Violent anti-Israel mob protests outside Brooklyn synagogue
Pro-Palestinian protesters in Brooklyn escalated tensions by hurling antisemitic slurs and clashing with police outside a synagogue on Monday. Video shows an anti-Israel rioter shoving a Jewish girl and an Israeli flag being burned. The incident highlights concerns about growing antisemitism in New York City, drawing criticism from hosts who note similar protests occurred at Columbia University.
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Jewish New Yorkers, beware.
The same rabid anti-Israel activists who have harassed Jews at synagogues in recent weeks in violent protests, flown the flag of Hamas and Hezbollah and stomped on the Israeli flag are returning to the streets tonight at Time Square in midtown Manhattan to rage-bait Israelis and Jews attending a “Jerusalem Real Estate Expo” at Times Square.
The protest underscores how anti-Israel activist groups are continuing to escalate their pressure campaigns against pro-Israel and Jewish events across the city, despite mounting criticisms of antisemitism. Earlier this week, Jewish and Muslim leaders led a protest at Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s residence at Gracie Mansion, asking that he address the growing antisemitism in the city.
Community leaders say these protests put more pressure on Mamdani who joined anti-Israel protests many times before he ran for the mayor’s office. In college, he was a founding member of his school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which also seeks “the return” of Palestinians to modern-day Israel and a one-state solution that claims modern-day Israel for Palestinians, essentially destroying the state of Israel.
The planned confrontation unfolded at 6:30 p.m. at the New York Hilton Midtown, where anti-Israel protesters are expected to target attendees and organizers connected to the real estate event. The anti-Israel group sponsoring the protest tonight is the New York and New Jersey chapter of PAL-AWDA, a group that is seeking “the return” of Palestinians to modern-day Israel. The group advocates for completely dismantling the state of Israel, and it rejects discussions of a two-state solution, demanding Palestinian control of modern-day Israel from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea, or as they chant, “from the river to the sea.”
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Abdullah Akl, of the Muslim American Society Youth Center, speaks during a Nakba 78 protest near Washington Square Park in New York City on May 15, 2026. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)
PAL-AWDA group regularly participates in demonstrations targeting Jewish and pro-Israel gatherings across New York City, alongside activists from Within Our Lifetime and the Muslim American Society’s New York chapter, which are also expected to send members to the protest. Al-Awda activists protested outside a Queens synagogue two weeks ago and targeted another synagogue event on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Within Our Lifetime is led by its fiery co-founder, Nerdeen Kiswani, and Muslim American Society members are led by Abdullah Akl, a youth and outreach coordinator for the 501(c)(3) religious nonprofit.
These groups have worked together with the network of far-left organizations that have organized anti-Israel protests and student encampments, like the People’s Forum, the ANSWER Coalition and the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which have been funded and supported by Neville Roy Singham, a controversial American Marxist tech tycoon living in Shanghai, supporting the Chinese Communist Party. It isn’t clear if those groups will send their members, but there is usually a lot of cross-pollination.
One regular anti-Israel protest participant, Anas Shuaib, 27, told Fox News Digital: “I will be at the Hilton event to stop land theft of Palestinian land and expose Zionist control of America.”
The “Jerusalem Real Estate Expo,” scheduled from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Thursday at the Hilton, promoted the event as “the Israeli capital’s greatest real estate opportunities … all under one roof.”
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In response, the PAL-AWDA New York and New Jersey chapter quietly announced its demonstration, titled “Stop the Sale of Stolen Palestinian Land.” Fox News Digital sent requests for comment to several of the organizations participating in the real estate event but didn’t hear back, and PAL-AWDA didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Promotional material for the protest describe the expo as an “illegal land expo and settler recruitment fair” featuring the “Mayor of Jerusalem,” with the mayor’s title placed in quotation marks.
Al-Awda used imagery in its protest advertisement that critics say symbolized the elimination of the Jewish state. The graphic featured a keyhole replacing the “O” in “Stop the Sale,” alongside a full map of modern-day Israel placed inside the “O” in “Stolen,” imagery commonly used by anti-Israel activists to reject Israel’s existence as a sovereign state.
The renewed demonstrations are likely to intensify scrutiny on Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who already faced criticism Tuesday night as Jewish and Muslim protesters gathered outside Gracie Mansion to protest what they described as rising antisemitism and the city’s handling of anti-Israel activism.
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Fox News Digital’s Kyle Schmidbauer contributed to this report.