u/TrackerOneA

>Israel is preparing legal action against The New York Times after the newspaper published an article describing the rapes of Palestinian prisoners in its custody.

>The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) announced its decision to sue on X on Thursday, after the paper doubled down in its defence of the report.

>"Nicholas Kristof’s deeply reported piece of opinion journalism starts with a proposition to readers: ‘Whatever our views of the Middle East conflict, we should be able to unite in condemning rape,'" a spokesperson for The New York Times said.

>Kristof's story contained harrowing testimonies of the rape of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers, which included accounts of prisoners being mounted by dogs, penetrated by carrots, and rectums torn by batons. 

>Israeli influencers and politicians responded to the accounts by claiming that the New York Times was perpetuating a blood libel – or an antisemitic canard, used to justify the slaughter of Jews in Europe during the medieval and early modern era.

>Israel's MFA wrote: "Following the publication by Nicholas Kristof in The New York Times of one of the most hideous and distorted lies ever published against the State of Israel in the modern press, which also received the backing of the newspaper, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar have instructed the initiation of a defamation lawsuit against The New York Times."

>Middle East Eye revealed similar testimonies to Kristof's last month, from a report titled “Sexual violence and forcible transfer in the West Bank: How the exploitation of gender dynamics drives displacement” by the West Bank Protection Consortium.

>The group documented at least 16 cases involving sexual crimes perpetrated by Israeli settlers and soldiers.

I was at the protest, and ill try to give my account of what happened before, during, and after it because many people are going off of hearsay and reading articles or watching highly edited clips to solidify the narrative they follow.

On Monday, May 11th, the Synagogue Young Israel of Midwood held an internationally-illegal land sale that included the sale of stolen Palestinian land in the West Bank, with the intent on selling it to settlers who would go and displace Palestinian families in the West Bank. Aside from the clear moral quandaries of selling stolen land, this sale was illegal under international law ( Under Article 49 of the Geneva Convention, settlements have been determined by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2004 to be serious breaches of international law, constituting war crimes) and illegal based on NYC and American laws (The Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibit discrimination in housing sales based on several protected characteristics, including religion, ethnicity, and national origin. U.S. real estate agencies are bound by both their state and federal laws to ensure that the sale of property is open to all prospective buyers) This is the context behind the land sale that was being protested, and the context is completely absent in much of the pro-Israeli side of framing this protest as being "against jews" or "antisemetic".

Anyways, I got to the protest at 5:15, about an hour and 15 before the Palestinian contigent was supposed to arrive. There were small amounts of barriers up around Young Israel of Midwood and about 30 or 40 police officers. They immediately began blocking off the entire block of Ocean and Ave L. There was a small pro-Israel group there already, and they soon formed a larger group across the street from where the land sale was taking place.

I was moved to the press area, which was stationed next to the pro-Israeli group. I was filming the event, and one of the members of the pro-Israeli side recognized me. I am openly pro-Palestinian and have covered other land sales in NYC, and was quickly surrounded by around 20 or so zionists, jeering and yelling at me. I was pulled into the police barrier by the NYPD and moved to a different area.

After a while, the anti-zionist Hasidic group Neturei Karta arrived with a few pro-Palestinian protesters around 6:15 or so. Immediately, the pro-Israel side began yelling insults, slurs, and horrible hate speech at the members of Neturei Karta. Things like "Kapo" and calling them "not jews" and one protester even began calling them "rats" which is a known antisemetic trope. This went on for 5 or so minutes as the pro-Palestine side began their chants. Every few minutes, another pro-Israeli protester would walk by Neturei Karta and yell an obscenity or slur at them, and multiple times the police had to step in to defend the peaceful Neturei Karta group.

Another section of the pro Palestinian protest group was held at Ocean and Ave M by NYPD. I headed over there, and it was a lot more contentious. As I walked over, i had multiple people walk by me and the people i was walking with (who were wearing keffiyehs) and had slurs and threats leveled against us. The Ave M group was surrounded by NYPD and the zionist group, with multiple places of the two protesting groups clashing, yelling at each other woth NYPD standing in between. A few times, both groups instigated small scuffles.

