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.”