Pro-Palestine Protestors Seize Brooklyn Museum

On May 31, 2024, up to 1,000 anti-Israel agitators swarmed the Brooklyn Museum in New York City, chanting “Free Free Palestine.” Museum employees rushed to lock the museum’s glass doors as the protest march approached. The radicals managed to seize the museum lobby, where they set up tents and hung banners on the glass wall enclosure of the lobby.

The demonstrators handed out brochures demanding the Brooklyn Museum publicly recognize the war the Israeli Defense Force is waging against Hamas, as “genocide,” and that the museum must break ties with donors and companies with ties to Israel.

The Brooklyn Museum said in a statement: “Out of concern for the building, our collections, and our staff, the decision was made to close the building an hour early.” The museum asked the public to vacate the building. The institution sits on the edge of Crown Heights, home to a significant number of Orthodox Jews.

A handful of demonstrators scaled the museum building to unfurl and attach a huge banner on the sculptured triangular pediment over the institution’s original entry doors. It read: Free Palestine Divest From Genocide. The protest goal was to take over the museum and force it to “disclose and divest” its ties, programs, and investments in Israel.

The protesters paraded on the grounds of the museum carrying banners and placards reading: The Future Is Anti Zionist, By Any Means Necessary, Allah Does Not Love the Oppressors, Free Palestine From The River To The Sea, Glory To The Martyrs, Zionism Is Terrorism, Gaza Resists, and other catchphrases that, ahem… promote Jeffersonian democracy.

One of the troublemakers outside the museum wore a red and white checkered keffiyeh to hide his identity. He waved a large green flag—the banner of the Islamic fundamentalist terror organization, Hamas. Written on the flag in white calligraphic Arabic is the Shahada (an Islamic statement of faith): “There is no god but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” Great Britain designates Hamas as a terrorist group, and displaying support for them, like flying their flag… is illegal in the UK.

The Brooklyn Museum confirmed that existing and newly installed artworks on museum grounds suffered damage. The museum said members of its staff were physically and verbally harassed by rabble rousers entering the museum. The museum noted they did not call the NYPD, but the police nevertheless arrived and made arrests. A police helicopter and two drones hovered above the museum.

The NYPD Strategic Response Group arrived at the museum and violent scuffles took place between the protesters and the SRG. It was reported by the Associated Press that “demonstrators hurled plastic bottles at the officers and shouted insults.” A protester vandalized an outdoor sculpture with spray-paint and was arrested. The iconic OY/YO sculpture found on the museum plaza was defaced with scrawled messages and pro-Palestine stickers.

The NYPD said the Brooklyn Museum protest was organized by Within Our Lifetime (WOL), the same group that attempted to disrupt the Met Gala at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 6, 2024. The WOL chair, Nerdeen Kiswani, was tackled and arrested while occupying the museum lobby. She was one of 34 demonstrators arrested by the NYPD. At the time of this writing, charges have yet to be determined.

At the Met Gala protest of May 6, 2024 organized by WOL, some 2,000 protesters marched to shutdown the Gala, instead they were diverted by the NYPD into New York’s Central Park. Once in the park they vandalized two important bronze sculptures. One is dedicated to the US soldiers of the 107th Infantry Regiment who lost their lives in WWI, the other is a bronze equestrian statue gilded in gold and dedicated to General Sherman, the Commanding General of the Union Army during the Civil War.

When organizing the May 31, 2024 Brooklyn Museum protest, Within Our Lifetime called on its supporters to “flood” and “de-occupy” the museum. It should be mentioned that Hamas called its Oct. 7, 2023 attack on Israel from Gaza, Operation Al-Aqsa Flood. That “flood” killed 1,200 people in Israel. It swept away 253 hostages, 130 of which are still held by Hamas in underground dungeons in Gaza. Five of the captives are Americans.

The protesters never mentioned the hostages, American or otherwise. There wasn’t a single solitary American flag carried in the crowd, but there were hundreds of Palestinian flags of all sizes… and one large Hamas banner. Why, it almost makes one think this crowd was anti-American.

The protest at the Brooklyn Museum comes just prior to New York City’s Celebrate Israel Parade, held this year on June 2, 2024. The theme of this year’s parade is “Bring Them Home,” a reference to the 130 hostages held by Hamas terrorists. It’s a certainty anti-Israeli protesters will attempt to disrupt the event. The NYPD Strategic Response Group will be waiting.

That pro-Palestinian protesters are targeting art museums should come as no surprise. Anti-Israel activists have recently merged with climate alarmist groups like Just Stop Oil.

I’ve been documenting eco-vandals like Just Stop Oil, Declare Emergency, Last Generation, Extinction Rebellion, and others, wrecking havoc on paintings and sculptures in museums, galleries, various institutions, and public places—all in the name of protecting the environment. I have documented this devastation in the WAR ON ART section of my blog.

For instance, on March 8, 2024, a member of the UK group Palestine Action, entered Cambridge University and used a box cutter to utterly destroy a 110-year-old oil painting by famed artist Philip Alexius de László (1869-1937). It was a portrait of Arthur James Balfour, the UK Foreign secretary who issued a 1917 declaration favoring a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine.

Palestine Action is an ally of Youth Demand, a spin-off of Just Stop Oil. The membership is interchangeable. The Youth Demand slogan is: “There can be no business as usual until Palestine is free!” Youth Demand and Palestine Action have been carrying out a vandalism campaign against buildings used by the Labour Party and the Ministry of Defence, a strategy intended to force the UK government to abandon Israel to the tender mercies of Hamas.

I have witnessed innumerable social causes in my lifetime, and I’ve seen protest movements against war from Vietnam to Afghanistan. But I have never encountered activists who intentionally, purposefully, mutilate or obliterate works of art to promote their worldview.

Not just any work of art, but masterworks that exemplify the heights of Western Civilization. On Jan. 28, 2024 creeps from the French eco-vandals Riposte Alimentaire (Food Response) hurled soup at Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa in the Louvre. As I write this on June 1, 2024, a droid from the same miserabilist group glued a poster directly on the unprotected surface of Poppy Field, a Claude Monet oil painting hanging in the Musee d’Orsay in Paris.

Droid glues poster onto 1873 “Poppy Field” oil painting by Claude Monet.

Something in the Western soul is withering, and we need to reverse the malady promptly. When a society begins plundering its highest achievements in the arts, total collapse follows. The ersatz “rebels” fighting a war on art have nothing to offer but simulacrum. They’ve got it all wrong.

To me rebellion is like art, it’s either pure or it’s nothing.