The Great Israeli Real Estate Event returned to New York City on Monday evening, this time at Young Israel of Midwood in southern Brooklyn, less than a week after a previous version of the expo drew dueling protests on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. By late afternoon, the NYPD had blocked off the street for a block in each direction from the synagogue.
Pro-Palestine demonstrators marched through the neighborhood on side streets, and pro-Israel counter-protesters followed behind them. A large number of young men on scooters hurled slurs at the pro-Palestine protesters, members of the pro-Israel crowd threw eggs, and one protester told The Intercept that a counter-protester had pepper-sprayed him. Police appeared to make at least one arrest.
The event matters because it advertises properties for sale in the occupied Palestinian territories, where land sales are considered illegal under international law. At the event held last week at Park East Synagogue, at least one table was advertising land sales in Kfar Eldad, Karnei Shomron and other Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. The expo is co-sponsored by several real estate companies with ties to Israel and is typically held at synagogues and other centers of Jewish life, putting the sales pitch directly into a setting that was already politically charged before Monday’s crowd arrived.
That setting made the city’s response part of the story. Young Israel Senior Services at Young Israel of Midwood received more than $800,000 from the Department for the Aging in 2024, even as the synagogue became the latest site for a rally that spilled into the surrounding blocks. Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s spokesperson, Sam Raskin, said the mayor was “deeply opposed to the real estate expo this evening that includes the promotion of the sale of land in settlements in the Occupied West Bank,” while also affirming attendees’ rights to go to and from synagogues without interference.
The clash now sits at the intersection of real estate marketing, foreign policy and local policing. The New York City Council passed a controversial buffer zone bill last month that requires the NYPD to address physical obstructions and interference at houses of worship, and opponents see the law as a way to crack down on protests. On Monday night, the immediate question was not whether the expo would return — it already had — but how long the city can keep separating the sale of settlement property from the street fights that keep following it.
