They Came Back to the Synagogue. Again.

By GM | The Unredacted | Reporting based on original NY Post coverage by Ella Morrison and Anna Young

Tuesday night in Manhattan, about a hundred people who have never cracked a history book surrounded one of the oldest synagogues in New York City and screamed that Israel has no right to exist. They brought drums. They brought keffiyehs. They brought Palestinian flags. What they did not bring was any apparent awareness of what it means to lay siege to a Jewish house of worship in 2026 and demand that the Jewish state be erased from the map.

But sure. Very peaceful. Very normal. Nothing to see here.

The group responsible is called Pal-Awda NY/NJ, and their hobby is showing up at Park East Synagogue on East 67th Street whenever Jews gather inside for any purpose whatsoever. Real estate event? Send the mob. Immigration seminar? Send the mob. Bingo night? Probably send the mob. Last November they packed 200 people outside the same building to scream at Jews attending a Nefesh B'nefesh gathering, a group that helps American Jews move to Israel. This week they came back with the same chants, the same rage, and the same complete indifference to the fact that they are targeting a synagogue.

One NYPD officer went to the hospital with a leg injury after protesters physically shoved past police barricades into the street. Water was thrown on officers from a building along the route when the crowd later marched to Hunter College.

Zero arrests were made.

Let That Sink In

The Jewish community of New York City has been watching this pattern develop for years now, and what they are watching is a city that has decided, in practice if not in policy, that a synagogue is a legitimate protest venue. That Jewish institutions are fair game. That if you show up with enough people and enough drums and enough righteous fury about whatever cause you have attached yourself to, the police will hold the line just long enough to avoid a full riot, and then everyone will go home and nothing will happen to anyone.

Pal-Awda is not subtle about what they think. On the second anniversary of October 7th, the day Hamas murdered 1,200 people including babies, elderly Holocaust survivors, and young people at a music festival, this group posted on social media celebrating what they called the moment "the Palestinian Resistance broke the gates of the world's largest open-air prison." That is who organized Tuesday night's rally. That is who the NYPD was protecting Jewish New Yorkers from while also, somehow, letting them push officers into the hospital and walk away uncharged.

Karen Lichtbraun of Herut New York City, who helped sponsor the event inside the synagogue, was characteristically direct. "They're a bunch of brainwashed fools," she told the Post. "Israel does not occupy anything. It's the Jewish homeland. And this is all anti-Zionism, which is antisemitism, which is Jew hate." Hard to argue with the logic.

The Mayor Who Wasn't There

Zohran Mamdani, the mayor of New York City, has not said a single word about Tuesday night's attack on a Jewish institution in his city. Not a statement. Not a tweet. Not a press conference. The mayor who has an opinion about everything apparently has no opinion about a mob surrounding a synagogue and hospitalizing a police officer.

This should shock people. It does not, because everyone already knows where Mamdani stands. He is a staunch critic of Israel, a DSA member in good standing, and the kind of politician whose silence on antisemitism is so consistent it has stopped being surprising and started being policy.

Here is what makes it worse. After the November protest at Park East, City Council Speaker Julie Menin passed legislation allowing the NYPD to create buffer zones around houses of worship when protests pose a threat. The bill passed 44 to 5. The entire City Council, across party lines, looked at what was happening to synagogues in New York and said this has to stop.

Mamdani refused to sign it. He let it sit on his desk while his DSA allies howled about free speech and civil liberties, and he did absolutely nothing until the calendar ran out and the bill became law automatically on April 25 because he had stalled long enough for the clock to do what he would not.

That is the mayor of New York City in 2026. He will not sign a bill protecting synagogues from being mobbed. He has to be dragged into it by parliamentary procedure.

90 Days Is a Long Time

Under the new law, the NYPD has 90 days to develop a formal security plan. Ninety days. In a city where Pal-Awda is booking venues and printing flyers on a weekly schedule, the police department has three months to figure out whether maybe, possibly, a buffer zone around a synagogue might be warranted.

The Jewish community does not have 90 days. They are watching what happens to their institutions in real time. They are watching a group that celebrated the October 7th massacre show up at their synagogue twice in six months with impunity. They are watching an officer get hospitalized and nobody get arrested. They are watching a mayor who cannot bring himself to say the words.

There is a version of this story where New York City is a place that takes antisemitism seriously. That version of this story is not being written right now. What is being written, on Tuesday nights outside Park East Synagogue, with drums and flags and chants that a Jewish state has no right to exist, is a different story entirely.

And the mayor still has nothing to say.

Original reporting by Ella Morrison and Anna Young, New York Post, May 5, 2026.