Feds Launch FACE Act Lawsuit Against Anti-Israel Protesters at NJ Synagogue
Frightened worshipers were confronted by a pro-Palestine mob shouting, “The Jew is here!” “You got your f*cking sh*t rocked, didn’t you?” “You’re next! You’re next!”
The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act lawsuit against a group of anti-Israel protesters who disrupted a New Jersey synagogue event last year—marking the first time the government has invoked the law’s protections for places of worship in a federal complaint.
Enacted in 1994, the FACE Act makes it illegal to block access to reproductive health care facilities, including abortion clinics. The Act also protects houses of worship, prohibiting the use of force, threats of force, or physical obstruction to intentionally injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.
The mob protests in West Orange, New Jersey, last November were sparked by a religious event at Congregation Ohr Torah synagogue to promote the sale of real estate in Israel.
Originally scheduled at the home of Dr. Moshe Glick, the gathering was relocated to the synagogue, the lawsuit says, after protesters sent him a threatening letter. Glick later discovered he had been “doxxed” in pro-Palestinian social media accounts publicizing his home address as the location of a planned protest.
On the night of the event, pro-Palestinian protesters stormed through the neighborhood, blaring “vuvuzelas” as they approached the synagogue. Vuvuzelas are long slender horns known to cause permanent hearing loss, according to the filing.
Defying police, the protesters charged onto synagogue grounds, aggressively confronting worshipers, including Glick, who was targeted with a vuvuzela in his face by Altaf Sharif, one of the protesters.
Chaos ensued as another worshiper, 65-year-old David Silberberg, allegedly defended Glick by spraying pepper spray at Sharif. At that point, according to the complaint, a protester named Eric Camins shouted, “The Jew is here!”—pointing to Silberberg.
In the YouTube video provided by Glick and embedded below, Sharif is then seen tackling Silberberg to the ground, keeping him in a chokehold as they roll down a hill. Believing Silberberg’s life was in danger, Glick then allegedly intervened to rescue him, according to the complaint and depicted in the lurid scene:
After the assault, according to the filing, members of the mob shouted to the Jewish worshipers, “And you got your f*cking sh*t rocked, didn’t you?” and “You’re next! You’re next!” They also shouted, “Moshe Glick you can’t hide!”
This mob gone mad allegedly scared several individuals away from attending the event.
While Sharif—so far—has gotten off scot-free following the riots, Glick was indicted in June on criminal charges, including assault and weapons possession following the scuffle. The prosecution of the respected communal leader sparked outrage. Glick is now forced to fight an unjust legal battle, his supporters say, one that has turned the aggressor, Sharif, into the “victim.” His indictment sets a “dangerous precedent for how Jews are treated in the legal system amidst rising anti-Semitism.”
But now, justice may be coming for Sharif and the organizers of last year’s mayhem. The DOJ lawsuit filed in New Jersey federal district court on Monday names local chapters of the national Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), as well as Sharif and other protesters as defendants. The government asks the court to restrict their access to the synagogue and Glick’s home, and it seeks monetary damages.
The protesters’ conduct, both in forcing the relocation of the event from Glick’s home and in disrupting the event at the synagogue, violated the FACE Act, the government says in the lawsuit.
The DOJ filing is the latest step taken by the new administration to advance a more even-handed enforcement of the FACE Act, which for years disproportionately targeted pro-life demonstrators.
During the Biden administration, the FACE Act was weaponized against pro-life Americans, while pro-life centers and churches were left unprotected, as reported at Legal Insurrection. The Biden DOJ arrested and convicted 23 individuals under the FACE Act for praying and demonstrating outside abortion facilities.
“Yet, the same DOJ refused to apply the FACE Act to protect places of worship and crisis pregnancy centers,” the administration’s anti-Christian bias task force reported earlier this year.
The weaponization of the FACE Act against pro-lifers officially came to an end as soon as Trump took office. One of the President’s first executive orders was to pardon the 23 pro-life protesters earlier convicted under Biden.
The new DOJ leadership immediately directed its staff to pursue future abortion-related FACE Act prosecutions and civil actions only in limited circumstances, to guard against further abuse of the law against peaceful protesters.
And earlier this year, the Trump DOJ filed a statement of interest in support of a private FACE Act lawsuit against pro-Hamas protesters who disrupted a similar event at a Los Angeles synagogue.
This lawsuit is a great development. It will bring fresh scrutiny to how the events of last year—and the way local authorities handled them—ended with criminal charges against the alleged victims of the violence rather than its perpetrators.
It could also lay the groundwork for future lawsuits, not only against these defendants but in other cases. In addition to civil penalities, violators of the FACE Act can face criminal punishments including fines or imprisonment.
With Monday’s filing, the Trump DOJ has finally flipped the FACE Act script, not only for Glick, but for houses of worship and their members that until now have been neglected by the law enacted to protect them.
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Comments
“Vuvuzelas are long slender horns known to cause permanent hearing loss, according to the filing.”
