the protest spread, supporters of Israel from the neighborhood flocked to the area. At least six people were taken into custody, the police said. Whether they were pro-Palestinian or pro-Israel demonstrators was unclear.
Stephanie Benshimol, 45, an Israeli American woman, had heard about the demonstration and arrived on the block to confront the pro-Palestinian activists. She was wearing a blue denim jacket with the words “free the hostages” and a “Trump” pin on her lapel, and she had pepper spray tucked inside her pocket.
At one point she was caught in the fray and injured her left knee. “I’m fine,” she said, “but it’s just the point that you don’t go to any house of worship in America to protest — not a house of worship.”
By 1 p.m., the protest had ended and the police barricades on the block had been removed. A woman carrying a pro-Palestinian sign walked her bicycle along the thoroughfare, away from the house of worship. A man wearing a yarmulke told her to keep moving.
Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.
Chelsia Rose Marcius is a criminal justice reporter for The Times, covering the New York Police Department.
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