A small group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators, shadowed by a heavy police presence, rallied in Brooklyn on Monday night to condemn the actions of a crowd of pro-Israel counterprotesters who verbally and physically assaulted a woman there last week.
After gathering at Barclays Center, the pro-Palestinian group, which numbered in the dozens, set out for the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the focal point of dueling protests on Thursday where the woman was attacked.
The police filled the streets, with some officers blocking off cross streets by standing in a line while holding bicycles. When the crowd began to drift into the street, a police recording directed protesters to get back on the sidewalk or face arrest.
One man was arrested near the Central Library on Grand Army Plaza shortly before 9 p.m. The protest was otherwise peaceful, and the police kept the group from reaching its intended destination.
Fliers for the protest cited two other assaults that organizers said had happened at the Crown Heights protest. Mayor Eric Adams said on Sunday night said that a second woman had been separated from other pro-Palestinian protesters and harassed by counterprotesters. She was injured in the encounter, Mr. Adams said.
Erin Williams, 37, was among those in the crowd. Ms. Williams, who lives in Crown Heights, said the attacks on the two women had motivated her to join the protest.
“It’s not that it takes happening in my neighborhood to care, but this felt like the final straw,” she said. “When I see a mob of 100 men threatening to rape a woman, I’m done defending Israel. I’m out in the streets.”
The police have said they are investigating the attack on the first woman. That woman, who has not been publicly identified but who provided a statement to The New York Times, said the assault occurred after she wandered onto the scene of the protests, which had been touched off by an appearance at the Lubavitch headquarters by a far-right Israeli official.
The official, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s national security minister, has espoused racist anti-Arab views and fiercely opposed a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip. His speech on Thursday 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.
The protest on Thursday devolved into chaos because of a potent mix of provocative factors: the presence of Mr. 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 the protests on Monday.
The organizers said they planned to “flood the streets of Crown Heights to inform them Zionism is not welcome here.”
Protests in support of both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have become common in New York in the wake of Hamas’s 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 last four months alone. An estimated 29,500 people have attended those protests since Jan. 1, according to the data.
At one point during the protest on 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 spokesman 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,” Mr. Seligson said in a statement. “The fact that a possibly uninvolved bystander got pulled into the melee further underscores the point.”
Scott Richman, the Anti-Defamation League’s regional director for New York and New Jersey, echoed that sentiment, describing the events as “totally unacceptable and appalling.”
“No one should be singled out for harassment or violence because of their perceived views,” he added, “nor should Jews meeting in a synagogue be shouted down with antisemitic slurs or accusations of genocide.”
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.”
Mr. 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, Mr. Rabin was assassinated by a right-wing extremist, Yigal Amir, who opposed the prime minister’s participation in the Oslo peace process.
Mr. 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 Mr. Ben-Gvir in New Haven, Conn., at Shabtai, a private Jewish discussion society that is based at Yale University but not affiliated with the school.
And on Thursday, Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the longest-serving Jewish member of the House, appeared outside a restaurant in Manhattan where Mr. Ben-Gvir was speaking.
Joined by several rabbis and Brad Lander, the city comptroller and a mayoral candidate, Mr. Nadler announced that he would introduce legislation designed to impose economic sanctions on Israeli settlers who commit violence in the West Bank.
Another protest against Mr. Ben-Gvir was held Sunday in front of the Edmond J. Safra Synagogue in Gravesend, Brooklyn, according to the police and video footage.
That synagogue is across the street from Congregation Shaare Zion, where Mr. Ben-Gvir had been expected to speak, according to members of both synagogues. His talk, which was scheduled for around 9:30 a.m., was canceled, the members said.
Cassidy Jensen and Molly Longman contributed reporting.