ALL OUT TO DEFEND BAY RIDGE & PALESTINE 🇵🇸

📆 Wednesday, Feb. 26
⏰ Press conference at 4 PM, rally and salah at 5 PM
📍 6807 5th Ave Brooklyn, NY
🗞️ Press release: tinyurl.com/ProtectBayRidge

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For over 15 months of escalated genocide in Palestine, we have been flooding New York for Gaza. All the while, we have incurred both brutal repression from the NYPD and now increasing attacks from zionist organizations. Betar, Herut, and several other racist, anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic groups have attempted to instigate fights at our rallies, maced us, worked to doxx community members, and put out a reward for anyone who can hand a beeper to WOL chair Nerdeen Kiswani (effectively a death threat). Now, these same groups are planning to protest a masjid in Bay Ridge, a clear escalation of their incitement of hatred against our community. WOL, along with over 30 organizations across New York, are calling on allies to come out to Bay Ridge for a press conference, rally and salah on Wednesday at 4 PM in defense of our community and the Palestinian people.

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Honoring the Martyrs of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre — Thirty-one years ago on February 25th 1994, zionist terror bred in Brooklyn spilled Palestinian blood in Al-Khalil. On that day Baruch Goldstein, a Brooklyn-born settler, entered the Ibrahimi Mosque and murdered twenty-nine Palestinians in cold blood as they prayed during Ramadan. Goldstein was subsequently overpowered, disarmed and beaten to death by the surviving Palestinians in an act of self-defense and collective resistance.

In the aftermath of the massacre, Palestinians in Al-Khalil estimated that as many as 70 people were martyred that day, with more than 250 injured.

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Before he settled in Palestine in 1983, Goldstein’s anti-Palestinian hate was molded by his membership in the Jewish Defense League. Founded in New York City in 1968 by Meir Kahane, who was also born and raised in Brooklyn, the JDL was notorious for carrying out multiple bombings and terrorist attacks throughout the 1970s & 80s and the assassination of Palestinian-American community activist Alex Odeh in 1985 in Santa Ana, California. 

Although the JDL was investigated and surveilled for its terrorist activities by the FBI for decades, it remains active to this day after rebranding as Yad Yamin and now as Herut, and continues to collaborate with other violent zionist organizations in New York City, including Betar.

In recent years, emboldened by active protection from the NYPD and more “mainstream” entities like the Zionist Organization of America, these groups have increased their physical violence and intimidation against the Palestinian community and allies in New York City.

Recent examples of this violence include former JDL members (now publicly identifying as Herut) macing pro-Palestine youth, Betar offering $1,000 to anyone who hands WOL’s chair and founder Nerdeen Kiswani a beeper (a reference to the occupation’s terrorist attacks in Lebanon in 2024), and JDL-adjacent Councilwoman Inna Vernikov bringing a gun to threaten a demonstration at Brooklyn College in October 2023.

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Meir Kahane & Baruch Goldstein’s Legacies Today: Palestinian Resistance In The Face Of Zionist Violence

The actions outlined above in part one are not isolated incidents. Inna Vernikov’s political mentor, Dov Hikind, a former New York State Assemblyman, was also formerly a member of the JDL. In 2008 he declared, “I’m proud of every single moment, let me make that very clear. Rabbi Kahane had a great influence on me.” In the 1980s, according to journalists Michael Karpin and Ina Friedman, Hikind was suspected by the FBI of “involvement in planning a string of six bombings against Arab targets in NY, Massachusetts and California—in which one man was killed and seven were injured.”

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Before being elected to New York City Council, Vernikov served as an aide to Hikind, and during her election bid in 2021, held a campaign event inviting supporters to “Meet Assemblyman Dov Hikind & His Wife Shani!” Shani Hikind, as of 2024, was the Executive Vice President of American Friends of Ateret Cohanim, a zionist organization funding illegal settlements in the West Bank and Al-Quds. Between 2020-2023, Dov and Shani Hikind contributed $2,550 to Inna Vernikov's City Council campaigns, according to public records.

In 1990 following his death, supporters of Meir Kahane lined the streets of Brooklyn during his funeral procession with israeli flags and signs that read “Death To Arabs.” Kahane’s grandson, Meir Ettinger, who carries both his name and his violent legacy, is one of the leaders of the Hilltop Youth, a zionist vigilante group in the West Bank that carried out the 2015 murder of Dawabsheh family in the village of Duma, in which 18 month Ali Dawabsheh and his two parents were burned to death.

