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‘Settlers Go Back Home’: Pro-Hamas Protesters Agitate in Jewish New York Neighborhood, Leading to Clashes
Pro-Hamas demonstrators gather in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park in New York City on Feb. 18, 2o25. Photo: Screenshot
The pro-Hamas group Pal-Awda staged a protest in the heavily Orthodox Jewish neighborhood of Borough Park in New York City on Tuesday night, leading to clashes.
Pal-Awda, which says it supports the “complete end to the settler-colonial project of Israel” and supported the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of Israelis, announced its “Flood Boro Park” protest “to stop the sale of Palestinian land.”
The demonstration targeted an Israeli real estate event in Brooklyn, although the website for the event reportedly did not offer holdings in disputed territories such as the West Bank. According to the Jerusalem Post, however, the organizer of the real estate gathering, the Getter Group, could inquire into property in settlements on behalf of its clients.
The use of the term “flood” in the title of the protest was seemingly designed to pay homage to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack against Israel, in which the terrorist group killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages. The onslaught was termed the “Al-Aqsa Flood” by Hamas.
Approximately 200 anti-Israel protesters showed up on Tuesday, with at least an equal number of pro-Israel protesters and local Jews countering them.
The anti-Israel protesters chanted slogans such as “settlers, settlers, go back home, Palestine is ours alone,” “Zionists go to hell,” and “We don’t want no Zionists here,” according to press reports and video circulated on social media.
Videos of violence at the protests quickly went viral. One video showed an anti-Israel protester, who was promptly arrested, punching a pro-Israel man in his face unprovoked. Other videos showed clashes between the two sides, with it being unclear exactly who started the violence.
One Zionist organization, Beter USA, posted on X prior to the clashes that it would be confronting the anti-Israel demonstrators, who had announced their planned protest in advance.
“Our synagogues will not be touched in Brooklyn tomorrow. You will not come near our streets or stores jihadis,” the group wrote, adding that it will “fight back” against anti-Israel demonstrators “by any means necessary.”
Borough Park is known as one of the most heavily populated Orthodox Jewish communities in the US, leading many Jewish groups and political leaders to argue the anti-Israel demonstration was antisemitic and really meant to intimidate the local Jewish community.
“Last night we saw protesters in Boro Park targeting Jewish New Yorkers with hateful rhetoric and antisemitic chants. This is unacceptable,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul posted on X. “We are grateful to [the New York City Police Department] for their diligent work keeping all New Yorkers safe.”
Brad Lander, the New York City comptroller, noted that “calling Orthodox Jews in Boro Park ‘filthy Zionist a–holes,’ shouting ‘you’re so gross, you’re disgusting,’ and chanting ‘settlers go back home’ to people whose parents & grandparents were killed in the Holocaust is antisemitism, plain and simple.”
He continued, “We cannot tolerate it. I condemn it in the strongest terms.”
The group #EndJewHatred said in a statement that what happened in Borough Park “is the consequence of the complete systemic failure of local officials, most notably Mayor [Eric] Adams and Police Commissioner [Jessica] Tisch, to meaningfully stand up to Jew-hatred and support what has, especially since Oct. 7, 2023, become New York City’s most vulnerable and attacked minority community.”
It added, “We did not see Mayor Adams arrive on scene to order the crowd of Hamas supporters to disperse. He did not arrive, bullhorn in hand, to call them out as unwelcome in his city.”
Members of the US Congress also condemned the scenes on Tuesday night.
The vile and antisemitic rhetoric directed at Jewish residents in Borough Park is unacceptable and unconscionable. We will not tolerate the egregious behavior on display that was clearly designed to intimidate and harass Jews in the Borough Park neighborhood,” Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), the minority leader of the House of Representatives, said in a statement. “People of goodwill across our city and throughout the nation must continue to do everything possible to protect our Jewish brothers and sisters who are under assault and fight the cancer of antisemitism with the fierce urgency of now.”
Rep. Ritchie Torres posted on X a video of the clashes, writing that “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,” he argued, adding that the movement has “no desire to free Palestinians from Hamas.”
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UK, France, Germany Urge Gaza Ceasefire, Ask Israel to Restore Humanitarian Access
People walk among destroyed buildings in Gaza, as viewed from the Israel-Gaza border, March 20, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen/File Photo
The governments of Germany, France and Britain called for an immediate return to a ceasefire in Gaza in a joint statement on Friday that also called on Israel to restore humanitarian access.
“We call on Israel to restore humanitarian access, including water and electricity, and ensure access to medical care and temporary medical evacuations in accordance with international humanitarian law,” the foreign ministers of the three countries, known as the E3, said in a statement.
The ministers said they were “appalled by the civilian casualties,” and also called on Palestinian Hamas terrorists to release Israeli hostages.
They said the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians could not be resolved through military means, and that a long-lasting ceasefire was the only credible pathway to peace.
The ministers added that they were “deeply shocked” by the incident that affected the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) building in Gaza, and called for an investigation into the incident.
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Israeli Military Says It Intercepted Missile Fired from Yemen; Houthis Claim Responsibility
FILE PHOTO: Houthi military helicopter flies over the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea in this photo released November 20, 2023. Photo: Houthi Military Media/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The Israeli military said it intercepted a missile fired from Yemen on Friday, one day after shooting down two projectiles launched by Houthi terrorists.
Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthis claimed responsibility for the attack, saying that it fired a ballistic missile toward Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv, the group’s military spokesperson, Yahya Saree, said in a televised statement in the early hours of Saturday.
Saree said the attack against Israel was the group’s third in 48 hours.
