An anti-Israel mob descended on the Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles Sunday in a display that turned violent as keffiyeh-clad activists attacked a Jewish woman on the street.
The video capturing the beating also shows a masked woman spraying a Jewish man with what appears to be mace.
The chaos on Sunday began when anti-Israel agitators gathered outside the synagogue and attempted to block its entrances. Congregants then exited the building to counter-protest.
As the Los Angeles Times reported, only one arrest was made. The arrested individual was reportedly carrying a “spiked flag,” ostensibly meant to be used as a weapon.
Other videos show police escorting an anti-Israel couple out of their car — alongside their keffiyeh-clad toddler — as the woman, holding her own keffiyeh, flipped off congregants who emerged from the synagogue to stage a counter-protest.
Rabbi Hertzel Illulian, the founder of the JEM Community Center in Beverly Hills, told CBS News he could not imagine Jews or Christians gathering outside a mosque and attacking worshippers.
“I don’t think the Jewish would go in front of a mosque or the Christian people would go in front of a mosque to do such a thing,” Illulian said. “Nobody would accept this. But here, when it comes to Jews and Israel, everything is kosher, everything is okay.”
President Joe Biden released a statement on X Monday morning, saying he is “appalled by the scenes outside of Adas Torah synagogue in Los Angeles.”
“Intimidating Jewish congregants is dangeorus, unconscionable, antisemitic, and un-American,” Biden wrote. “Americans have a right to peaceful protest. But blocking access to a house of worship — and engaging in violence — is never acceptable.”
The Adas Torah synagogue is only a few miles from the University of California, Los Angeles, where an anti-Israel encampment became the scene of violence against Jews and what attorneys for students suing the university have described as a “Jew Exclusion Zone.”
Los Angeles was the site of the killing of Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old man who was hit over the head with a megaphone by an anti-Israel protester, then fell backwards and struck his head on the ground, ultimately dying the next day while in the hospital.
The alleged killer, Loay Abdel Fattah Alnaji, is a professor at Moorpark College in Southern California.