While “mostly peaceful” riots "protests" are OK in the Big Apple, celebrating a Jewish holiday is, apparently, not.
Video footage from Tuesday night shows NYPD forcefully trying to break up a large crowd of Orthodox Jews who had gathered to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which commemorates the 40 years Israelis spent wandering the desert after fleeing Egypt. Most of those who had clustered together in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights weren’t wearing masks, and none appeared to be social distancing.
But instead of dispersing as asked, the crowd resisted, forcing the NYPD to abandon their efforts and leave the scene without making any arrests.
NYPD tried to break up a huge Sukkot party in Crown Heights tonight — and met fierce resistance from ultra-Orthodox revelers pic.twitter.com/sS8VuDaAUo
— Jake Offenhartz (@jangelooff) October 6, 2020
It’s not the first time NYC police have attempted to break up Jewish gatherings while allowing left-wing protests to carry on unimpeded. Multiple videos have emerged since the city went into lockdown back in March showing police breaking up groups of Jewish mothers and their children gathered in parks and on playgrounds.
After the welds were removed, NYC officials put chains and locks back on a playground in a Jewish community.
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) June 15, 2020
Video shows Orthodox Jews cutting those chains so their children can play in the playground.pic.twitter.com/ycuYxgZTWn
In April, the NYPD also forcibly broke up a crowd of mourners who had gathered for a rabbi’s funeral in violation of the city’s limit on gatherings of more than 10 people.
At one point, NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, who himself has been caught on several occasions violating his own state’s COVID lockdown orders, targeted the Jewish community by name with threats of government action if they gathered in violation of the city’s restrictions, going so far as to threaten synagogues and other houses of worship with permanent closure if they opened amid the shutdown.
Just this week, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo labeled "religious institutions" a "problem" for his shutdown-happy regime.
"We know religious institutions have been a problem,” Cuomo said. “We know mass gatherings are the super spreader events. We know there have been mass gatherings going on in concert with religious institutions in these communities for weeks.”
Meanwhile, even as the city continues to bar restaurants, businesses and churches from fully reopening (and even keeps some businesses in COVID hotspots shut down entirely), hundreds of leftwing, anti-police protesters were allowed to camp – tents and all – outside City Hall itself over the summer to demand a reduction in the NYPD’s budget as part of a Black Lives Matter campaign. Crowds of angry protesters clogged up intersections, took over city blocks and even set up barricades during the months of unrest that followed the police-involved deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. One recent BLM riot in Manhattan left behind $100,000 worth of damage after mobs of activists smashed windows and left graffiti scrawled across the walls of chain stores and banks.
But, as always seems to be the case with fascists, it’s those pesky Jews who are the real problem.