The forces that molded and enabled Goldstein’s terror continue to fuel violence against Palestinians today, both in Palestine and here in New York City. And it's no coincidence that those that found inspiration in Goldstein's genocidal violence, like Itamar Ben-Gvir who had a portrait of him hanging on his living room wall for years, are the most vocal champions of the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As we honor the martyrs of the Ibrahimi Mosque Massacre and all of Palestine's martyrs, we must renew our commitment to resisting zionism and colonialism in all its forms and fighting for Palestinian liberation and return within our lifetime.🇵🇸

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🚨HAPPENING RIGHT NOW‼️
ALL OUT TO DEFEND BAY RIDGE & PALESTINE 🇵🇸

📍 6807 5th Ave Brooklyn, NY
🗞️ Press release: tinyurl.com/ProtectBayRidge

🚨 Protest happening RIGHT NOW as Columbia University is hosting former israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett. War criminals are not welcome in NYC‼️

📍Columbia University

🚨EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION🚨

SUPPORT THE STUDENTS RELAUNCHING SIT-IN AT MILSTEIN LIBRARY LOBBY! 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸

WHERE: Milstein Center, 3009 Broadway, NYC
WHEN: NOW – Ongoing

Support students outside as they continue their sit-in after the admin locked down the campus. Despite Barnard’s militarized response, they demand:
•Reinstate Expelled Students IMMEDIATELY
•Justice for Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya & All Palestinians
•Divestment & Amnesty for All Activists

Wear a mask & keffiyeh. Be brave!

We will not stop. We will not rest.
Agitation until amnesty. Disruption until divestment. Resistance until return.

🚨URGENT CALL TO ACTION

Show up NOW to defend the Columbia/Barnard sit-in at the Dr Safiya Liberated Zone (formerly Milstein) at Barnard College on 117 st. between Broadway and Amsterdam.

Barnard admin is threatening to sweep the building, claiming that there is a "bomb threat." More information will be shared as it comes in. Please distribute to your networks.

URGENT🚨: NYPD is brutalizing & arresting Columbia protesters RIGHT NOW! Get to Columbia IMMEDIATELY and stand in solidarity! They want to silence the movement—we won’t let them. Show up! Spread the word‼️

TODAY: THURSDAY, MARCH 6th (12-3pm): Demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard is holding another afternoon of COMMUNITY OUTREACH at 141 Flushing Ave (Building 77). Due to today’s weather, we are moving our biweekly Wednesday tabling this week to THURSDAY.

During our last community outreach afternoon, we connected with many workers and tenants who feel empowered to fight against the growing fascism and militarism at Brooklyn Navy Yard and expressed an urgent desire for solidarity amongst one another.

We will have free coffee/tea, covid tests, flyers, zines, art supplies, letter-writing materials and petition signing. Come outside and join us anytime between 12pm and 3pm to connect with one another, make art, and take action against these genocide profiteers! Bring your coworkers, your love, and your rage❤️‍🔥❤️‍🔥

United, we will demilitarize Brooklyn Navy Yard and resist their corporate facism!

🚨 EMERGENCY CALL TO ACTION 🚨

STAND WITH COLUMBIA STUDENTS – NO COPS ON CAMPUS!

Barnard College called NYPD on its students who were violently arrested for demanding the reinstatement of their expelled peers. This is repression—on our campuses, in our streets, and in Palestine. We won’t be silent. We won’t be intimidated.

📍 WHERE: 3009 Broadway, NY, NY
📅 WHEN: TODAY, THURSDAY 3/6 @ 2:30PM

Join Columbia students standing against NYPD brutality, demanding justice for expelled students, and reaffirming commitment to Palestinian liberation.

Today we honor Palestinian activist, freedom fighter, and revolutionary intellectual Basil al-Araj, assassinated eight years ago on March 6th, 2017 by zionist forces in Al-Bireh in the West Bank. 

Basil, who was 31 years old, fought back against the IOF with a gun in his hand for over two hours. It was only after he ran out of ammunition that the invading occupation forces were able to break into the home he was sheltering in and execute him. After months of pursuit, Basil Al-Araj ‘found his answers’ and ascended to martyrdom. While he was hunted by both the IOF and Palestinian Authority forces, he wrote in his last testament: “Now I walk to my fate, satisfied that I have found my answers. How stupid I am; is there anything more eloquent than the actions of a martyr? I should have written this months ago, but what kept me was that this question is for you, the living. Why should I answer for you? You should search for it. As for us, the people of the graves, we seek nothing else but God’s mercy.” 

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In the months leading up to his martyrdom in March 2016, Basil and five of his comrades were arrested, jailed, and tortured by the Palestinian Authority's security forces, their case became a rallying cry throughout Palestine and around the world in the fight to end security coordination between the PA and the zionist occupation.

After launching a hunger strike in protest of their political imprisonment, they were all subsequently released, but the occupation forces soon began re-arresting his comrades and jailing them without any charge or trial - so Basil went into hiding to avoid being arrested by the IOF and PA forces. 

Following his assassination, Palestinians throughout Palestine, Lebanon, and beyond, including here in NYC, took to the streets to condemn the occupation and the PA’s complicity in his death. In Ramallah, where two hundred Palestinians gathered in protest, PA security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets at the crowd, injuring eleven people, including Basil’s father.

A prolific writer and “engaged intellectual,” Basil’s legacy continues to live on through his words and his example of resistance and continues to inspire Palestinians and all those struggling for Palestinian liberation around the world.

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