Anti-Israel protesters outside a Jewish community-sponsored film screening in Chicago on Monday attacked a Jewish man in his late fifties who entered the theater with a small Israeli flag, allegedly punching him repeatedly in the head.
Local ABC affiliate WLS-7 reported:
As anti-Israel protesters tried to block people from entering a Monday night screening of “Nova,” a documentary about the October 7 Hamas massacre at the Nova Music Festival that killed hundreds, a Jewish attendee was attacked. Chicago police are now investigating.
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The man, who is in his late 50s, said one protester tried to yank the flag from his hand. The next thing he knew, he was being attacked by several protesters.
“A group of them was swinging me around and threw me into a parked car,” the victim said. “I was completely surrounded by maybe six or seven that started punching me in the head.”
The man spoke to local news on camera, but did not want to be identified, and said he feared for his children’s safety.
Chicago is home to a large Palestinian-American community, and frequently features radical anti-Israel protests that rival those in Detroit. Last week, threats of protests forced the cancelation of a musical performance by the Jewish musician Matisyahu, who is openly supportive of Israel (as well as of the broader goal of peace in the Middle East).
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.