Incensed Residents Confront Westboro Baptist Church Members
By Michael Keller
Fresh from its appearance before the U.S. Supreme Court last week, the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas brought its signature brand of protest to Brooklyn yesterday where it encounters opponents of its anti-Jewish and anti-gay rhetoric.
The church, which triggered a national debate around the limits of free speech after their widely vilified protest at a Marine’s funeral brought them before the U.S. Supreme Court held rallies Monday in front of Jewish schools and synagogues in Brooklyn and a gay rights center in Manhattan. Protesters prepared for them along the way.
The protestors arrived early to the Chaim Berlin Yeshiva on 1310 Ave. I in Brooklyn. Police set up barricades for both groups: the church members, and a group of roughly 75 to 100 Orthodox Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the area.
Jeff Garret, an Orthodox resident who was giving self-defense advice before the protest, said that it was important “to show that Jews came and that this won’t happen again. As compared to World War II when not enough Jews did things.”
Only four church members were on hand. They carried signs reading “Jews Killed Jesus,” “God Hates Israel,” and “God is your enemy.” One church member wore a bloody American flag and the flag of Israel around her waist, carrying a sign that read, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers.”
The church members sang songs that were inaudible under the chants of “Nazi Scum Will Die.” When asked if the church identified itself with the Nazi party, one member replied, “We are not a political organization.” He wore a “Dunder Mifflin” T-shirt and carried two signs that read “Your Rabbi is a Whore” and “144k Jews Will Repent,” a reference to a verse in the Book of Revelation.
New York State Assemblyman Dov Hikind, who represents the largely Orthodox neighborhood of Borough Park, also protested earlier in the day outside the Chabad Lubavitch of Kensington, a Jewish center and synagogue on Ocean Parkway. At that protest, he broke through the police barricade and attempted to grab the signs held by one protester, Shirley Phelps-Roper, daughter of Fred Phelps, the church’s founder. When “people carry signs into your community like ‘Your Rabbi is a Whore,’ you don’t close your eyes,” he said later in the day at the protest on Avenue I. A woman who asked to be identified only as Stefanie and who came from her home in Sheepshead Bay spoke emotionally at the end of the protest. “They have no decency these people,” she said, “I’m a Christian and I can’t stand it. It’s not embarrassing; it brings shame.”
The protesters, however, were not a unified group. Binyamin Jolkovsky, publisher of the Jewish World Review, an online Jewish magazine, thinks that such a vocal protest “embarrasses the Orthodox Jewish community by lowering it down to the level of the people protesting.” He came to the protest to spread his point of view, he added, saying that the church “messed up their research. The Orthodox Jewish community is generally pro-life, pro-family, and in favor of God in the public square,” he said, much like religious Christian communities.
These ideological similarities, however, did nothing to assuage the anger of the protesters. The crowd chanted “Go To Hell” and other slogans and consistently heckled the church members during the half-hour protest. One protester held up a Jewish book saying, “This is the Bible,” while another draped himself in the Israeli flag. One protester threw a beverage onto a church member and a group of Orthodox teenagers threw a plastic bottle. The sizable police force on hand was quick to respond.
At the end of the protest, the four church members got in to the red mini-van that had dropped them off. As the car tried to make its way through the crowd of people surrounding it, one protester hit the hood of their car with an unidentified object, leaving a sizable dent.
Protesters ran after the car as it left heading West on Avenue I. One mini-van carrying at least three Orthodox protesters drove down the avenue with its side door still open while a fourth person jumped in. The car went off following the church members’ car.
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