Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld—whom pro-Hamas activists assaulted last year—wrote to the Department of Justice to note D.C.’s permissive attitude toward anti-Semitic harassment and violence in light of Wednesday’s terror attack
A rabbi whom pro-Hamas activists assaulted last year urged the Department of Justice on Thursday to investigate Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department (MPD), alleging that officers have been ordered “not to enforce D.C. law against anti-Israel protesters.”
Anti-Israel activists assaulted Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld—leader of Washington’s Yeshivas Elimelech Jewish studies center—while he prayed outside the Israeli embassy. The protesters, who had demonstrated near the embassy since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack, attempted to disrupt Herzfeld’s prayer by blasting sirens in his ear, ultimately damaging his hearing.
Herzfeld approached the MPD officers after the assault, asking why they did not intervene. The officers “told Rabbi Hertzfeld that they had been instructed not to enforce the noise ordinances against Palestinian protesters who protested outside the Israel Embassy,” his letter to the Justice Department reads.
“Rabbi Herzfeld believes that the MPD has either been given such instructions or has itself instructed certain officers not to enforce D.C. law against anti-Israel protestors,” he wrote through his legal representative, Rothwell Figg, according to a copy of the letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon. “Rabbi Herzfeld has a specific basis to believe that for more than a year, MPD officers have been under instruction to avoid enforcing certain D.C. laws against anti-Israel protesters in the District.”
Federal authorities, the rabbi said, must now seek to determine whether the MPD and D.C. government have shirked their legal responsibilities and fostered an environment that enables violent attacks on Jews and Israelis. He asked the Justice Department to gather “all electronic communications” from the MPD to determine if it issued “instructions to avoid enforcing D.C. law against anti-Israel protestors.”
Herzfeld noted in his letter that the anti-Israel agitators were permitted for months to gather “directly in front of the Embassy and thereby threaten and intimidate visitors.”
“For years, it has always been the policy that protestors in front of the embassy be required at a much greater distance so as not to harass visitors.” That is no longer the case, Herzfeld’s attorneys state.
The city’s permissive attitude towards anti-Israel activists, Herzfeld told the Free Beacon, warrants immediate federal scrutiny in light of Wednesday’s terrorist attack that killed Israeli embassy staffers Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. The alleged assailant, Elias Rodriguez, shouted “Free, free Palestine!” before he gunned down the duo.
“We don’t know if any amount of security in the world would have prevented these murders. But we do know that prior to these murders the security in the city was insufficient,” Herzfeld said. “D.C. was a place where many Jews told me that they did not feel safe walking because they are Jewish. With her policies, the mayor tolerated this antisemitism and, more than that, encouraged it.”
The letter is not the first time D.C. mayor Muriel Bowser has faced accusations of permitting anti-Semitic and anti-Israel harassment. In May 2024, she declined to send police officers to George Washington University’s campus even after school officials requested a law enforcement presence to help clear the encampment that student radicals erected on the university’s property.
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