They Want Us Gone
When a crowd of anti-Israel protesters gathered outside 770 Eastern Parkway, the world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Crown Heights, on Thursday night, April 25, the Jewish community there prepared for the worst. They had good reason to.
The protest was promoted by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), a group that proudly identifies as anti-Zionist, in response to a visit from Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s controversial national security minister. It drew hundreds, including many Jewish counter-protesters and watch groups. Among them was a crowd of Orthodox Jewish men who later harassed, chased and injured a female bystander, which was caught on video and widely circulated online. That disturbing incident, which has sparked significant outrage, is currently under police investigation.
There is no justification for the violent and downright embarrassing behavior shown in that video. Regardless of what the investigation concludes, the footage is shocking and indefensible. It should never have happened.
But what happened before that moment was also unacceptable — and has been largely overlooked. Before the footage currently spreading through social media like wildfire was taken, protesters surrounding the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters were heard chanting, “Judaism yes, Zionism no, Israel has to go,” at Jewish residents of the area. “Settlers, settlers, go back home, Palestine is our home,” calling for jihad and an intifada and referring to Hamas, the terrorist organization responsible for the massacre that left over 1,200 Israelis dead and more than 250 taken hostage, as “justified” and “resistance fighters.”
Chanting genocidal slogans at a synagogue is protesting what, exactly?
The New York Times and other outlets have largely ignored the details of what preceded the assault. They’ve said little about the fact that WOL deliberately targeted Crown Heights, a neighborhood with a deeply-rooted Jewish community, by staging a demonstration outside what is both a house of worship and its most visible Jewish institution. Even less coverage has been devoted to the rhetoric surrounding Monday’s follow-up protest, promoted by the Crown Heights Tenant Union (CHTU) and thankfully blocked and rerouted by police, which explicitly aimed to “flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here.”
These protests are not isolated events. They are part of a larger campaign to push Jews out of public life, especially on college campuses.
In the ten months since Oct. 7, the Anti-Defamation League has tracked over 100 incidents targeting Hillel, the center of Jewish student life at hundreds of American universities. These range from vandalism and disruptions of events to direct calls to expel the organization from campus.
At UC Santa Cruz, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) demanded the university “cut ties with all Zionist institutions — including Hillel.” At Drexel, the Drexel Palestine Coalition (DPC) called Hillel a “global Zionist campus organization” and demanded its removal. Students at Baruch College shouted “no Zionists here” and “Baruch Hillel, go to hell” while accusing the organization of murdering children and supporting fascism. At UNC Chapel Hill, students cheered a speaker’s call for “No more Hillel,” and at Columbia, students protested outside the Kraft Center while chanting for the university to sever all ties with Hillel.
This campaign to expel Hillel should more aptly be renamed as an attempt to expel Jews from college campuses. As Miriam Elman, the executive director of the Academic Engagement Network, rightly said, it is “an intolerable attack on organized Jewish campus life.”
And now, what began on college campuses is spilling out into the streets of New York.
On the Sunday after the Crown Heights protest, the Bronx Palestine Solidarity Committee, an affiliate group of WOL, posted on Instagram urging Brooklyn residents of “Caribbean descent” to, once again, “rise up against” what it described as the “racist Zionist Chabad-Lubavitch.”
“Black people in Brooklyn are violently exploited via rents to then feed their genocidal land grabs in Palestine,” they wrote. “What would happen if Caribbean Brooklyn … tore down these f***ing monsters?”
In a follow-up Instagram story posted Monday, the group dismissed criticism of its violent rhetoric, writing, “Y’all won’t wield landlord power over Black and Caribbean Brooklyn to fund Palestinian genocide forever” and warning that it was “only a matter of time.”
Crown Heights Bites Back (CHBB) and other radical groups have also since announced a meeting to prepare for future demonstrations, criticizing protest organizers for their lack of preparedness and urging protesters to train in both “defensive and offensive tactics.”
“Black and brown Crown Heights is sick and tired of decades of white / Jewish supremacist landlords, pigs, Shomrim, racist ambulance, the killings, the evictions, being treated as an enemy in our own neighborhoods, our elders being assaulted by Chabad, and having to fight day in and day out to live and work in the areas we grew up,” CHBB wrote on Instagram.
The echoes of history are hard to ignore. In 1991, Crown Heights became the site of the worst antisemitic race riot in American history after a Hasidic driver in the motorcade of the Lubavitcher Rebbe accidentally ran a red light and struck two Black children, killing seven-year-old Gavin Cato. Fueled by long-standing tensions between the Black and Jewish communities and false rumors that Jewish medics refused to treat the victims, mobs took to the streets. Jewish homes and stores were vandalized, police cars were torched and 29-year-old Yankel Rosenbaum, an Australian Orthodox Jewish student, was stabbed to death. Rioters chanted “Heil Hitler” and “Death to the Jews.” It took three days and over 100 arrests before police finally put a stop to the violence.
Now, more than three decades later, Jews are once again being told they don’t belong — on campus or in their own neighborhoods. The vitriol stirred by this new wave of student “activism” has reopened wounds that never fully healed. The Jewish community in Crown Heights was deliberately targeted, and if the extremist groups behind these protests have their way, they will be again.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, anti-Israel protests have become commonplace across New York. According to New York Police Department (NYPD) data, there have been approximately 2,400 such demonstrations since the war began, with 400 in the past four months alone. An estimated 29,500 people have attended those protests since Jan. 1, according to the data.
The videos posted from Thursday night do not reflect the behavior of most Jewish counter-protesters. By and large, when Jews have gathered at such demonstrations to counteract the presence of anti-Israel protesters, they have done so peacefully. The individuals who harassed and assaulted that woman that night were an exception and should be held accountable.
But what stands out most to me is that in 2025, a group of people marched into a Jewish neighborhood to declare that its residents were not welcome. That some Jews reacted badly should not be the only story making headlines.
The author of this article is a fellow at the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis (CAMERA).
Photo Caption: Jews and protesters clash outside 770 Eastern Parkway on April 25
Photo Credit: Anonymous
