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Anti-Israel group plans to protest at two events in NYC

Nefesh B’Nefesh told JNS it is working with law enforcement to protect participants.

Park East Synagogue
Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Oct. 31, 2021. Credit: ajay_suresh/Flickr via Wikimedia Commons.

PAL-Awda, the anti-Israel group that led a protest in November outside Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, announced a new protest in Manhattan on Jan. 7 against Nefesh B’Nefesh and on Jan. 8 against CapitIL, a Jerusalem-based real estate agency, in Queens, N.Y.

“Nefesh B’Nfesh settler recruitment fair on Wednesday at 7 p.m. in Manhattan and illegal Stolen Palestinian Land sale on Thursday at 6:30 in Queens,” the group wrote.

PAL-Awda NY/NJ, the New York/New Jersey chapter of the Palestine Right to Return Coalition, said it will be protesting “the illegal settlement of Palestinian land,” citing NBN’s recruitment of “over 80,000 settlers” since 2003.

“It is our duty to confront the pipeline of settlement and Zionist colonial expansion that is taking place in our own neighborhoods,” PAL-Awda stated, calling for protesters to “bring flags, keffiyehs and noisemakers” to a location in the city that it will announce to followers on Telegram.

A spokesperson for Nefesh B’Nefesh told JNS that the organization “remains committed to providing a secure, supportive and welcoming environment for participants of our various programming, and will continue to prioritize their safety and well-being at all of our events.”

The Jewish group added that it is “working with all the relevant law-enforcement agencies to ensure that full protection is offered to all our participants as well as staff members.”

PAL-Awda called the upcoming Jan. 8 event an “illegal event, explicitly advertising the establishment of an ‘Anglo community,’ Ma’ale Adumim, a West Bank settlement deemed illegal under international law. We will not be silent in the face of this blatant land theft and dispossession.”

The group previously claimed that CapitIL canceled a real estate fair in response to the protest outside Park East Synagogue.

Jessica Russak-Hoffman is a reporter for JNS in Seattle.
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