NEW YORK: People purporting to be pro-Palestinian activists hurled red paint at the homes of four Jewish officials with the Brooklyn Museum and also splashed paint across the front of diplomatic buildings for Germany and the Palestinian Authority early Wednesday, in sprees of vandalism that prompted a police investigation and brought condemnation from city authorities.
Mayor Eric Adams, in a post on the social platform X, shared four images of a brick building splashed with red paint with a banner hung in front of the door that called the museum’s director, Anne Pasternak, a “white-supremacist Zionist.”
“This is not peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime, and it’s overt, unacceptable antisemitism,” Adams wrote, sending sympathy to Pasternak and other museum board members whose homes were defaced. “These actions will never be tolerated in New York City for any reason.”
Taylor Maatman, a spokesperson for the museum said a report was filed with police but declined to provide more details.
“We are deeply troubled by these horrible acts of vandalism targeting museum leadership,” she said in a statement.
Red paint was also splashed across the front of a Manhattan building that houses Germany’s consulate and the United Nations mission, and another building that is a headquarters for for Palestinian diplomats. Flyers critical of the Palestinian Authority and its president, Mahmoud Abbas, were scattered outside the building.
It wasn’t immediately clear who was responsible or whether the acts of vandalism were all related.
A spokesperson for the New York Police Department declined to comment, saying the agency was investigating and would provide more information later. Messages seeking comment were also sent to Palestinian and German diplomats.
Hundreds of protesters marched on the Brooklyn Museum late last month, briefly setting up tents in the lobby and unfurling a “Free Palestine” banner from the roof before police moved in to make dozens of arrests. Similar protests have happened since October at other New York City museums.
The protest group Within Our Lifetime and other organizers of that demonstration said the museum is “deeply invested in and complicit” in Israel’s military actions in Gaza through its leadership, trustees, corporate sponsors and donors — a claim museum officials have denied.
The protest group did not respond to an email seeking comment.
City Comptroller Brad Lander, who was among the New York politicians to speak out against the protests, said the Brooklyn Museum has done more to grapple with questions of “power, colonialism, racism & the role of art” than many other museums.
“The cowards who did this are way over the line into antisemitism, harming the cause they claim to care about, and making everyone less safe,” he wrote on X.
The grand beaux arts museum, the city’s second largest, sits at the edge of Crown Heights, home to one of the city’s largest communities of Orthodox Jews.
The paint attacks came the same week that Within Our Lifetime organized a large demonstration outside a New York City exhibition memorializing victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on the Tribe of Nova music festival. The group called it “Zionist propaganda” and dismissed the music festival, where hundreds died, as “a rave next to a concentration camp.”
That protest also drew condemnations from across the political spectrum.
“The callousness, dehumanization, and targeting of Jews on display at last night’s protest outside the Nova Festival exhibit was atrocious antisemitism — plain and simple,” US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said Tuesday on X.
Apparent pro-Palestinian activists splash red paint on homes of Jewish officials at Brooklyn Museum
https://arab.news/yfbqd
Apparent pro-Palestinian activists splash red paint on homes of Jewish officials at Brooklyn Museum
- Mayor Eric Adams, in a post on the social platform X, wrote: “This is not peaceful protest or free speech. This is a crime, and it’s overt, unacceptable antisemitism”
- Taylor Maatman, a spokesperson for the museum said a report was filed with police but declined to provide more details
Trump says Zelensky ‘isn’t ready’ yet to accept US-authored proposal to end Russia-Ukraine war
- Trump said he was “disappointed” and suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward
- He also claimed Russia is “fine with it” even though Putin last week had said that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable
KYIV, Ukraine: President Donald Trump on Sunday claimed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “isn’t ready” to sign off on a US-authored peace proposal aimed at ending the Russia-Ukraine war.
Trump was critical of Zelensky after US and Ukrainian negotiators completed three days of talks on Saturday aimed at trying to narrow differences on the US administration’s proposal. But in an exchange with reporters on Sunday night, Trump suggested that the Ukrainian leader is holding up the talks from moving forward.
“I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t yet read the proposal, that was as of a few hours ago. His people love it, but he hasn’t,” Trump claimed in an exchange with reporters before taking part in the Kennedy Center Honors. The president added, “Russia is, I believe, fine with it, but I’m not sure that Zelensky’s fine with it. His people love it it. But he isn’t ready.”
To be certain, Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn’t publicly expressed approval for the White House plan. In fact, Putin last week had said that aspects of Trump’s proposal were unworkable, even though the original draft heavily favored Moscow.
Trump has had a hot-and-cold relationship with Zelensky since riding into a second White House term insisting that the war was a waste of US taxpayer money. Trump has also repeatedly urged the Ukrainians to cede land to Russia to bring an end to a now nearly four-year conflict he says has cost far too many lives.
Zelensky said Saturday he had a “substantive phone call” with the American officials engaged in the talks with a Ukrainian delegation in Florida. He said he had been given an update over the phone by US and Ukrainian officials at the talks.
“Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace,” Zelensky wrote on social media.
Trump’s criticism of Zelensky came as Russia on Sunday welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy in comments by the Kremlin spokesman published by Russia’s Tass news agency.
Dmitry Peskov said the updated strategic document, which spells out the administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision.
“There are statements there against confrontation and in favor of dialogue and building good relations,” he said, adding that Russia hopes this would lead to “further constructive cooperation with Washington on the Ukrainian settlement.”
The document released Friday by the White House said the US wants to improve its relationship with Russia after years of Moscow being treated as a global pariah and that ending the war is a core US interest to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
Speaking on Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum, Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, said efforts to end the war were in “the last 10 meters.”
He said a deal depended on the two outstanding issues of “terrain, primarily the Donbas,” and the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant.
Russia controls most of Donbas, its name for the Donetsk and neighboring Luhansk regions, which, along with two southern regions, it illegally annexed three years ago. The Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant is in an area that has been under Russian control since early in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and is not in service. It needs reliable power to cool its six shutdown reactors and spent fuel, to avoid any catastrophic nuclear incidents.
Kellogg, who is due to leave his post in January, was not present at the talks in Florida.
Separately, officials said the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany would participate in a meeting with Zelensky in London on Monday.
As the three days of talks wrapped up, Russian missile, drone and shelling attacks overnight and Sunday killed at least four people in Ukraine.
A man was killed in a drone attack on Ukraine’s northern Chernihiv region Saturday night, local officials said, while a combined missile and drone attack on infrastructure in the central city of Kremenchuk caused power and water outages. Kremenchuk is home to one of Ukraine’s biggest oil refineries and is an industrial hub.
Kyiv and its Western allies say Russia is trying to cripple the Ukrainian power grid and deny civilians access to heat, light and running water for a fourth consecutive winter, in what Ukrainian officials call “weaponizing” the cold.
Three people were killed and 10 others wounded Sunday in shelling by Russian troops in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, according to the regional prosecutor’s office.
