‘Destroy Israel’: Rabbi of NYC shul recounts targeting by mob

The 95-year-old senior rabbi of Manhattan’s historic Park East Synagogue, which was targeted by an anti-Israel mob earlier in the week, recounted the unsettling experience in an interview on Friday with the New York Post.

“I’m a Holocaust survivor. I saw my synagogue [in Vienna] burn on Kristallnacht with the police standing by and not intervening,” Rabbi Arthur Schneier was quoted as saying.

“Thank God in the United States, the police are protecting us against the hate-mongers,” Schneier said.

Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was an event orchestrated by the Nazis on Nov. 9-10, 1938, in which more than 1,400 synagogues and prayer rooms, and Jewish businesses, homes, hospitals and schools were burned, damaged and ransacked in Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.

Although the anti-Israel activists who gathered outside the synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side on Wednesday did not employ physical violence, they used incendiary language such as “Destroy Israel” and “We need to make them scared,” calling on the “resistance” to “take another settler out,” the Post reported.

Schneier said the disturbing event should serve as a “warning not to be silent. No house of worship should be subjected to this type of demonstration.”

Schneier has led the congregation for five decades. The synagogue was established in New York in 1890. On Wednesday night, it hosted an event by Nefesh B’Nefesh, an Israel-based organization encouraging North American Jews to relocate to Israel.

Mayor Eric Adams condemned the protesters, saying “Houses of worship are where people go to heal, reflect and respect one another. Church, mosque, synagogue, it makes no difference. Screaming vile language outside any of them isn’t ‘protest’ it’s desecration. It shows how sick and warped these agitators have become.”

He added that he will pay a visit to the synagogue when he returns from his trip abroad.

The anti-Israel Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani issued a statement saying that he “discouraged” the language used at the protest, but coupled it with a criticism of the event, saying that “these sacred spaces should not be used to promote activities in violation of international law,” the Post reported.

“Pal-Awda NY/NJ,” the anti-Israel group behind the protest, doubled down on its behavior, tweeting on Friday that it “showed up to declare ‘Death to the IDF’” in response to the effort to “recruit American settlers to illegally occupy stolen Palestinian land.”

According to the Post, the group moreover legitimized the Hamas-led attacks on Oct. 7, 2023, against Israel during the second anniversary of the massacre this year.

“Two years ago today, the Palestinian Resistance broke the gates of the world’s largest open-air prison, disrupting the norm of decades of dispossession and apartheid imposed by ‘Israel,’” the report cited the group as tweeting.

Meanwhile, Schneier told the Post he was “very, very touched” by the show of support for the Jewish community from prominent officials such as N.Y. Gov. Kathy Hochul and NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch.

“I’m touched by the solidarity of good people outraged by what has taken place. And also, by the way, I’ve received calls from clergy from many denominations,” the Holocaust survivor said.