No, the L.A. synagogue protest wasn't a 'pogrom'

"And Jesus went into the temple of God, and cast out all them that sold and bought in the temple, and overthrew the tables of the money changers, and…said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves…make not my Father's house a house of merchandise.”— Matthew 21:12–13, John 2:15–16, King James Version

President Joe Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris, California Governor Gavin Newsom, Congressman Ted Lieu, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass, California senate candidate Steve Garvey, and politicians of both parties are condemning the pro-Palestinian activists who protested at the Adas Torah Synagogue Sunday. 

Jewish, Israeli, and conservative leaders, including Amanda Berman, founder of the American Jewish group Zioness, Israeli envoy Michal Cotler-Wunsh, Ellie Cohanim of the Independent Women’s Forum, and others are calling the pro-Palestinian protest a “pogrom”, as have CNN’s Van Jones, the New York Post’s Editorial Board, the Free Press and others.

California Governor Gavin Newsom says, “Such antisemitic hatred has no place in California” and "There is no excuse for targeting a house of worship.”

Except, in this particular case, there was a legitimate reason for holding a protest outside a Jewish house of worship. While many of the initial news reports barely mentioned it, the protesters outside the synagogue were not there to protest Jews, the Jewish faith, Zionism, or even Israel’s current actions in Gaza, they were there to protest the sale of land in illegally-occupied Palestinian territories to Americans. 

The target of the protest was not the synagogue, it was the controversial group My Home in Israel, which was holding a real estate marketing event at the synagogue. As Forbes notes, the group ran an advertisement in the June 21 issue of the Jewish Journal in Los Angeles offering for sale “housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel.” 

The Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations explains that the synagogue event promoted “racially segregated settlements, where only Jewish people are allowed to live, on illegally-occupied Palestinian land.” 

According to the Los Angeles Times,

“In late June, a real estate venture called My Home In Israel advertised homes for sale at the event at Adas Torah. An archive of the website for My Home In Israel showed properties listed for as much as $4.1 million in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and in the West Bank settlements of Ariel and Efrat…”

Journalist Brooke Anderson wrote that a “review of the website My Home In Israel shows multiple properties advertised in parts of the West Bank.” The Jewish publication The Forward says that as of June 24 the company’s website lists a property in Efrat, an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

According to a flier cited by the Times of Israel, the company also lists properties in the West Bank settlements Efrat, Neve Daniel and Ma'ale Adumim.

Writing in Curbed, a real estate site published by NY Magazine, Nevin Kallepalli explains that My Home in Israel “showcase[d] available properties in both Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies: multiple units in a building near Givat HaMatos in East Jerusalem, townhouses in near Ari’el University in the heart of the West Bank, and a five-bedroom villa with a pool in the luxury enclave of Efrat south of Bethlehem.” Bethlehem is in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

Kallepalli also notes that “some of their listings are in neighborhoods available exclusively to Jews (unlike the U.S., restrictive covenants are legal in Israel).” Such covenants in the United States were often used to exclude blacks from living in certain areas.

Julian Shapiro, who runs a similarly-named real estate company called Home In Israel, says his company does not sell real estate in the West Bank. He explains, "We would never sell a property in the West Bank. We don't think it's the right thing to do."

At the Adas Torah Synagogue protest, one of the Jewish pro-Palestinian demonstrators held up a sign saying “Israeli Jew against land theft”. The Instagram announcement of the protest stated “Our land is not for sale” and called on demonstrators to “Stand against settler expansion at Sunday’s real estate event.”

According to United Nations Security Council Resolution 446, passed in 1979 and reaffirmed in 2016, the UN “determines that the policy and practices of Israel in establishing settlements in the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967 have no legal validity.” Most countries have taken this position, and even the United States’ official position is that the Israeli West Bank settlements–the main issue in the protest–are “inconsistent” with international law. 

Nonetheless, according to a 2023 study commissioned by the UN, “the first six months of 2023 saw Israel advance record rates of settlement housing units…a total of almost 30,000 proposed new housing units in the Israeli settlements in occupied Palestine.”

In 1967 Israel seized the West Bank from Jordan in the Six Day War. Today there are 500,000 Israelis and 2.7 million Palestinians living there. In March, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said, "Settler violence and settlement-related violations have reached shocking new levels, and risk eliminating any practical possibility of establishing a viable Palestinian state.”

Many Israeli organizations and individuals, including The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories (B’Tselem), condemn both the occupation and settlements as illegal and violative of Palestinians human rights.

