CNN

NYPD investigating harassment of woman by pro-Israel mob

By CNN Newsource

Published April 29, 2025 2:02 am

By Sharif Paget, CNN

(CNN) — New York police are investigating the attack of a Brooklyn woman harassed last week by a pro-Israeli group of men in an encounter captured on multiple videos, which has incited demonstrations and condemnation from religious groups.

The incident last Thursday occurred after pro-Palestinian activists had reportedly gathered to demonstrate against the visit of Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir at the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where they were met with Orthodox Jewish counter-protesters, according to the Associated Press.

In one video posted online, a woman with a blue and white scarf covering part of her face is seen walking away from a crowd of what appears to be mostly Orthodox Jewish men, as they repeatedly chant in her direction, call her racial slurs and hurl at least one object towards her.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Sunday the NY Police Department was investigating a series of incidents at the protests, and said initial reports indicated a “woman was surrounded and subjected to vile threatening by counter-protestors.”

On Monday, a law enforcement official confirmed to CNN that NYPD is investigating the incident involving the woman. Police told CNN earlier that some people were taken into custody and one person had been arrested at the protests, but did not specify if it was related to the incident involving the woman.

The woman, who did not want to be named due to security concerns, told CNN that she was initially reluctant to file a police report on the incident. But on Monday, she released a statement “demanding an immediate hate crimes investigation and action from city and state officials.”

The protest against Ben Gvir, a far-right Israeli politician, during his visit to the headquarters of the New York-based Hasidic Jewish community is one of several held in recent days during his US tour and comes at a time of renewed protests on college campuses over Israel’s handling of its war in Gaza.

Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad, said Ben Gvir was invited by some members of the community, but that the event was not officially sanctioned or organized by the synagogue’s leadership, according to the AP.

The woman seen harassed in the videos told CNN she learned about the protests after she heard helicopters circling overhead Crown Heights, where she is a resident, and went to the location.

“There were no protesters left by the time I got there. But there were just, like tons, like hundreds of Orthodox Jewish people in the street (and) on the sidewalk,” she told CNN.

“Then some people near me began filming, and I pulled a scarf up over my face because I didn’t want to be filmed by anybody,” she said, adding that putting the scarf on appeared to escalate things as a woman nearby began screaming.

“And as soon as she started screaming at me, this group of 100 men came almost immediately and encircled me,” she said. “They were threatening me, threatening to rape me. They were just shouting really disgusting, vile insults.”

The woman said police were nearby, lined up next to her, which can be seen in video she provided to CNN.

“The police did not do anything to intervene,” she said. “They literally just stared straight ahead as this was happening, just willfully ignoring the crime, the crime that was happening.”

CNN has repeatedly reached out to the NYPD for more information about what the officers at the scene witnessed, including what happened before the woman is seen being harassed in videos posted online.

The person who recorded and posted those videos told CNN that he arrived at the scene as the events were unfolding and began filming. He said he was not present as the interaction began.

In a video the woman provided to CNN supporting her account, a group of young men is seen approaching her and begin to taunt her. One of the men is heard telling police, “The fact that you guys let her in is the fact that you want violence.”

The woman can be heard responding, “I live here. I’m allowed to be here just as much as you are.”

In response, one man asks her if she is a pro-Palestinian supporter while using some derogatory language. Then, one of the men appears to use a strobe light in her face, as NYPD officers nearby do not appear to immediately intervene.

Then, the woman told CNN, a single officer came from another direction and attempted to escort her home, but a “mob of men followed.” Videos obtained by CNN show the woman leaving the area and being followed by a large group of men.

“They were yelling in Hebrew, ‘Death to Arabs,’” she told CNN. “I was terrified.”

The woman said she realized while trying to walk to safety that she did not want to lead the group of men to her home.

“I have nowhere to go, and I don’t know what to do,” she said.

A police vehicle then arrived in the street, she said: “I had to, like, run for my life, jump in the cop car, and the car sped away and took me home.”

In a statement to The New York Times, police said the officer that stepped in to escort the woman “saw her surrounded and pushed through the group to bring her to safety.”

A law enforcement official told CNN that a police officer at the scene saw her and guided her away from the unruly crowd. Someone from the crowd appeared to throw a traffic cone at her, but it didn’t appear to hit her, the official said.

The woman said she was hit by the traffic cone, which is apparent in the video shared with CNN.

The official said the officer tried to walk her home, but ultimately drove her home.

Multiple groups have denounced the incident and called for prosecution of those involved.

“We strongly condemn the violent mob of pro-Israel racists who chased and attacked a woman down a New York City street while shouting ‘Death to Arabs’ and other vile slurs … all because they thought she was an Arab-American,” Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the National Deputy Director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement.

“We call on elected officials across New York to condemn these hate actions, and we call on law enforcement to identify and prosecute those responsible for hate crimes,” he said.

A spokesperson for Chabad-Lubavitch denounced both the protesters and the counter-protesters, the AP reported.

The group condemned “crude language and violence” by what it called a “small breakaway group of young people,” Seligson, the Chabad-Lubavitch spokesperson, said in a statement, according to the AP.

“Such actions are entirely unacceptable and wholly antithetical to the Torah’s values. The fact that a possibly uninvolved bystander got pulled into the melee further underscores the point,” he said.

He also condemned “violent provocateurs” that had protested outside a synagogue, saying they did so “in order to intimidate, provoke, and instill fear.”

CNN’s Michelle Watson and Mark Morales contributed to this report.