He issued a warning to airlines that the Israeli airport was “no longer safe for air travel and would continue to be so until the Israeli aggression against Gaza ends and the blockade is lifted.”
However, the airport’s website seemed to be operating normally and showed a list of scheduled flights.
The group’s military spokesman has also said without providing evidence that the Houthis had launched attacks against the US aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman in the Red Sea.
The group recently vowed to escalate attacks, including those targeting Israel, in response to US strikes earlier this month, which amount to the biggest US military operation in the Middle East since President Donald Trump took office in January. The US attacks have killed at least 50 people.
The Houthis’ fresh attacks come under a pledge to expand their range of targets in Israel in retaliation for renewed Israeli strikes in Gaza that have killed hundreds after weeks of relative calm.
The Houthis have carried out over 100 attacks on shipping since Israel’s war with Hamas began in late 2023, saying they were acting in solidarity with Gaza’s Palestinians.
The attacks have disrupted global commerce and prompted the US military to launch a costly campaign to intercept missiles.
The Houthis are part of what has been dubbed the “Axis of Resistance” – an anti-Israel and anti-Western alliance of regional militias including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and armed groups in Iraq, all backed by Iran.
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Columbia University Agrees to Some Trump Demands in Attempt to Restore Funding
A pro-Palestine protester holds a sign that reads: “Faculty for justice in Palestine” during a protest urging Columbia University to cut ties with Israel. November 15, 2023 in New York City. Photo: Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Columbia University agreed to some changes demanded by US President Donald Trump’s administration before it can negotiate to regain federal funding that was pulled this month over allegations the school tolerated antisemitism on campus.
The Ivy League university in New York City acquiesced to several demands in a 4,000-word message from its interim president released on Friday. It laid out plans to reform its disciplinary process, hire security officers with arrest powers and appoint a new official with a broad remit to review departments that offer courses on the Middle East.
Columbia’s dramatic concessions to the government’s extraordinary demands, which stem from protests that convulsed the Manhattan campus over the Israel-Gaza war, immediately prompted criticism. The outcome could have broad ramifications as the Trump administration has warned at least 60 other universities of similar action.
What Columbia would do with its Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department was among the biggest questions facing the university as it confronted the cancellation, called unconstitutional by legal and civil groups, of hundreds of millions of dollars in government grants and contracts. The Trump administration had told the school to place the department under academic receivership for at least five years, taking control away from its faculty.
Academic receivership is a rare step taken by a university’s administrators to fix a dysfunctional department by appointing a professor or administrator outside the department to take over.
Columbia did not refer to receivership in Friday’s message. The university said it would appoint a new senior administrator to review leadership and to ensure programs are balanced at MESAAS, the Middle East Institute, the Center for Palestine Studies, the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies and other departments with Middle East programs, along with Columbia’s satellite hubs in Tel Aviv and Amman.
‘TERRIBLE PRECEDENT’
Professor Jonathan Zimmerman, a historian of education at the University of Pennsylvania and a “proud” graduate of Columbia, called it a sad day for the university.
“Historically, there is no precedent for this,” Zimmerman said. “The government is using the money as a cudgel to micromanage a university.”
Todd Wolfson, a Rutgers University professor and president of the American Association of University Professors, called the Trump administration’s demands “arguably the greatest incursion into academic freedom, freedom of speech and institutional autonomy that we’ve seen since the McCarthy era.”
“It sets a terrible precedent,” Wolfson said. “I know every academic faculty member in this country is angry about Columbia University’s inability to stand up to a bully.”
In a campus-wide email, Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president, wrote that the her priorities were “to advance our mission, ensure uninterrupted academic activities, and make every student, faculty, and staff member safe and welcome on our campus.”
Mohammad Hemeida, an undergraduate who chairs Columbia’s Student Governing Board, said the school should have sought more student and faculty input.
“It’s incredibly disappointing Columbia gave in to government pressure instead of standing firm on the commitments to students and to academic freedom, which they emphasized to us in almost daily emails,” he said.
The White House did not respond to Columbia’s memo on Friday. The Trump administration said its demands, laid out in a letter to Armstrong eight days ago, were a precondition before Columbia could enter “formal negotiations” with the government to have federal funding.
ARREST POWERS
Columbia’s response is being watched by other universities that the administration has targeted as it advances its policy objectives in areas ranging from campus protests to transgender sports and diversity initiatives.
Private companies, law firms and other organizations have also faced threatened cuts in government funding and business unless they agree to adhere more closely to Trump’s priorities. Powerful Wall Street law firm Paul Weiss came under heavy criticism on Friday over a deal it struck with the White House to escape an executive order imperiling its business.
Columbia has come under particular scrutiny for the anti-Israel student protest movement that roiled its campus last year, when its lawns filled with tent encampments and noisy rallies against the US government’s support of the Jewish state.
To some of the Trump administration’s demands, such as having “time, place and manner” rules around protests, the school suggested they had already been met.
Columbia said it had already sought to hire peace officers with arrest powers before the Trump administration’s demand last week, saying 36 new officers had nearly completed the lengthy training and certification process under New York law.
The university said no one was allowed to wear face masks on campus if they were doing so intending to break rules or laws. The ban does not apply to face masks worn for medical or religious purposes, and the university did not say it was adopting the Trump administration’s demand that Columbia ID be worn visibly on clothing.
The sudden shutdown of millions of dollars in federal funding to Columbia this month was already disrupting medical and scientific research at the school, researchers said.
Canceled projects included the development of an AI-based tool that helps nurses detect the deterioration of a patient’s health in hospital and research on uterine fibroids, non-cancerous tumors that can cause pain and affect women’s fertility.
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