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Protesters brandish swastikas at pro-Palestinian rally outside Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting
(New York Jewish Week) — At least two protesters brandished signs with swastikas at an anti-Israel protest targeting the annual Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday night.
One demonstrator held a sign with the Nazi symbol and the words “Israeli military.” The protester was forcibly ejected from the event by other participants who shouted at him and trampled his sign, prompting police to separate the two sides.
Another protester carried a sign that compared Jews to Nazis via a blood-spattered swastika intertwined with a Star of David and the words, “The irony of becoming what you once hated.”
The protest took place at 47th Street and 6th Avenue, near but not at the Rockefeller Christmas tree lighting ceremony, which was attended by New York City Mayor Eric Adams and featured performances from Cher, Barry Manilow and others. More than 1,000 protesters instead crowded onto the block next to another massive Christmas tree at the News Corp. company headquarters. The protest coincided with the International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People on Wednesday. Dozens of police cordoned off the crowd on the sidelines of the event as tourists passed by, and traffic was blocked off on adjacent streets.
The organization that led the protest, Within Our Lifetime, has led near-daily protests of Israel during its war against Hamas in Gaza. The group calls for Israel’s destruction and endorsed the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel in which terrorists killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped some 240, along with committing other atrocities. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza claims 14,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counter-offensive, a figure that is not verifiable and does not distinguish between combatants and civilians or denote casualties from misfired Palestinian rockets.
The leader of Within Our Lifetime, Nerdeen Kiswani, indicated her support for Hamas on Instagram last week, posting a picture of a boy kissing a Hamas fighter under the caption “Do you condemn Ham-.”
“We must defend the Palestinian right to resist zionist settler violence and support Palestinian resistance in all its forms. By any means necessary. With no exceptions and no fine print,” the group said on Instagram on Oct. 7.
Within Our Lifetime billed Wednesday’s protest as “Flood the tree lighting for Gaza,” evoking Hamas’ name for the Oct. 7 attack, “Operation Al-Aqsa Flood.”
A passerby who questioned protesters about the Hamas attack was berated and driven away from the rally, with police intervening between the two sides.
“NYPD, KKK, IDF they’re all the same,” the protesters chanted at police.
After protesters started marching, scuffles broke out between demonstrators and police. The NYPD said seven people had been taken into custody for one felony, five misdemeanors and one juvenile report.
In addition to the swastikas, other rhetoric and signs at the demonstration employed antisemitic imagery. Signs at the event said, “Zionist donors and trustees hands off our universities,” and showed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu holding President Joe Biden on a dog leash, evoking stereotypes about Jewish money and power.
Protesters also lashed Biden for his support of Israel, chanting, “Genocide Joe has got to go.”
Protesters explicitly called for the destruction of Israel, chanting, “End the settler Zionist state” and “We don’t want no two states, we want all of it.” Signs in the crowd read “Victory to the Palestinian resistance” and “Globalize the intifada,” which protesters also chanted, a reference to a campaign of terror attacks 20 years ago that killed an estimated 1,000 Israelis.
The crowd also chanted in favor of a ceasefire. A temporary ceasefire, agreed upon in exchange for Hamas releasing Israeli hostages, was in effect at the time of the protest.
Organizers claimed Jesus — a Jew who, according to Christian scripture, was born in Bethlehem in what is today the West Bank, and lived in the Galilee in what is presently Israel — as a Palestinian. They called to “suspend Christmas celebrations” due to the war alongside a protest by some churches in Bethlehem.
“Palestine is the birthplace of Christianity, Jesus was a Palestinian, how can celebrations go on as normal when his birthplace is being attacked,” Within Our Lifetime said in a post announcing the event. One protester carried a sign saying, “Jesus was a Palestinian Jew.”
Within Our Lifetime also targeted the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. During that event, protesters defaced the facade of the New York Public Library, causing $75,000 in damage.
The group sparked backlash earlier this month by posting maps online showing the location of Jewish and pro-Israel organizations in New York and encouraging its followers to target the institutions.
Jews are consistently targeted in hate crimes more than any other group in New York City, with over 230 antisemitic incidents reported to police so far this year. Anti-Jewish hate crimes have surged since Oct. 7, according to NYPD data.
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The post Protesters brandish swastikas at pro-Palestinian rally outside Rockefeller Center Christmas tree lighting appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada
Vancouver police arrested and released one person at the home of Charlotte Kates, director of the terror group Samidoun, in a dramatic raid on Nov. 14. The raid was conducted […]
The post Vancouver police raid a home linked to the director of Samidoun—which is now a terrorist entity in Canada appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims
President-elect Donald Trump won an overwhelming majority of the votes in New York City (NYC) precincts that were at least a quarter Jewish, according to a data analysis by the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), a prominent Washington DC-based political group.
RJC presented data on Friday affirming the notion that Trump won a higher proportion of the NYC Jewish vote than in previous elections, potentially signaling an ideological shift in the traditionally-liberal voting bloc. According to RJC data, Trump received the “overwhelming” majority of votes in precincts with a Jewish population of at least 25%.
Trump’s 2024 performance among Jews in NYC seems to mark a substantial improvement over the 2020 and 2016 elections, contests in which the president-elect struggled to make inroads among Jewish voters.
