Great Israeli Real Estate Event Returns to New York City Amid Pro-Palestine Protests

A controversial real estate expo advertising properties for sale in the occupied Palestinian territories returned to New York City on Monday, less than a week after a previous event drew dueling protests on the Upper East Side.

““We are building the Land of Israel and destroying the idea of a Palestinian state,” said Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich on Friday”

Al Jazeera

The “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” took place Monday evening at Young Israel of Midwood in southern Brooklyn, and by late afternoon the NYPD had blocked off the street for a block in each direction from the synagogue while allowing protesters to congregate within sight of the building.

Al Jazeera

The Intercept reported that groups of pro-Palestine demonstrators marched through the neighborhood on side streets, followed by a swarm of pro-Israel counter-protesters, and that pro-Israel demonstrators threw eggs while one protester said a pro-Israel counter-protester had pepper-sprayed him.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani praised the NYPD’s handling of the crowd at an unrelated press conference on Wednesday, saying, “I do believe that the police ensured that yesterday,” while the New York Civil Liberties Union rebuked the barricaded area as a “no-speech zone.”

European Union foreign ministers agreed on Monday to a set of sanctions aimed at Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank, after months of blockage tied to opposition from Hungary under former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas wrote on X that “Extremisms and violence carry consequences,” and French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said, “It’s done. The European Union is sanctioning today the main Israeli organisations guilty of supporting the extremist and violent colonisation of the West Bank.”

BBC

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar rejected the decision, writing on X that “Israel firmly rejects the decision to impose sanctions on Israeli citizens and organizations.”

The sanctions target three settlers and four settler organizations, and the agreement also included sanctions on leading Hamas figures, with the measures starting the EU’s legislative procedure and set to enter into force at a later date.

In the West Bank, a BBC report described settlers forcing Mohammad Asaasaa to dig up his father Hussein’s grave hours after burying him in the village of al-A’sa’asa near Jenin, after children rushed in shouting, “The settlers are digging up the grave!”

The BBC said the settlers were from a settlement newly rebuilt known as Sanur on a hilltop overlooking the cemetery, and it quoted the Israeli army statement that it “condemns any attempt to act in a way that harms public order, the rule of law, and the dignity of the living and the dead.”

In Gaza, Al Jazeera’s weekly wrap said Israel maintained its violent posture and that “Those killed include Azzam al-Hayya,” the son of Hamas negotiator Khalil al-Hayya, who died on Thursday from injuries sustained during an Israeli strike the night before in Gaza City.

Al Jazeera also reported that “More than 854 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed by Israel since the October ‘ceasefire’,” and that the cumulative death toll since October 2023 is now more than 72,740, while it said the European Union condemned Israel’s expansion of the “orange line” restricted zone covering more than 60 percent of the Gaza Strip.