Selling and Buying West Bank Land In Manhattan: Utterly sickening
Sid Shniad
Selling and Buying West Bank Land In Manhattan
Utterly sickening
MJ Rosenberg
May 06, 2026
On Tuesday night, several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters — many of them young Jews — gathered outside Park East Synagogue after learning that the synagogue was hosting what organizers called “The Great Israel Real Estate Event,” a promotion for Americans purchasing property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.
According to reporting in The New York Times, the event was organized by a company marketing homes in settlements considered illegal under international law. Counter protesters quickly reframed the demonstration not as opposition to settlements or occupation, but as an antisemitic protest targeting a synagogue. Politicians and media figures followed suit, presenting the controversy primarily as yet another example of rising hostility toward Jews in New York. (New York City Council president Julie Menin — the anti-Mamdani of New York politics — eagerly joined in.)
But that framing deliberately obscures the actual issue. This was not a protest against Jewish worshippers. No worship service was taking place. It was a protest against using a synagogue as a venue to promote the sale of occupied Palestinian land.
The people protesting outside Park East Synagogue were not protesting Jews at prayer. There was no prayer. They were protesting the marketing of stolen Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. That distinction is not secondary. It is the entire story.
And yet, once again, much of the political and media establishment rushed to flatten a political protest into an “antisemitic incident,” as though demonstrating against settlement expansion were equivalent to threatening Jews for being Jews.
That inversion has become one of the defining dishonesties of this era.
Again, the event itself was not a religious service. It was a real estate expo promoting property purchases both in Israel and in settlements deep inside occupied Palestinian territory — settlements the entire world considers illegal. It was, in effect, a sales convention for colonization. The organizers were not hiding that fact. Even The New York Times reported that the event promoted purchases in “Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.”
So naturally, people protested.
What were they supposed to do? Send a politely worded letter to the editor while land seized from Palestinians is marketed to wealthy Americans over hors d’oeuvres on the Upper East Side?
If a church hosted a conference selling homes in communities established exclusively for white Christians, protesters would rightly descend on it. No one would pretend the protest was “anti-Christian.” But when the issue is Israel, ordinary political standards suddenly disappear.
The building itself becomes sacred, no matter what is happening inside it.
That is the inevitable result of New York’s new “buffer zone” obsession around houses of worship. The law was sold as a way to protect religious freedom and shield worshippers from intimidation. Fine. But what happens when a “house of worship” is being used not for worship, but for political organizing around internationally condemned activity? What if it hosted a fundraiser supporting genocide?
Does wrapping a real estate expo in synagogue walls magically immunize it from protest?
Many politicians apparently think so.
Assemblyman Micah Lasher declared that the protest was intended “to create fear in the hearts of Jewish New Yorkers.” That is absurd. The protesters were not there because Jews were inside. They were there because settlement promoters were inside. Conflating the two is not defending Jews. It is weaponizing Jewish identity as a shield for Israeli government policy.
And that tactic has become routine.
Any protest against Israeli state actions is immediately reframed as an attack on Jews collectively. The result is catastrophic both politically and morally. It cheapens the reality of actual antisemitism. Threatening Jews because they are Jews is antisemitism. Opposing the sale of occupied Palestinian land is political speech protected by the First Amendment and grounded in international law.
Even Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who condemned the event itself — still felt obligated to genuflect before the now-mandatory script about ensuring access to houses of worship. Again: this was not a prayer service. Nobody was blocking Jews from praying. The issue was a political and commercial event using religious space as cover.
And that is the real strategy here.
By intentionally holding these events in synagogues, organizers create a political trap. Protesters show up because the activity itself is outrageous. Then defenders of the settlements point not to the settlements but to the location of the protest: “Look, they’re outside a synagogue.”
The substance disappears. The occupation disappears. Palestinian dispossession disappears. Only the accusation of antisemitism remains.
It is cynical. And it works.
The good news is that the expiration date for this nonsense is approaching fast. Americans — including, very prominently, young Jews — are not only heartsick about the Gaza genocide and the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank; they are increasingly sick of being told they must remain silent about it.
Support for Israel as an exclusivist Jewish state has collapsed inside much of the Democratic Party. Even Alan Dershowitz recently announced that after six decades as a registered Democrat, he is now a Republican. Good news for Democrats. Less good for Dershowitz, whose new party contains growing strains of actual antisemitism — hostility not only to Israeli policy, but to Jews themselves.
People are tired of watching Palestinian land disappear while American politicians and institutions pretend nothing is happening. They are tired of seeing every criticism of Israel pathologized as bigotry. And they are tired of being told that opposing settlements — settlements illegal under international law and built on the permanent denial of Palestinian rights — somehow falls outside acceptable political speech.
The protesters understood exactly what this event was about.
The people pretending otherwise understood it too.
Hate is hate, even when hosted inside a house of worship. That was true before Emancipation, when the most virulent defenses of slavery—and later Jim Crow— emanated from within white churches, including from the pulpit. It is just as true now.
Organized religion being used as a cover for racial crimes is nothing new. Jews have known that for 2000 years.