Voting data from the 2024 election also indicate that there was a significant shift among Jewish voters in Pennsylvania. President-elect Trump also enjoyed greater success in heavily-Jewish enclaves of deep-blue cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles, according to data compiled by the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners and the Los Angeles Times, respectively.
Trump’s increased success among Jewish voters in the Big Apple comes amid simmering anger over surging antisemitism across the country.
In the year following the Hamas slaughter of roughly 1200 people throughout southern Israel, college campuses have become embroiled in an unrelenting onslaught of protests opposing the Jewish state. Moreover, many Jews have expressed dissatisfaction with the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, suggesting that the president has not been a firm ally of the Jewish state.
Over the past year, NYC has been ravaged with raucous, often-violent anti-Israel demonstrations and an unrelenting spate of antisemitic hate crimes.
Columbia University, one of the most prestigious higher education institutions in the world, became a poster-child for the anti-Israel campus movement, erecting encampments and holding protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state. Many NYC public schools came embroiled in scandal after teachers presented students with lesson plans that accused Israel of committing “apartheid” and “genocide” against the Palestinians.
Though most national Democrats continue to express support for Israel’s right to defend itself from Hamas terrorists, some figures in the party have, over the past year, adopted a more adversarial posture toward the Jewish state, often citing the humanitarian situation in Gaza as a key reason.
High-profile Democrats such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (MA) have suggested that Israel has perpetrated a “genocide” against Palestinians in Hamas-ruled Gaza, where Israel has been waging a military campaign targeting terrorists since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Earlier this year, a group of dozens of Democratic lawmakers, including former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), sent a letter to US President Joe Biden, urging him to “reconsider” approving offensive arms shipments to Israel.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. While courting Jewish voters, Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them once he retains office in January.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
The post Trump Won A Majority of Votes In Heavily-Jewish New York City Precincts, Election Data Claims first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge
The Jewish community in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, New York was the target of another attack on Thursday evening, as three men attempted to rob a Hasidic man after stalking him through the neighborhood.
Footage of the incident was shared on X/Twitter by Yaacov Behrman, liaison of Chabad Headquarters and founder of the Jewish Future Alliance (JFA) nonprofit. It shows the men, whose faces were concealed by hoods and ski masks, chasing the man into the street and through the neighborhood after attempting to accost him.
No arrests have been made.
“He doesn’t give in easily, and I don’t think they got anything,” Behrman tweeted. “The Jewish Future Alliance is deeply concerned not only about the increase in crime but also the fact that, once again, the perpetrators were wearing masks. We need to reinstate mask laws.”
The explosion of an antisemitic hate crime spree in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn has set the Orthodox Jewish community on edge in recent weeks.
Last Tuesday, two men beat a middle-aged Hasidic man after he refused to surrender his cell phone in compliance with what appears to have been an attempted robbery. According to multiple accounts, the assailants were two Black teenagers.
That incident was the third time in eight days that an Orthodox resident of Crown Heights was targeted for violence and humiliation. Before then, an African American male smacked a 13-year-old Jewish boy who was commuting to school on his bike in the heavily neighborhood, which is heavily Jewish, and less than a week earlier, an assailant slashed a visibly Jewish man in the face.
Most recently, a masked man was caught on video approaching a visibly Jewish father walking with his two sons and grabbing one of the children in broad daylight. He was unable to secure possession of the child, whose father fought back immediately and did not let go of his son. Police later identified the man as Stephan Stowe, 28 — a suspect gang member with an extensive criminal history which includes 33 prior arrests — and charged arrested him attempted kidnapping and endangering the welfare of a child.
In each case, the suspect was allegedly a Black male, a pattern of conduct which continues to strain Black-Jewish relations across the Five Boroughs.
Black-on-Jewish crime is a social issue which has been studied before. In 2022, a report published by Americans Against Antisemitism (AAA) showed that Orthodox Jews were the minority group most victimized by hate crimes in New York City and that 69 percent of their assailants were African American. Seventy-seven percent of the incidents took place taking in predominantly Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods in Brooklyn. Of all assaults that prompted criminal proceedings, just two resulted in convictions.
“We’ve never seen anything like this,” AAA founder and former New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind (D) told The Algemeiner. “Shouldn’t there be a plan for how we’re going to deal with it? What’s the answer? Education? We’ve been educating everybody forever for God’s sake, and things are just getting worse.”
The problem has become acute in recent years. In July 2023, for example, a 22-year-old Israeli Yeshiva student, who was identifiably Orthodox and visiting New York City for the summer holiday, was stabbed with a screwdriver by one of two men who attacked him after asking whether he was Jewish and had any money. The other punched him in the face. Earlier that year, 10- and 12-year-olds were attacked on Albany Avenue by four African American teens.
According to a report issued in August by New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, antisemitic incidents accounted for a striking 65 percent of all felony hate crimes in New York City last year. The report added that throughout the state, nearly 44 percent of all recorded hate crime incidents and 88 percent of religious-based hate crimes targeted Jewish victims.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Attempted Robbery of Jewish Man in Brooklyn Puts Orthodox Community on Edge first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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