Israel contests this view, but whether one agrees with the UN characterization of Israeli actions or not, the pro-Palestinian protesters had ample reason to believe they were acting in good faith in protesting the sales event held at Adas Torah.

Biden, Newsom, and others have also condemned the protests as being held against a Jewish “house of worship” and/or Jewish “congregants.” But Sunday is not the Jewish day of worship–the Jewish Shabbat runs from sunset on Friday to nightfall on Saturday. Because Adas Torah is an Orthodox synagogue, it does conduct services every day, but Sunday’s demonstrators were not there to interfere with Jewish religious services, they were to protest a sales event.

While it was inappropriate for Adas Torah to host such an event, this does not mean that protesters’ legitimate grievances can't at times spill over into inaccurate, overblown, or offensive rhetoric, or even violence. But this goes both ways–the low-level but regrettable violence at the protest were clashes between protesters, not anti-Semitic attacks. 

According to The Forward, numerous videos “show pro-Israel protesters throwing punches, spraying mace, shouting Islamophobic slurs and, in one case, hurling an egg in the face of someone on the other side.”

The Guardian explains:

“Protesters on both sides of the conflict described an out-of-control situation where people were targeted with bear spray and scuffling in the streets, and criticized police for failing to stop the violence. Pro-Palestinian demonstrators shared video of pro-Israel counter-protesters yelling racial slurs, and said that the counter-protesters had punched them, kicked them, chased them, ripped hijabs from the heads of Muslim women, made rape threats and followed some demonstrators back to their cars in an attempt to photograph their license plates. A pro-Palestine protester who lives in the area said the intensity of the harassment and violence from the pro-Israel counter-protesters was frightening, with ‘people who came up to me screaming, telling me to get out of their neighborhood.’

“Another pro-Palestine protester, a military veteran in his late 30s, blamed the Los Angeles police department for failing to separate the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters outside the synagogue, as officers typically do at demonstrations. Instead, he said, members of both groups were allowed to mix freely together as police formed a line and tried to push all of the demonstrators away from the synagogue, escalating the conflict between the groups. That demonstrator said he was pepper-sprayed twice and later forced to go to the emergency room after he was hit in the face with a rock, knocking out two of his teeth.

“Sean Beckner-Carmitchel, a Los Angeles journalist who specializes in protest coverage, captured footage of pro-Palestinian protesters ‘pleading with officers for help’ as they were ‘being shoved and hit’ by pro-Israel demonstrators with the officers standing by.

“Several journalists covering the protest were also assaulted, Adam Rose, the secretary of the Los Angeles Press Club, tweeted on Monday. Among them was Beckner-Carmitchel, who said he filed a police report after being assaulted by pro-Israel demonstrators. A reporter for CalMatters said that one pro-Israel protester knocked his phone out of his hand as he tried to film, and later another demonstrator told him ‘you shouldn’t be here’ and snatched away his phone.”

In Protesters on both sides criticize LAPD response to violent demonstration outside synagogue, the Los Angeles Times extensively interviewed people who were at the synagogue protest on various sides, and heard conflicting accounts of the event. A doctor who was at the demonstration to treat the injured told the Times that when he arrived at the synagogue he found “protesters gathered near the entrance. Within 20 minutes, he said, LAPD officers had formed two lines — one on the east side of the block and another on the west, cutting off access to where protesters had parked their cars, effectively ‘sandwiching’ the pro-Palestinian supporters between counterprotesters and police…He said he treated at least 11 protesters during the violence that ensued.”

The doctor explained he had treated both protesters and counterprotesters for injuries, including one “hit on the cheekbone by a [pro-Isreal] counterprotester” and another was pro-Palestinian protester who “was pushed to the ground and beaten on his back with wooden sticks.”

He says “80 to 100 protesters tried to leave around 1:30 or 2 p.m., but because they were blocked by the police line, they had to use side streets through the neighborhood. As they tried to make their exit, the medic said, a group of Israel supporters confronted them, sometimes getting into violent skirmishes.”

The doctor says at that point a pro-Israel counterprotester shouted, “We have the bullets, you have the blood.” 

According to TRT World, “Pro-Israeli counter-protesters were filmed attacking the crowd and violently pushing protesters.”

Numerous media outlets have said that there was one arrest made at the protest, of a demonstrator arrested for carrying a “spiked post.” What most outlets don’t say is that it was a pro-Israel demonstrator who was arrested for carrying it.

