It wasn't just one home, this was a coordinated attack on people associated with the Brooklyn Museum.
The homes of the Jewish director of the Brooklyn Museum and other museum leaders were vandalized early Wednesday morning in a coordinated attack, according to a museum spokeswoman.
Vandals attacked the Brooklyn Heights home of Anne Pasternak, director of the museum, by smearing red paint and graffiti across the entry of her apartment building and hanging a banner that accused her of being a “white-supremacist Zionist.”
The homes of two trustees and the museum’s president and chief operating officer, Kimberly Panicek Trueblood, were also targeted, according to Taylor Maatman, the museum’s director of public relations and communications.
The home where Pasternak lives is actually an apartment building that his home to nearly 100 people. Mayor Eric Adams posted photos of the vandalism, calling it both a crime and "unacceptable anti-Semitism."
This is not peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime, and it's overt, unacceptable antisemitism.
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) June 12, 2024
These actions will never be tolerated in New York City for any reason. I'm sorry to Anne Pasternak and members of @brooklynmuseum's board who woke up to hatred like this.
I… pic.twitter.com/vi17PumBoM
Sen. Chuck Schumer also criticzed the attack as "evil" and un-Americans.
Every American needs to see the photos of this antisemitic attack
— Chuck Schumer (@SenSchumer) June 12, 2024
The director and several board members of the Brooklyn Museum had their homes vandalized with revolting intolerance
This is not America
We must confront this bigotry
The perpetrators must be held accountable pic.twitter.com/cR7AtgVz1F
The red triangle is apparently a symbol used in Hamas videos to signal a Jewish person who is about to be killed.
The triangle became a prevalent symbol online and offline beginning in November 2023 following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s aggressive retaliatory offensive, according to the Anti Defamation League.
It first appeared in propaganda videos from the al-Qassam brigades — Hamas’ military wing — to highlight an Israeli soldier that was about to be killed or wounded in a targeted attack by the terrorists.
In the clips, the red triangle followed the target, which was then hit with a sniper’s bullet, a rocket-propelled grenade or another deadly blast.
“Though it can be used innocuously in general pro-Palestine social media posts, the inverted red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence in many popular anti-Zionist memes and political cartoons,” the ADL says on its website.
The group that organized this vandalism has apparently been using it for their own targeting.
The pro-Hamas group that organized a direct action against the Nova massacre exhibit in NYC has released a new hit list map for other sites using Hamas triangle symbols. Hamas used the symbol to mark areas in Israel to carry out terrorist attacks on Oct. 7. WOL Palestine calls… pic.twitter.com/8w8vpeJEan
— Andy Ngô 🏳️🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) June 12, 2024
The vandalism of these homes connected to the Brooklyn Museum was not done at random. The backstory here is that the group behind this held a rally at the Brooklyn Museum two weeks ago. That rally also involved vandalism of artwork on display outside.
The rally began at around 4:30pm, when over 100 demonstrators took over the Brooklyn Museum’s lobby with assorted banners and Palestine flags. Hundreds more joined after marching from the Barclays Center sports arena, about a 20-minute walk from the museum.
“Brooklyn Museum you can’t hide, divest from genocide,” they chanted.
Around 5:15pm, the museum closed its doors and instructed the protesters to evacuate the building immediately. A chaotic scene ensued with NYPD officers in riot gear storming the lobby to tackle and arrest protesters, among them a leading organizer with the Palestinian youth movement Within Our Lifetime (WOL), while pushing the rest toward the back exit.
There were also arrests outside:
🚨Arrests have been made at the anti-Israel protest outside the Brooklyn Museum. One protester got into a shoving match with an NYPD officer. The protester tried to run away but officers chased him, tackled him to the ground, and arrested him. pic.twitter.com/c4TKRuGGqk
— Julio Rosas (@Julio_Rosas11) May 31, 2024
The protest group blamed the museum but the museum claimed it had not called the police and noted that because the museum is on city-owned land, police didn't need their permission to come inside. Basically the museum threw the NYPD under the bus.
a spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum acknowledged that “the police brutality that took place here on Friday is devastating” and noted that the museum did not call the police, but that NYPD does not need its authorization to enter because its building is city property on city-owned land.
The spokesperson added that the museum will not press charges against those who were arrested and that it has “reached out to the community affairs leadership at NYPD to discuss their actions on Friday and how we can focus on de-escalation going forward.”
In response the group issued a long statement expressing its outrage which concluded, "And we hereby put the Brooklyn Museum—and all complicit cultural institutions—on notice. We will be back. We will not stop. We will not rest. Free Palestine. Palestine is everywhere."
In another statement issued last night, the vandals made it clear this was revenge for what happened at the museum two weeks ago:
The Brooklyn Museum is an institution tainted with the blood of our martyrs. It is a nexus of Zionism, Imperialism, and settler-colonialism. The museum's complicity in the Palestinian genocide is a filthy inescapable reality and so is its violence against those protesting it. Our action is a retaliation against the museum's direct connections to the networks that materially support the genocidal entity as well as its collaboration with the FASCIST NYPD.
The Brooklyn Museum must face consequences for not heeding the call of its workers to divest, for supporting genocide and for brutalizing Palestinian hijabi women including Nerdeen Kiswani who we salute as a freedom fighter and a revolutionary leader.
The "genocidal entity" is Israel and Nerdeen Kiswani is a leader of the activist group Within Our Lifetime who was arrested inside the museum two weeks ago. Kiswani is defending the vandalism as "peaceful."
And another horrific retweet by the NY Hamas Queen. pic.twitter.com/GaR4mj8gon
— LAWYERGONEROGUE (@lawyergonerogue) June 13, 2024
This was just one of several sites vandalized in NYC last night.
A trio of vandals chucked red paint at a Palestinian mission and a luxury Upper East Side building Wednesday morning — hours before a pair of firebugs torched two American flags outside the Israeli consulate, authorities said...
In a similar incident, multiple people clad in head scarves hopped out of a gray-colored vehicle and chucked fliers in front of the German Consulate General on First Avenue near East 49th Street around 3:30 a.m., authorities said.
They then threw paint at the front door before taking off in their ride, heading north on First Avenue, cops said.
No arrests have been made yet and police aren't saying if all of the incidents were connected. But several of these incidents, including the vandalism at Pasternak's house were caught on video, so hopefully that will change. Will she press charges this time or is she going to give the vandals another pass? The group behind it has posted video of themselves vandalizing her property.
Anarchist group Pal_ActionUS just posted video of themselves vandalizing the home of Anne Pasternak. Their social media feed connects them to the “Act Progressive International” website which lists their partners as the DSA and Code Pink.
— Jason Curtis Anderson (@JCAndersonNYC) June 13, 2024
Who will hold them accountable? pic.twitter.com/B9DDHp2hNg
Join the conversation as a VIP Member