Hamas survivors speak out about ‘ignorant’ pro-Palestinian protests in the US
Survivors of the Hamas terror attack have spoken out against the “ignorant” pro-Palestinian protests erupting across US cities and college campuses — and fear it could be the beginning of something worse.
“I opened a newspaper and on the second page I saw a sign on a store saying ‘no Jews are allowed,'” Maya Parizer, 27, told The Post.
Parizer recently arrived in the US after escaping the Nova Music Festival massacre, where Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 200 innocent revelers on Oct. 7.
“For me, it brings me back to the days of the Holocaust, where it started on small things but then the hate crimes just grew bigger,” she said.
Parizer was partying with friends at the festival in Re’im, Israel, not far from the Gaza border when the Iran-backed terrorists attacked.
She hid in a small room for 23 hours with three other families as terrorists swarmed the event, killing or capturing anyone they could.
She said even though she’s now on US soil, she still doesn’t feel safe.
Ahead of a meeting with US senators on Capitol Hill this week, Parizer was forced to enter the building through an underground tunnel as pro-Palestinian demonstrators blocked their entrance.
Follow along with The Post’s live blog for the latest on Hamas’ attack on Israel
She said she feared the protesters would turn violent, which flew in the face of her perception that the US is “the most safe place possible.”
“I want to stop being scared like I’ve been since October 7. It just keeps getting worse because I’m not in the warzone anymore but it feels like I am in some way,” she said.
“I’m scared that at any corner someone would identify me, maybe from the interview, maybe from hearing my accent, maybe just assuming. This is 2023, people should just wake up.”
Soon after Israel began its retaliatory airstrikes against Hamas, pro-Palestinian protestors took to the streets across the country.
While many have been peaceful, others have seen hateful demonstrators burn US and Israeli flags — or worse.
At a pro-Palestinian rally in Midtown on the day after the Hamas attack on Israel that killed 1,400 Jews, one attendee was seen brandishing a picture of a swastika on her phone.
Several high school girls from Brooklyn’s Urban Assembly Institute of Math and Science for Young Women also brandished unsettling signs at a Washington Square Park rally on Wednesday reading, “Please Keep the World Clean” above an illustration showing the blue Star of David in a garbage can.
Looking to help? Donate here to UJA-Federation of New York’s emergency fund to supply critical aid to the people of Israel, working with a network of nonprofits helping Jewish communities around the world.
Mark Avsker, the Soviet Union-born grandson of Holocaust survivors, said some of the US-based demonstrations he’s seen or read about “take a very shallow view of the situation.”
“I don’t expect most of the people to get into the depths about some conflict or situation halfway around the world. It’s totally fine for people to be ignorant in that situation,” he conceded, before adding, “It is not fine to be ignorant and then to express extreme, very strong opinions about the situation they know nothing about.
” And not only that but also to insist violently to make their opinions enforced,” he added. “That is something that is completely unacceptable.”
The campuses of some of America’s top colleges and universities have been the site of some of the most vitriolic antisemitic rhetoric, displayed under the guise of showing support for Palestinians.
On Oct. 11, a 24-year-old Israeli Columbia University student was beaten with a stick outside the university’s main library, leading to assault as a hate crime charges against 19-year-old Maxwell Friedman.
Campus protests resumed the next day, as thousands of people representing both sides flooded its main square.
The day after Hamas’ cowardly strike against Israel, 34 student groups at Harvard University signed a letter saying Israel was “entirely responsible” for the terror attack.
Harvard saw large pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus, which included the chant “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” which the Anti-Defamation League calls an “antisemitic slogan.”
Hamas attack survivor Adele Raemer agrees — but took it a step further.
“When they say Palestine will be free from the river to the sea, we have to understand that that is a genocidal war cry,” said the 68-year-old American-Israeli, who spent 14 hours locked in her Kibbutz Nirim home’s armored safe room, as she and her family listened to Hamas fighters burn the town to the ground and kidnap their neighbors.
“And I take them at their word.”
Avsker also shared a harrowing account echoing events of the Holocaust relayed to him by his sister-in-law, who took shelter with her three young children as the bloodthirsty terrorists raided their neighborhood.
“The images [she] told me about how they were hiding in the shelter, listening to the soldiers around shooting and hearing their voices and waiting in horror for the moment the door will open and they would be shot on the spot. Those are images that I didn’t expect to hear now because I remembered so many of them.”
Avsker said although the Holocaust happened 80 years ago during “a different era” and a “different place,” it’s still a living history to everyone in Israel.
He expressed fears about what will happen when the young leaders of tomorrow — who are currently being fed a steady diet of inaccurate information about Israel at leading colleges and universities around the country — graduate into the real world.
“Kids grow up, but the concern is that if those kids when they grow up will not get some sense into them will become the leaders, and will replace the leaders today that still have some common sense. That will be concerning,” he told The Post.