They’re sports celebration noise makers popular in Africa. Equivalent to the air horn but cheaper.
Which can also cause permanent hearing loss.
Shorter hardin “very suitable for intimidating joooos”
Glock pistols are celebration noisemakers popular in the United States. Equivalent to BB guns but only more expensive.
s/
As usual, local prosecutors prosecute the victim while letting the perp walk away. What a perversion of justice a la Alvin Bragg. I am glad the Trump Administration is stepping up to the plate to undo the perversion of justice by local authorities.
Bring back the Mafia. More trustworthy and more effective than a Demitards BitchAss prosecutor.
But abortion clinics ARE places of worship – death worship.
The FACE act needs to be scrapped. Otherwise (should Dems regain D.C.) it will be used against pro-life people who pray for and attempt to counsel women seeking abortions. It’s a bad law of questionable Constitutional merit. There are other laws to deal with outright harassment, intimidation, threats, discrimination, and trespass. Those activities don’t get a “free speech” pass.
There is not a single law that Democrats won’t abuse or ignore the second it suits them
It has never been used against them, so long as that’s all they were doing. It’s been used against people who were blocking entrances, or getting in people’s faces and physically preventing them from entering. The Supreme Court has been very clear that protesters must be allowed to come close enough to the entrance that people about to enter can hear their message, but may be kept far enough away that people remain able to enter unmolested.
The problem with the act is not that it will be misused but that it was never enforced evenhandedly. It was never used to protect pregnancy help centers, or places of worship, as it explicitly says it should be. Now this administration is correcting that.
If someone is blocked from entering a place of worship, why is that not a civil rights violation? Why use FACE?
To rub it in the Democrats FACES.
“The Act also protects houses of worship”
I mean… WHO KNEW?
Certainly not through four years of Biden, nobody ever did!
The law was enacted because there was a real problem with people blocking abortion clinics. The pregnancy support places were added in the name of even-handedness, even though they weren’t actually experiencing a problem. And they threw in the houses of worship as a gesture to the pro-life side of the debate.
Until recently no one’s been trying to block entrances to houses of worship, so there was never a reason to enforce it. But in the Biden years both churches and pregnancy support centers started experiencing problems from a new generation of leftist activists, and the Biden administration refused to do anything about it. That has now been corrected.
New generation of leftist activists. You do mean those kind adherents to the Religion of Pieces.
No, I don’t mean that. Moslems are against abortion too. They don’t mind killing babies on jihad, but they object to it outside that context. So the people causing trouble at pregnancy support centers are not Moslems. And the ones at churches and synagogues are generally not Moslem either. They’re Marxists, if anything at all.
But those laws are only enforced against conservatives.
I am a BIG fan of vigilante justice. It’s a lost art and more effective than Democrat prosecutors.
We can’t just scrap laws because one side or the other will abuse them. They made this law after the high profile killings of abortion providers. The basic civil rights laws of the time were not sufficient due to no criminal penalties. And this law has survived a challenge in the courts. But my big question off topic on this law is why didn’t we use this to stop local and state governments from blocking us form worship during Covid 19 garbage? Is there a statute of limitations??? Under this law the governments themselves were criminal.
State and local governments didn’t “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injure, intimidate or interfere with, or attempt to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship;”
“(4) PHYSICAL OBSTRUCTION.—The term ‘physical obstruction’ means rendering impassable ingress to or egress from a facility that provides reproductive health services or to or from a place of religious worship, or rendering passage to or from such a facility or place of religious worship unreasonably difficult or hazardous.”
find the connection to the shadow government of the dnc dsa blmplo and
take them to civil court for bk proceedings
maga
I’d rather the execrable FACE act be repealed, but since it is on the books KUDOS to the Trump DOJ for weaonizing it against terrorists.
Words mean things. Islam is a cancer in the West, and as such, an enemy of the West. Let’s not get complacent and use the enemy’s language.
There’s no such nation called ‘palestine’, and never has been. As such, there are no ‘palestian’ people, and never has been. They are Arabs, mongrel Arabs (mostly Islamic) that no other Arab (mostly Islamic) nations want inside their borders. Now, ask yourself ‘Why?’
Call them pro-Gazans, call them anti-Israel, or Islamists, but never ‘pro-palestine or palestinians’ because these are made-up words. One mightvas well praise the utopian reality of Wakanda when using those words.
Words mean things. Stop using the enemy’s language.
Excellent.
Thank you.
I thought I read a District Court Judge rules that nationwide, the FACE act could only be used against conservatives.
Good, I hope they bury those terrorists under the prison
Surrounded by bacon.
Simply despicable that these Jew-hating, genocidal Islamofascists, Muslim supremacists and their non-Muslim, useful idiot, Dhimmi-crat allies, feel emboldened to attack American Jews in a manner resembling that of German National Socialists of the 20th century (or, Muslim terrorists, in the 21st century).
The hammer of federal law enforcement needs to come down, hard, upon all of these vile reprobates.