The head rabbi at the historic Park East Synagogue is calling for local and state legislators to outlaw protests near houses of worship following a tumultuous pro-Palestine protest that lead NYPD Commissioner Tisch James to apologize to the congregation last month.
“This was not just an attack on a synagogue. This was an attack against the Jewish community,” Rabbi Arthur Schneier told a crowd assembled outside the synagogue’s E. 68th St. entrance Thursday night. “It’s important to ask every legislator in the city council and state to make sure that a law is enacted, whereby it is prohibited to demonstrate before synagogues or any other house of worship.”
Schneier joined New York City Comptroller Mark Levine on a stage setup outside the synagogue near Third Ave. on the Upper East Side, where some 400 congregants and pro-Israel advocates gathered in solidarity.
“What we saw here was hatred, hatred, hatred of the Jew and hatred of every human and decent being,” Schneier told the crowd, which waved Israeli flags and signs reading “New York Zionist.”
The November clash occurred when the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation NY/NJ organized protestors to demonstrate in opposition to an event hosted by Nefesh B’Nefesh, a group that assists Jewish immigration to Israel from the U.S. and Canada — and which the activist organization called a “settler recruiting fair.”
“The demonstrators were protesting Jewish New Yorkers interested in learning about immigration to Israel,” the city’s comptroller told the crowd outside the synagogue. “In the case of Israel, one of the most common reasons people are interested in immigrating is to flee anti-Semitism, which is on the rise in New York and in America, a fact perhaps lost on the protesters who were busy trying to make the attendees feel unsafe.”
Joining the Thursday night rally was Brooklyn resident David Galperin, 33, who protested in opposition to the pro-Palestine activists last month.
“I was there at the entrance to our synagogue when the protestors came. I’ve never seen anything like it,” said Galperin. “It was a huge Palestine rally. They were there trying to intimidate us. They were trying to take over. We’re here tonight to show our faces in public, that we are united and not afraid.”
Once the speakers were through, attendees were treated to performances by the Synagogue Park East Children’s Choir and Reggae star Matisyahu, who played his 2005 hit “King Without a Crown.”
Footage of November’s protest shows pro-Palestine protestors chanting “Intifada,” “Death to the IDF” and “Resistance, Take Another Settler Out” while members of the pro-Israel camp called them “p—ies” and “cowards” and demanded they take off their face masks. There was no violence, no summonses and no arrests, a high-ranking police source told the Daily News.
The NYPD set up pens with barricades for both sides of the protest but, while the pro-Israel side went into their pen, the pro-Palestinian protestors showed up later and headed for the building entrance before ultimately pulling back to their pen, a law enforcement source said.
Tisch, who spoke to congregants in the wake of last month’s protest, said that because the police didn’t set up a frozen zone at the entrance, “the space right outside your steps was chaotic.”
“People have the right to protest, including within sight and sound of a house of worship. They have the right to say things that are incredibly painful to hear. I understand that pain, deeply and personally,” Tisch said in November. “But the right to say those things is protected by the First Amendment, and the NYPD must uphold that right.
“You deserved an NYPD posture that recognized the sensitivity of this location, the climate we’re living in, and the heightened fear within our community,” she said at tat time. “Instead, you had turmoil.”
