An 'extremist' rabbi has tried to run-over pro-Palestine protesters in New York on Tuesday. In this incident, three people have been arrested including that rabbi.
The rabbi Reuven Kahane, a 57-year-old driver, tried to drive into the protesters on a Manhattan street on purpose.
New York Police Detective Melissa Delacruz said the incident happened around 8:45 am [local time] near the intersection of 72nd Street and Park Avenue on the Upper East Side.
About 25 protesters had been wrapping up a demonstration outside a building and were walking away when two of them got into an argument with a driver.
The rabbi then struck a 55-year-old protester with his vehicle. The demonstrator was treated at a hospital for minor injuries. The rabbi, the demonstrator and another demonstrator were taken into custody, Delacruz said.
Rabbi Kahane is said to be a relative of Meir Kahane, the founder of the Zionist terror group, Jewish Defense League, and a fierce proponent of the expulsion of all Arabs from Palestine.
Meir Kahane, a former Israeli MP who was assassinated in 1990, was the founder of Jewish extremist Kach party which was banned in Israel after the 1994 murder of 29 Palestinians in Al Khalil city by one of his supporters.
Police officials told local media that Kahane is charged with second-degree assault, a designation in the New York Penal Code reserved for assaults where the perpetrator intends to cause serious injury and inflicts physical harm on the victim. The offence entails a maximum potential sentence of 7 years imprisonment.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest [CUAD] — the student group that organised a protest sit-in on campus which sparked similar demonstrations at other colleges across the US — said anti-war protestors "were attacked on the crosswalk" by an "Upper East Side Zionist."
According to CUAD, the individual approached the demonstrators, who were peacefully urging Columbia to divest from companies collaborating with Israel and advocating for the US government to cease its support for the Israel army.
[Kahane] requested a flyer before seizing a protester by the arm. He then "circled the block to drive into our peaceful demonstration," striking one person who was "arrested and handcuffed to the bed while in the hospital," CUAD added.
