The homes of Jewish Brooklyn Museum officials were vandalized with terrorist symbols on Tuesday night, during the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, New York politicians announced.
Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, showed on social media that museum director Anne Pasternak’s home had been defaced, according to pictures that he posted displaying red blood, which is meant to simulate paint, and red inverted triangles used in terrorist propaganda to indicate the targeting of personnel or vehicles with munitions.
This is not peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime, and it's overt, unacceptable antisemitism.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
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) June 12, 2024
Councilwoman Julie Menin said that other Jewish board members had been targeted as well, and Councilman Lincoln Restler said that other sites affiliated with the museum had also been targeted.
“Anne Pasternak, Brooklyn Museum white supremacist Zionist,” a banner with red hand prints which was hung at the director’s home, read.
“We are deeply troubled by these horrible acts of vandalism targeting museum leadership,” the Brooklyn Museum told The Jerusalem Post. “For two centuries, the Brooklyn Museum has worked to foster mutual understanding through art and culture, and we have always supported peaceful protest and open, respectful dialogue. Violence, vandalism, and intimidation have no place in that discourse.”
NYPD investigating
The New York Police are investigating the incident, according to Adams. Restler said on X that there was footage of the vandalism.
“This is not a peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime, and it’s overt, unacceptable antisemitism,” said the mayor. “These actions will never be tolerated in New York City for any reason. I’m sorry to Anne Pasternak and members of the Brooklyn Museum’s board who woke up to hatred like this.”
New York Governor Kathy Hochul condemned the incidents as acts of antisemitism that had no place in the state.“We stand with the Jewish community in the face of hate and we will continue to fight antisemitism wherever it rears its ugly head,” Hochul wrote on social media.
Menin said that the incidents were not only acts of antisemitism but direct threats to Jewish individuals and their communities. The Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick said on social media that Jews and other residents were made unsafe by such “vile antisemitism.”
Restler and fellow city council member Crystal Hudson issued a joint statement decrying that defacement as being counterproductive to their objectives of achieving a permanent, bilateral ceasefire.
The Brooklyn Museum was listed as a target for “autonomous action” as part of Within Our Lifetime’s (WOL) Monday “day of rage for Gaza.”
On March 31, WOL protesters, who occupied the museum in protest, clashed with the NYPD. WOL has called for sustained protests against the institution, demanding that it recognizes that there is a genocide being committed against the Palestinians, discloses any of its financial ties to Israel, and pays “reparations for its contributions to colonial looting and gentrification.”
“If you take peace from the people, we take peace from you,” read the WOL call to action graphic that featured the red inverted triangle above the museum.
Writers Against the War on Gaza shared on Instagram that “autonomous actors” had on Wednesday also targeted the New York City German consulate, the Israeli Consulate General, and the Jordanian mission to the United Nations.
“Through our actions, we continue to globalize the intifada,” read a communique from the vandals issued through the anti-Israel group.
“We locate complicity in the genocidal campaign against the Palestinians among all nations that refuse to cut ties with the Zionist settler state, refuse to support Palestinian freedom and the right to return, and profit from the attempted annihilation of the Palestinian people.
“We, as dissidents in the imperial core, urge comrades everywhere to consider all normalizers our enemies and join in creative resistance to every state actor and institution that aids and abets genocide,” it read.