That demonstration, organized by Pal-Awda — the same group that chanted “We support Hamas here!” outside a Queens synagogue this month — was named in honor of the “Al-Aqsa Flood,” Hamas’ code name for its savage Oct. 7 incursion into Israel.
Borough Park is a well-known Brooklyn enclave of Orthodox Jews; more than half its population is Jewish. Organizing hundreds of people to head there specifically to protest Israel was no random act.
That is, it’s not like the “Flood Boro Park” event carried peaceable overtones or promised to be a love-in.
Indeed, hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered there to scream “filthy Zionist a–holes” at Jews on the street and threaten to kill them and chanted, “There is only solution, Intifada revolution!”
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) of Brooklyn denounced the protest as “egregious behavior … clearly designed to intimidate and harass Jews.”
“It should come as a shock to no one that the pro-Hamas mob targeting Jews and promising to ‘flood’ Boro Park has descended into violence,” commented the Bronx’s Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY).
According to James, however, brawls that broke out at this event were entirely the fault of Betar — even though the one person charged with violent assault that night was on the pro-Hamas side.
This state has seen literally hundreds of anti-Israel protests since Oct. 7 — displays marked by screaming activists blocking streets and bridges, taking over buildings, occupying campus quads and chasing Jewish students into hiding.
They have staged protests outside synagogues, waved the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah, raised pictures of terrorist leaders and produced maps of “enemy” institutions.
They have invaded memorial vigils for the victims of Oct. 7, using these occasions of sorrow to celebrate the attack and hoist signs reading, “Glory to the Martyrs; Victory to the Resistance.”
These protests have contributed to a frightening, well-documented rise in antisemitic assaults and violence.
Groups such as Within Our Lifetime, Code Pink, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, Students for Justice in Palestine, the People’s Forum and many others have not been shy about promoting chaos and violence and “chilling” the free expression of speech, as James complains about Betar.
But out of everything that’s happened in New York in these last two years, the attorney general decided that an obscure Jewish group is the real problem.
Antisemites on social media are gloating and chuckling about the dissolution of Betar, saying it proves how peaceful and righteous the anti-Zionist movement has been.
Take note: Betar didn’t go to Muslim neighborhoods and start fights, or protest outside mosques; its members never harassed random Muslims in public.
They only acted as counter-protesters at pro-Hamas demonstrations.
James has been sitting on this agreement with Betar for months, and its release just two weeks after Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration is no coincidence: It’s a gift to him, a sign that she’s on board with his program of demonizing Israel.
The AG has sent a clear signal that there are no limits to denouncing or harassing Jews in New York.
You only risk trouble if you dare to push back.
Seth Barron is a member of The Post Editorial Board. His next book, “Weaponized,” will be published in April.
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