U.S. charges pro-Palestinian demonstrators
Civil case arises from violent protests last November outside West Orange shul
On November 13, 2024, pro-Palestinian protesters staged a noisy, disruptive, eventually violent demonstration outside Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange.
A real estate fair for property in Jerusalem was going on inside the Orthodox shul. The demonstrators, objecting to Israel’s existence and therefore to any Israeli’s — or any Jew’s — right to own land there, gathered outside the shul, broke through a police line, stood on the shul’s lawn, and blew vuvuzelas — horns that make noise at such volume that they can cause hearing loss — at the building, and then at the faces of two of the fair’s organizers.
When a protester, Altaf Sharif, blew a vuvuzela in Moshe Glick’s face, Mr. Glick pulled it out of his hands. The protesters also attacked David Silberberg, who had been inside the shul with Mr. Glick. (When Mr. Silberberg walked out of the shul, another protester alerted his colleagues that “The Jew is here!”)
A nasty fight followed. Mr. Glick hit Mr. Sharif with a flashlight, to protect Mr. Silberberg, and Mr. Sharif ended up in the hospital. Eventually, the Essex County’s prosecutor’s office charged both Mr. Glick and Mr. Silberberg with aggravated assault, bias intimidation, and weapons offenses. Mr. Sharif was not charged. Those charges still are pending.
Videos taken that night show rage, confusion, and violence.
On Monday, in a civil suit, the Department of Justice charged two organizations, the New Jersey chapters of the National Party for Socialism and Liberation and the American Muslims for Palestine, as well as four people cited by name (one of them is Mr. Sharif) and a Jane and a John Doe. (One of the Does, the complaint said, detonated a stink bomb.)
The DOJ’s Civil Rights division filed the suit using the Freedom of Access to Clinics Entrances Act — FACE — passed in 1994, in a new way. That act has been used to keep anti-abortion activists from intimidating or otherwise stopping women from entering health clinics.
As the New York Times pointed out, President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, which takes direction from the president in a way that it had not before, under other presidents, has stopped using the FACE Act against anti-abortion demonstrators, and soon after he took office Mr. Trump pardoned anti-abortion activists who had been charged with violating the act.
Now, the FACE act is being used to stop demonstrators from intimidating or otherwise stopping people from entering houses of worship. It alleges that protestors were doing exactly that — noisily and violently — when they tried to disrupt the real estate fair.
Attorney General Pam Bondi released a statement about the lawsuit. “No American should be harassed, targeted, or discriminated against for peacefully practicing their religion,” she wrote. “Today’s lawsuit underscores this Department of Justice’s commitment to defending Jewish Americans — and all Americans of faith — from those who would threaten their right to worship.”
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