Clashes break out at anti-Israel protest in Brooklyn Jewish neighborhood
Pro-Palestinian activists shout ‘settlers go back home’ and ‘we don’t want no Zionists here’ at Boro Park rally that is widely condemned as antisemitic by political leaders
Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.
NEW YORK — Anti-Israel protest groups staged a rally in a Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, berating the residents as “settlers” and “Zionists” and sparking fights with pro-Israel counterprotesters.
The protest, led by the Pal-Awda activist group, took place in Boro Park, an area with a large Orthodox population.
Around 200 anti-Israel protesters gathered on a street in the neighborhood within a barricaded area set up by police. A crowd of Jewish residents and other pro-Israel counterprotesters demonstrated on the sidewalk across the street. Dozens of police officers separated the two sides. The protest began just after sundown and the temperature was below freezing.
The anti-Israel protesters chanted, “settlers settlers go back home, Palestine is ours alone,” “Zionists go to hell,” and “We don’t want no Zionists here.” Most wore masks or keffiyehs to cover their faces.
“How many kids did you kill today?” they shouted, to the beat of a snare drum. Some of the protesters held up their hands in an inverted triangle, a Hamas symbol, toward Jewish counterprotesters.
Others shouted insults, including at children. One man called neighborhood residents “filthy Zionist assholes,” and a woman shouted at a pair of young girls watching from a crosswalk, saying, “You’re so gross. You’re disgusting.” Children on their way home from neighborhood yeshivas peered out their bus windows at the scene.
“There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” a man shouted through a megaphone.
The anti-Israel organizers said they were protesting against an Israeli real estate event in the area, accusing organizers of marketing land in the West Bank. Similar events have sparked several heated protests in the region since the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Tuesday’s event was reportedly canceled due to safety concerns.
“Flood Boro Park to stop the sale of stolen Palestinian land,” organizers said in a social media post announcing the event. Anti-Israel groups in New York often refer to their events as “floods,” an homage to the Hamas term for the October 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, the “Al-Aqsa Flood.”
On the Jewish side, dozens of adults and youths from the neighborhood and other counterprotesters lined a police barricade across the street. Some were actively protesting, while others were curious passersby who stopped to take photos on their phones. Several held Israeli flags and shouted at the anti-Israel crowd. One woman held up the yellow flag of the far-right Jewish Defense League.
“Brooklyn doesn’t want you,” one man shouted. “Get out of our neighborhood. We don’t want you here.”
“Nazis go home,” a group chanted. Others called the protesters “terrorists.”
Several participants danced and sang along to a song in Hebrew played through a cellphone held up to a megaphone.
“Who believes is not afraid,” the song said.
Several fights broke out. A couple of anti-Israel activists who walked into the Jewish side were shouted at and pushed out. Some participants traded blows on the sidelines of the rally. As the protest wound down, the two opposing groups walked down opposite sides of the street, with some crossing back and forth, leading to further scuffles. The police struggled to keep participants separated, and on the sidewalks, away from traffic.
It should come as a shock to no one that the pro-Hamas mob targeting Jews and promising to “flood” Boro Park has descended into violence.
Violence is not a bug but a feature of the so-called “Free Palestine” movement, which has no desire to free Palestinians from Hamas. pic.twitter.com/RLZZEb4GFg
— Ritchie Torres (@RitchieTorres) February 19, 2025
“Were you guys like this on October 7? Stay in Palestine and there’ll be more October 7s,” a woman shouted across the street.
“We were dragging your soldiers on October 7,” she said.
As the anti-Israel group headed toward a subway station, NYPD Deputy Chief Richie Taylor, the highest-ranking Orthodox Jewish police officer in the city, urged neighborhood residents to not follow them any longer.
“There’s no reason for it. They’re leaving,” he told a crowd of young men.
The NYPD said one man had been arrested for assault.
Anti-Israel activists have held hundreds of protests in New York since the October 7, 2023, Hamas invasion of Israel, but Tuesday’s rally stood out because protests in Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods are rare.
The protest was widely condemned by New York political leaders before it took place.
“This ‘protest’ is in fact targeted harassment aimed at a neighborhood with one of the highest populations of Orthodox Jews in the US,” said Representative Daniel Goldman, a New York Democrat. “To harass and intimidate Jews because of the actions of Israel is textbook antisemitism. True progressives must speak out against this hate.”
Anti-Israel street protests in New York have spiked since the Hamas attack on Israel, starting with a celebration the following day, and have continued since the current ceasefire between Israel and Hamas. The activists’ targets have included cancer patients, museums, memorials to the dead, libraries, transportation hubs and holiday events.
