We, Hoboken residents, call on Hoboken public officials and Zionist community leaders to condemn anti-Palestinian rhetoric, threats, and violence.

On March 27, 2026, a Hoboken resident was arrested for planning, from his Hoboken residence, to assassinate a prominent pro-Palestine activist in New York City. The federal criminal complaint details a weeks-long undercover operation specifying the target. It includes the defendant's chilling invocation of violence in the name of "self-defense," a common justification for both state and private violence against Palestinians.

Anti-Palestinian rhetoric and bigotry have skyrocketed in our community, both online and in person, since October 2023. Although finally in 2025, Mayor Bhalla allowed a Palestinian flag raising to take place at City Hall, it was publicly condemned by then-Councilmember (now Mayor) Jabbour. Despite repeated calls throughout 2024 at City Council meetings for ceasefire resolutions and for an acknowledgement of Palestinian existence and needs in Hoboken, the only statements that emerged from City Council, which included Mayor Jabbour at that time, relating to Palestinians at all, simply called for unity, decried antisemitism, and failed to ever mention Palestinians in Hoboken.

There are Palestinian individuals and families who live in this town and deserve to be assured of their safety, value, and dignity as Palestinians in the city they call home. Failing to address, specifically and clearly with respect to Palestinians, the fear that comes naturally from knowing one of our own neighbors was planning to assassinate a pro-Palestine activist, is a grave abandonment of the civic duty of our public officials. Milquetoast affirmations of inclusivity and condemnations of "hate" are no help when they fail to call out the specific forms of hate motivating violence in our community.

Targeting pro-Palestine activists, while often based also on Islamophobia and racism, is most directly promoted by the pro-Israel faction who have vociferously defended what the rest of the world acknowledges as a genocide, and who routinely condemn and vilify pro-Palestine and anti-Zionist individuals and groups from their pulpits and their keyboards.

The leaders of local Zionist organizations, including two synagogues, United Synagogue of Hoboken and Chabad of Hoboken and Jersey City, and the local chapter of the Israeli American Council, as well as the Jewish Federation of Northern New Jersey, have an urgent moral obligation to publicly clarify to everyone in this community and everyone on their vast list-serves that they condemn without reservation any and all threats and violence against Palestinians and pro-Palestinian activists. Whether or not the arrested man is formally affiliated with the Zionist communities in this town, those communities give safe harbor to anti-Palestinian bigotry and violence. Especially given how small this town is and how vocal the Zionist community leaders have been in their defense of Israel's genocide and their condemnation of pro-Palestine groups, they must issue public statements decrying any threats or violence against pro-Palestine individuals, activists, or groups.

Therefore, we, Hoboken residents, call on Hoboken public officials and Zionist community leaders to condemn anti-Palestinian rhetoric, threats, and violence.