A zionist threw eggs at the pro-palestine side, and one hit a cop, which caused the NYPD to arrest the two people who threw them. A huge group of Zionists followed the police to their car, yelling and trying to get their two people de-arrested. The pro-Palestine side got ready to march to meet with the Neturei Karta group, which had been sectioned off on Ocean and unable to march to them directly. So the pro-Palestine side began marching East down Ave M towards E 19th or 18th. We marched north on either 18th or 19th, with a large group of pro-Israel supporters running alongside the march, instigating fights, yelling obscenities, spitting on the hasidic group marching with us, and antagonizing the march as it moved peacefully through the surround neighborhood (again, only done because the NYPD wouldnt let us meet with our other group safely)

During the march, the NYPD was completely absent, and multiple fights broke out, instigated (from what I could tell) primarily by the pro-Israel side. There were chants during the march, matched equally by "death to arabs" chanted in hebrew, along with "USA" and "Am Yisrael Chai".

We made it to the other group at Ave L after marching a large circle around the block to reunite. The muslim members of the march prayed, and the members of Neturei Karta put up their banners to shield them from the pro-Israeli group that had surrounded the pro-Palestine group on all 3 sides (the final side being the NYPD barrier). It was around this time I noticed a lone marcher flying a Hezbollah flag. Compared to the various members of the pro-Israel side wearing IDF uniforms and shirts, multiple Jewish Defense League Shirts, and tons of Israeli flags, the media and cycle seemed to have locked onto the lone Hezbollah flag flown by a single member of the pro-Palestine group.

After a while, and a few small scuffles on both sides, the pro-Palestine side began marching towards the Ave H stop on the Q to disperse the protest (it was around 9pm at this time) in order to keep the pro-Palestinian protesters safe, as other protests ended with dispersals that led to members of the pro-Palestine side being targeted, harrassed, and attacked by large groups of Zionist antagonizers (Eastern Parkway Protest April 28, 2025).

Along this march, there were multiple times where zionists targeted pro-Palestinian protesters that fell behind the march, being berated and harassed. Multiple pro-Israeli agitators used high powered flashlights and flashing devices on pro-Palestinian protesters, shining them directly into people's eyes and cameras. Tons of hateful slurs, rhetoric, and violent threats were hurled at the pro-Palestinian march all the way to the train stop. As the protest ended, multiple zionists using noisemakers played loud sirens and noises against the pro-Palestine side as they were dispersing.

All throughout the protest, the pro-Israeli side was the main agitator, attacking and provoking, making verbal threats, spitting, and grabbing flags of the pro-Palestinian side. The footage edited to show violence against the pro-Israeli side was done deliberately to set up a narrative of violent pro-Palestine protesters attacking and invading a jewish neighborhood. What wasnt shown was the many jewish protesters on the Palestinian side being harassed, called Kapos and rats, and attacked alongside the other Palestinian protesters. This was a one-sided peaceful protest, where the Palestinian side was restrained, attacked, and threatened, while the pro-Israeli group chased, harassed and threw slurs and insults the entire evening.

That was my recollection of the day, and the way that the media and pro-israeli groups have framed it is completely devoid of the reality of being there. This was an illegal land sale, hosted at a Synagogue BECAUSE of the optics of protesting in front of a Synagogue. Its a defensive mechanism, and makes any pushback against this illegal sale of land look antisemetic by default. It never takes into account the countless Jewish people on the side of Palestine protesting against these real estate events.

I hope my account can help dispell some of the horrible misinformation floating around the entire event. If anyone wants proof of anything Ive mentioned here, I can link video showing everything I mentioned. I hope these horrific land sales end, and if a Synagogue does not want to be protested, it should simply not host an illegal land sale of Palestinian land in real estate events.