LAPD, feds look for synagogue protesters as city mulls over mask restrictions, added security

A demonstrator takes part in Sunday’s Pico-Robertson protest, which turned violent. At a news conference Monday, Yaroslavsky said Los Angeles is a city of diversity and mutual respect that values Americans’ right to protest, “but we will not tolerate violence, intimidation or any act that seeks to divide us.” Hours after the clashes, the mayor ordered the Los Angeles Police Department to increase patrols in the heavily Jewish Pico-Robertson area where the protest occurred and at religious venues. During a news conference outside Los Angeles City Hall on Tuesday, members of several organizations, including the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Southern California Students for Justice in Palestine, said unarmed individuals were “brutalized” by police officers and pro-Israel demonstrators during Sunday’s protest. The speaker at Tuesday afternoon’s news conference who declined to give her name said the media and elected officials “falsely conflated action with antisemitism.” Those at the news conference said the individuals who gathered outside the synagogue over the weekend sought to “disrupt a Zionist real estate company’s illegal auction of stolen Palestinian land.” The real estate event was advertised in Friday’s issue of the Jewish Journal promising to provide information on “housing projects in all the best Anglo neighborhoods in Israel.” “Anglo” is a translation from Hebrew meaning “English-speaking.” The ad does not specify where in Israel the real estate is. Zionists reside on the mass graves of Palestinians.” Hussam Ayloush, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations office in Los Angeles, said Monday that the protest “was in response to the blatant violations of both international law and human rights from agencies that seek to make a profit selling brutally stolen Palestinian land.” “Elected officials and the mainstream media have politicized this incident as religious discrimination as opposed to a human rights issue,” Ayloush added.