NEW YORK — The Police Department said it was preparing for new protests in Brooklyn on Monday after a woman was verbally and physically assaulted by hundreds of pro-Israel demonstrators there last week.

The police were investigating the attack on the woman, who has not been publicly identified but who provided a statement to The New York Times. She said she had wandered onto the scene of dueling protests Thursday outside Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, where Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, was speaking.

The appearance by Ben-Gvir, a far-right politician who has espoused racist anti-Arab views and fiercely opposed a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, drew a small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators and a much larger crowd of pro-Israel counterprotesters, according to videos posted online by those in both camps.

In her statement to the Times, the woman said a large crowd of ultra-Orthodox Jewish men kicked her, threw objects at her, threatened to rape her and hurled sexist, racist and anti-Arab abuse at her. Her account is consistent with video footage of the incident that was shared widely online.

Protest Devolved Into Chaos

The protest Thursday devolved into chaos because of a potent mix of provocative factors: the presence of Ben-Gvir, who has been considered a political extremist in Israel for decades; its location on Eastern Parkway outside Chabad headquarters, a cherished site for the Hasidic Jewish community; and the attack on the female bystander.

As news of the assault spread, activists posted calls on social media for protests Monday beginning at Barclays Center, a central transit hub that is roughly 2 miles from the Chabad headquarters.

The organizers said they planned to “flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here.”

Flyers for the protest cited two other assaults that organizers said had happened at the Crown Heights protest. The police on Monday could not confirm the other incidents had occurred, but Mayor Eric Adams in a statement Sunday night said that a second woman was separated from other pro-Palestinian protesters, harassed by counterprotesters and suffered injuries.

Protests in support of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become common in New York in the wake of Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza.

According to Police Department data, there have been roughly 2,400 associated protests since the war began, with 400 held in the past four months alone. An estimated 29,500 people have attended those protests since Jan. 1, according to the data.

Police Said Hundreds Surrounded Women at the Protest

At one point during the protest Thursday, hundreds of men and boys, many dressed in Hasidic attire, surrounded the woman, according to the police and videos of the episode.

In her statement to the Times, the woman said she was not involved in the protests but had been watching with neighbors and pulled a scarf over her face when people began filming. She asked that her name not be used for fear of retribution.

The woman said she was quickly encircled by an angry crowd and moved near a line of police officers for protection. The crowd began to chant “death to Arabs” in Hebrew and followed her and an officer who had begun escorting her, video shows.

Many people also shouted racist and sexist profanities at the woman as others shoved her. At least one person hurled an orange construction cone at her head before the officer was able to guide her into a police vehicle, the footage shows.

Rabbi Motti Seligson, a spokesperson for Chabad Lubavitch World, said the organization condemned “the crude language and violence” seen at the demonstration, though he attributed it to a “small breakaway group of young people.”

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

The attack was also denounced by groups critical of Israel. Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the deputy director of the national Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the organization condemned “the violent mob of pro-Israel racists who chased and attacked a woman down a New York City street.”

And Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a left-leaning activist group, said in a statement, “It is impossible to separate the mob’s hateful, violent attacks from the ideology Ben-Gvir promotes.”

Ben-Gvir spent decades on the political fringes in Israel before he rose to influence in recent years as part of the coalition government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He attracted public attention in Israel for the first time in 1995, when he appeared on television and threatened the life of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin. Several weeks later, Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist, Yigal Amir, who opposed the prime minister’s participation in the Oslo peace process.

Ben-Gvir was also barred from serving in the Israeli army because of his political views, a rare occurrence in a country where most people fulfill military service as a rite of passage.

And for many years he was well-known for keeping a portrait in his home of Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn man who killed 29 Palestinians in a 1994 massacre at a mosque in the West Bank.

His visit to the United States has been punctuated by frequent protests.

On Wednesday, hundreds of protesters rallied outside an appearance by Ben-Gvir in New Haven, Connecticut, at Shabtai, a private Jewish discussion society that is based at Yale University but not affiliated with the school.

And on Thursday, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., the longest-serving Jewish member of the House, appeared outside a restaurant in Manhattan where Ben-Gvir was speaking.

Joined by several rabbis and Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a mayoral candidate, Nadler announced that he would introduce legislation designed to impose economic sanctions on Israeli settlers who commit violence in the West Bank.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Liam Stack and Chelsia Rose Marcius/Victor J. Blue
c. 2025 The New York Times Company