A Yorktown vigil was for mourning, not for shouting slurs

Brett Freeman

'The protesters are free to hold their own vigils for the very real suffering in Gaza. That suffering is undeniable — and it is compounded by Hamas, which uses its own people as human shields. Jews are not blind to Palestinian pain. Many of us grieve both tragedies at once.'”

“Baby killer.”

That was among the number of epithets hurled by a group of about a dozen or so protesters, who screamed at the people attending the Oct. 7 memorial at the Yorktown Community & Cultural Center on Monday, Sept. 29. They also allegedly yelled "from the river to the sea," although we don't have that particular phrase documented on a video sent to us.

For reference, "from the river to the sea" is a genocidal call for the total elimination of Israel because the land of Israel exists between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Oct. 7 memorial was organized by several local Jewish community groups and spearheaded by Yorktown High School senior Talia Pierson, who founded Lights of Tomorrow in honor of the victims of Oct. 7.

My 76-year-old mother and my aunt were among the Oct. 7 memorial attendees.

So, here’s my honest question to the protesters: What exactly did you intend to accomplish? To frighten elderly women who came to mourn? To score a slogan at a vigil for civilians butchered and kidnapped on Oct. 7?

I'm not saying that protesting the war in Gaza has no place in American society (the First Amendment and all). But these people weren't protesting a meeting of government officials. They were protesting a nonpartisan group of people mourning the Oct. 7 massacre — a group that I'm certain holds differing and nuanced views of the war in Gaza.

Protesting at this peaceful gathering is akin to the Westboro Baptist Church—a hate group notorious for disrupting military funerals and even the funerals of Sandy Hook victims.

If people felt fearful of the protesters (as my mom did, documented in a series of texts she sent to me), the fear was not misplaced. In May, two Israeli embassy employees were murdered in D.C. by a man shouting "Free Palestine." In September, a New Hampshire gunman opened fire at a country club, allegedly shouting the same phrase. And in June, a man in Colorado injured eight people with Molotov cocktails after targeting Jews. My aunt's son (my cousin) had been at that mall just 30 minutes earlier.

The slaughter on Oct. 7 is not in dispute: Hamas-led gunmen murdered more than a thousand people, burned families alive, raped women and girls, and abducted hundreds. The Jewish community is still mourning that atrocity, carried out by Hamas, the terrorist group that Palestinians in Gaza elected to lead in 2006. What Jews want now is simple: for Hamas to release the hostages and for Oct. 7 to never happen again.

The protesters are free to hold their own vigils for the very real suffering in Gaza. That suffering is undeniable — and it is compounded by Hamas, which uses its own people as human shields. Jews are not blind to Palestinian pain. Many of us grieve both tragedies at once.

You can hold two truths: Hamas committed atrocities, and civilians in Gaza are living through hell. That is the moral gray we’re stuck in where decent people can argue about proportionality and tragic wartime choices. (Think of the Allied bombing of cities like Dresden—awful methods justified, in the moment, by a felt necessity to end a war.) But acknowledging tragedy in Gaza doesn’t justify shouting “baby killer” at neighbors holding a memorial vigil for the murdered.

Do the protesters recognize that Hamas’ ideology is explicitly genocidal? Article 7 of Hamas' founding document states, "The Day of Judgement will not come about until Muslims fight the Jews, when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Muslims, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him."

Juxtapose this with the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948: "...to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions. We extend our hand to all neighboring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighborliness..."

Polling in the months after Oct. 7 found large majorities among Palestinians supporting the attack or denying that atrocities occurred. That doesn’t make every Palestinian “complicit,” but it should complicate the chant-sheet by the "Free Palestine" protesters.

I ask the protesters: If your activism has room for complexity here, say so out loud. In our reporter's interview, one of the protestors said she doesn't hate Jews and that she is just opposed to Zionism. Opposing Zionism—the Jewish right to self-determination—is antisemitism, no matter how it’s framed.

If your goal was to persuade, you failed. If it was to intimidate mourners, you succeeded—and revealed something ugly about the movement you represent. Here’s my challenge: Stand with me in a position that is both pro-Palestinian people and anti-Hamas. Condemn the Oct. 7 atrocities without qualification. Demand every hostage’s release now. Call for protections for civilians in Gaza and real pressure against Hamas for seizing humanitarian aid and placing civilians as human shields. And stop screaming slurs at grieving families in Westchester.

If you can agree to those basics, we have a place to start talking. If you can’t, then maybe “baby killer” was never about justice—it was just about hate.