On Sunday, June 23, 2024 an Israeli real estate firm called My Home in Israel (“housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel”) staged a real estate event inside a synagogue, Congregation Adas Torah, in Los Angeles together with another Israeli company called International Marketing & Promotions (“We sell things to Jews. We sell Israel to the world.”). This unseemly event not only dragged a synagogue into the muck but broke U.S. civil rights and international human rights laws in the process. Yet protests against the event were quickly spun as quite literally a “pogrom” against Jews — and by some of America’s most recognizable “liberal” Democrats.
The protest was organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement and was joined by a number of pro-Palestinian groups on the Left, including CODEPink. As an article in the Forward reported, “Hundreds of counter-protesters — toting their own flags and megaphones — were present when it began at 12 p.m. […] The scene recalled a fracas at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA the night of April 30 which began when a pro-Israel mob arriving after the conclusion of Passover lobbed fireworks, poles and other items at the encampment and tried to tear down its makeshift walls.”
The vehemence of the counter-protest betrays an ugly truth about Zionism. It has always used land theft and land sales to accomplish the displacement of Palestinians. Such property is illegal; international law recognizes the West Bank as Palestinian and settlements as illegal. Real estate sales like Adas Torah’s are no different from selling stereos off the back of a truck under some overpass.
The usual shrill accusations of antisemitism have been turned up a notch and the propagandists’ keyboards are on fire — because these real estate sales, more than anything else we see right out in the open, demonstrate exactly how Zionism works and its absolute depravity.
In March a similar event took place at Keter Torah synagogue in Teaneck, New Jersey. This followed almost identical events — all at synagogues — in Montreal and Toronto and was to be followed in Lawrence and Flatbush. According to New York Magazine, “The Great Israeli Real Estate Event is an annual exhibition produced by Gideon Katz, a self-described ‘expert in marketing Israeli real estate to the global Jewish community.’ […] At most of the events was a company called My Home in Israel, brought along to showcase available properties in both Israel and the Palestinian territories it occupies: multiple units in a building near Givat HaMatos in East Jerusalem, townhouses in near Ariel University in the heart of the West Bank, and a five-bedroom villa with a pool in the luxury enclave of Efrat south of Bethlehem.”
Rich Segal, a resident of Teaneck, New Jersey and himself Jewish, testified at a public hearing in March that he believes restrictive sales of Palestinian land to Jews-only buyers (American Muslims can’t buy any of the houses) violate both domestic and international law, including the 1965 Civil Rights Act and the 1968 Fair Housing Act. “We don’t allow real estate events to be for whites only, or for Jews only. Now, as Jews, we don’t get to fly under the radar and break the law and hide it in the synagogue. Segal went on to say that such sales also violate international law because, at the Teaneck sale, homes from three different [illegal] West Bank settlements were being offered.
At these events much of the violence has come from counter-protesters. In Toronto, Ilan-Reuben Abramov, a supporter of the Israeli real estate event, attacked protesters with a nail gun. In Los Angeles pro-Palestinian protesters were punched, shoved, pelted with raw eggs, and soaked with bear and pepper spray. Well-organized counter-protesters and members of nearby synagogues, many with Israeli flags, were there expressly to confront the pro-Palestinian protesters.
Predictably, a Jewish Chronicle headline screamed “Keffiyeh-clad mob launches bloody assault on Los Angeles synagogue.” CNN commentator Van Jones actually called the protest a “pogrom.” And Democratic Party leaders at all levels — President Joe Biden, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass — all endorsed stomping on the First Amendment by barring protests in front of houses of worship. Bass promised to meet with the Jewish Federation Los Angeles, Rabbi Noah Farkas, and “other law enforcement and faith leaders” to prevent a repeat of the protests.
President Biden, who after October 7th claimed to have seen videos of nonexistent beheaded babies on kibbutzim in the Negev, sputtered that the protests were “antisemitic and un-American.” But what of those American and international laws being broken by the Israeli real estate organizers? Isn’t violating the 1965 federal Civil Rights Act un-American? The Fair Housing Act? Apparently not to the great enabler of a genocide — who as Senator undermined civil rights provisions, lobbying his colleagues as a Delaware Dixiecrat against school busing, calling it a “liberal train wreck.”
Because pro-Israel spin has transmuted the protest into an attack on Jewish worshippers, it is necessary to point out that the protest took place on a Sunday — not the Jewish sabbath. It was also not, as echoed throughout the mainstream media, a random racist attack on a synagogue but a protest at an offensive and illegal sale.
Religious institutions, including synagogues, often open their facilities to community groups and for public meetings or voting. Churches hold medical screening clinics. Synagogues hold on-site blood drives. A New Bedford synagogue rents out part of its facility to a girls school. These are all commendable public uses of religious property, but none has anything to do with Judaism. And neither did the Zionist real estate event in a meeting room at Adas Torah.
In 2009 Stoughton (MA) synagogue Ahavath Torah hosted a series of far right speakers, including Dutch fascist Geerd Wilders. When it repeated the stunt in 2016 over a hundred clergy, including rabbis from other congregations, protested. And quite justifiably.
So, again, it is unfortunate to have to point out the obvious — but like any organization, houses of worship are capable of staging questionable (even illegal) events, and the public has every right to protest them.
Adas Torah Congregation is situated in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood of Los Angeles in an area known as the “kosher corridor.” According to an Aish magazine profile, “In a 20-minute stroll down Pico […] I encounter 30 shuls, kollels and outreach programs: Persian, Modern Orthodox, kiruv, yeshivish, Chabad, Carlebach, Yemenite, Chassidic, Israeli. There are boutique shuls for musicians and artists; one for Moroccans and another French-Moroccan. Plus 30 kosher restaurants!”
With all these opportunities to conduct a so-called “pogrom” why was only Adas Torah chosen for protest? The answer is staring you right in the face – because of the illegal sale of Palestinian land and the violation of domestic and international laws shamefully taking place inside the building.
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