Efforts to sell ‘Anglo neighborhoods in Israel’ at LA synagogue erupt in protests

Efforts to market homes in Israel and stolen land in West Bank to Jewish Americans are continuing to spark protests across North America, with the latest angry confrontations happening outside a synagogue in one of Los Angeles’s most prominent Jewish neighborhoods.

The volatile protest and counter-protest outside a real estate event at the Adas Torah synagogue on Sunday prompted denunciations from Democratic politicians, including Joe Biden, who said protests targeting a house of worship were antisemitic and unacceptable.

The Los Angeles demonstration was the latest in a series of heated demonstrations outside similar Israeli real estate events held at synagogues across North America this year, including in Toronto, Canada; New Jersey; Baltimore, Maryland; and North Hollywood.

Related: Despite Covid surge, Los Angeles mayor considers mask ban at protests

Pro-Palestinian protesters have accused some of the companies involved in these events of trying to sell stolen land in the West Bank, and questioned the legality of the marketing efforts.

One of the real estate companies named in an advertisement for the Los Angeles event, My Home in Israel, has listed high-end properties for sale in West Bank settlements on its website, including boutique apartments in Ariel and luxury villas in Efrat. Israel’s settlements in the West Bank are widely considered illegal under international law. The US recently restored its position that they are “inconsistent” with international law.

Previous US events involving My Home in Israel have prompted calls for law enforcement investigations from Palestinian American and pro-Palestine groups, and denunciations from some local Jewish residents.

The chaotic demonstration outside a synagogue was quickly condemned by national and state leaders, with Biden, California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and local Democratic officials denouncing it an example of “abhorrent” antisemitism.

“I’m appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles. Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangerous, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American,” Biden tweeted.

“There is no excuse for targeting a house of worship,” Newsom tweeted.

Video footage from the protest, which began around noon on Sunday, showed hours of furious and sometimes violent confrontations, first in front of the synagogue, and later elsewhere in the neighborhood. Some local news outlets reported they had seen video footage showing pro-Palestine protesters blocking the entrance to the synagogue, and Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, the founder of a Beverly Hills community center, told the Los Angeles Times that protesters had blocked some visitors from going inside, and that the screaming outside had disturbed afternoon prayers.

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 then 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.

A third pro-Palestinian protester in their mid-20s said the lack of police response to these assaults reminded them of the late-night attack in April on the Gaza solidarity student encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, where young pro-Palestinian activists were assaulted for hours by counter-protesters while law enforcement officers stood by. But in some ways, the protester said, Sunday’s violence was more disturbing, because it happened in broad daylight.

The three pro-Palestine protesters, all Los Angeles residents, said they did not want their names published because of concerns that they might be harassed or violently targeted.

The day of chaotic street violence in Los Angeles’ Pico-Roberston neighborhood, home to many synagogues and Jewish schools, struck a nerve with many Jewish Americans, fueling ongoing concerns about antisemitism and the violent targeting of synagogues and other Jewish community centers.

“The events of yesterday have cast a shadow of fear not just in this community or in our city, but regionally and nationally,” Los Angeles’ mayor, Karen Bass, said at a press conference with local Jewish leaders on Monday. Bass said she had directed the police department to provide extra patrols, and said city officials were working to expedite public funding for additional security measures for religious buildings. The interim Los Angeles police chief, Dominic Choi, pledged to work more closely with Jewish public safety groups in the future.

“What we saw yesterday and are witnessing time and again across the nation are protests that devolve into excuses to target and harm Jews,” the Jewish Federation Los Angeles said in a statement on Monday, condemning the “abhorrent violence in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles, the most densely populated Jewish area on the west coast.”

Code Pink, one of the advocacy groups that had encouraged supporters to demonstrate against the Los Angeles real estate event, said that Biden and other Democratic leaders had “misrepresented this protest as an antisemitic attack on worshippers.

“The protest was solely focused on the illegal sale of Palestinian land. We respect religious practices and make sure our actions are directed toward real estate activities, not against worshippers,” the group said in a statement, criticizing what they called a lack of police intervention as “Zionists attacked peace activists and stole their phones”.

“The demonstration in front of the Adas Torah synagogue over the weekend was in response to the blatant violations of both international law and human rights from agencies that seek to make a profit selling brutally stolen Palestinian land,” the executive director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Hussam Ayloush, said in a statement. “Elected officials and the mainstream media have politicized this incident as religious discrimination as opposed to a human rights issue.”

“We are horrified that members of our community would use a Jewish place of worship as a location to facilitate Israeli apartheid and the continued ethnic cleansing of Palestinians,” Jewish Voice for Peace LA said in a statement on its Instagram account.

The real estate event at Adas Torah on Sunday had been advertised in the Jewish Journal, a local community newspaper, as a chance to “come and meet representatives of housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel”.

The Jewish Journal advertisement also mentioned a previous real estate event held on Thursday at the Shaarey Zedek synagogue in North Hollywood, which drew some protesters and a police presence but did not result in any arrests, a Los Angeles police department spokesperson said.

Rabbi Dovid Revah of the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to requests for comment. He told the New York Times that the event was promoting “properties in very established, legal communities”, and said the intensity of the protest showed him “it wasn’t just about Gaza, it was having Jews in Israel altogether”.

Other Jewish leaders across the US have made similar arguments in the wake of synagogue real estate protests.

“This is just a facade and a front for them to bring this antisemitic rhetoric and behavior to a synagogue, and that’s completely unacceptable,” Isaac Schleifer, a Baltimore city council member, said after a demonstration there in April, the Baltimore Jewish Times reported.

My Home in Israel did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the protests its event had generated and on its real estate offerings in the West Bank. The company’s website is currently unavailable, and a person who answered a company phone number declined to give their name.

The Los Angeles police department said in a statement on Monday that there “were several physical altercations between the two groups protesting”, and that it had received two reports of battery that were under investigation. Police arrested one individual on Sunday “for having [a] spiked post at a protest”, the department said.

Activists from pro-Palestine groups in Los Angeles held a press conference outside city hall on Tuesday afternoon to criticize the response from law enforcement and local Democratic officials, and to pledge they would not be deterred from further protests.

“We will continue to challenge the sale of stolen Palestinian land in North American cities, no matter where these events take place,” a representative of the Palestinian Youth Movement said.