In a widely-circulated post, British-Iranian Jewish journalist Nioh Berg claimed, “They're beating up Jewish women in LA in broad daylight now.” 

Tech business writer Hugh Taylor, posting a clip of this incident, writes, “An antisemitic pro Palestinian mob showed up outside the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles and began beating up Jews. This is a modern-day pogrom.”

The “Jew Hate Database” (jewhatedb) posted a short video clip, claiming “Pro-Jihad mob brutally assaults Jewish woman in Los Angeles. The woman is pinned to the ground by the Jihadi mob, leaving her bloodied after being punched multiple times.” This photo of the “Jewish woman” was widely shared.

MSN, apparently referring to the same incident, reported:

“Video of the synagogue standoff shows anti-Israel protesters and counterprotesters brawling. At one point, a woman could be seen on the ground curled up in a fetal position as a mob kicks her while she's down.”

Actually, the pro-Israel counterprotestor referenced is a muscular young Jewish man named Naftoli Sherman, who had a pro-Palestinian protester in a headlock and was bloodied. 

Kate Burns, an independent journalist who was at the rally, explains:

“[T]his is not a Jewish woman, it's a guy with long hair…This guy was trying to start fights all day.” 

Documentarian Vishal Pratap Singh says Sherman was “starting fights” at the rally, and The Forward wrote, “Multiple people also said online that the man with the bloody nose had been instigating.”

Sherman was interviewed by a sympathetic media and provided a very different account of events and his role in them.

Many other pro-Israel sources have been misleading. For example, in an article about the Thursday evening protest against a similar real estate event in Valley Village, Jewish Breaking News reported: 

“Harrowing footage captured the provocateurs surrounding the Shaarey Zedek Congregation in Valley Village, bombarding it with chants of “Free Free Palestine!” and “Israel, Israel what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?”

During the Vietnam War, those protesting against President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s brutal bombing of North Vietnam chanted “LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?” The Palestinian protesters were simply referencing the Palestinian children who have been injured or killed by the Israeli bombing in Gaza. 

According to the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, nearly 15,000 children in Gaza have been killed since the Gaza war began in October. UNICEF reports that at least 1,000 children have had one or both legs amputated.

Jewish Breaking News’ pearl-clutching aside, in context, both “Free Free Palestine!” and “Israel, Israel what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?” are reasonable, yet Jewish Breaking News portrays it ominously, as if Jews are being attacked by Palestinians.

David Israel, writing in the independent weekly Jewish newspaper Jewish Press, grievously distorts CAIR-LA’s statement on the Adas Torah clash. 

CAIR-LA wrote:

“The real estate events, which were organized by Israel-based agency My Home in Israel, a firm that reportedly markets real estate in Israel and the illegally occupied West Bank, took place over the weekend at the Shaarey Zedek Congregation in Valley Village and the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles.”

Israel notes that “a glance at [My Home in Israel’s] page describing their recent projects reveals they are all inside ‘Israel proper’.” It might have occurred to Israel that, in the face of this controversy, the real estate organization probably removed listings in Palestinian territories from their website, particularly since numerous reports have stated that they are selling properties in Palestinian territories. Instead, he writes:

“But as far as CAIR-LA is concerned, it’s all ‘land located in the illegally-occupied Palestinian territories.’ These are not people who seek a two-state solution, they are after a one-state solution with all the Jews in the deep sea” (italics added).

CAIR-LA never said “all land” or anything of the sort, yet Israel wants us to believe CAIR-LA’s statement means they want “all the Jews in the deep sea.”

The reaction from both politicians, Jewish leaders, the media, and on social media follows a familiar pattern–pro-Palestinian protesters are libeled as anti-Semites, and their worst moments are falsely portrayed as being indicative of the whole movement. Palestinians' very legitimate grievances are dismissed.

Both of my grandfathers escaped the pogroms in Tsarist Russia in the early 1900s–massacres perpetrated by reactionary Black Hundreds thugs and egged on by “Bloody Nicholas”, Tsar Nicholas II. At the age of 80, my father's father still spoke of being a small child hiding under a kitchen table as the Black Hundreds rampaged through the Jewish section of town, beating and killing Jews and burning down homes.

That today prominent people, institutions, and organizations can proffer an analogy between these horrendous crimes and Sunday's legitimate protest demonstrates how unreasonable and overblown the American reaction to pro-Palestinian protests has become.

This is an extended version of a column which originally appeared in Salon.com (6/29/24).