America

Anti-Zionist Graffiti Splashed on Homes of Brooklyn Museum Officials

The homes of several Jewish leaders and board members of the Brooklyn Museum were vandalized early Wednesday morning in a coordinated attack, according to a museum spokeswoman.

Vandals attacked the Brooklyn Heights home of Anne Pasternak, director of the museum, by smearing red paint and graffiti across the entry of her apartment building and hanging a banner that accused her of being a “white-supremacist Zionist.”

The homes of two trustees and the museum’s president and chief operating officer, Kimberly Panicek Trueblood, all of whom are Jewish, were also targeted, according to Taylor Maatman, the museum’s director of public relations and communications.

The Brooklyn Museum has had a fraught relationship with some community organizers, who have staged protests throughout Ms. Pasternak’s tenure. Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the institution’s grounds have become a gathering spot for pro-Palestinian activists who claim there is a link between wealthy trustees and the military-industrial complex in Israel — an accusation that museum officials have denied.

Last week, police arrested dozens of activists outside the museum, including a leader of the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, after a protest in which some activists invaded the museum. In a statement, the organization said it condemned the Brooklyn Museum and would “hold its leadership fully accountable for the violence carried out against the protesters inside and outside the museum, the majority of whom were Black and brown youth and young women.”

In a phone interview on Wednesday morning, Ms. Pasternak said she was “disgusted and shaken” about the vandalism of her home.

Back to top button