By Islam Dogru
Closed-door meetings held in some synagogues in the US and Canada to sell properties belonging to Palestinians from areas where illegal settlers reside in East Jerusalem and the West Bank have sparked outrage across the US.
One of these meetings, organized by the Texas-based real estate company Keller Williams, was protested in Englewood, New Jersey.
Dozens of protesters, including pro-peace Jews, gathered outside the Ahavath Torah Synagogue in Englewood, holding Palestinian flags and protesting the sale of properties to American Zionist Jews from illegal settlement areas.
Surrounded by tight police security measures, the protesters gathered near the synagogue, for hours chanting slogans such as "Freedom for Palestine," "End the Israeli occupation," and "Illegal settlements must stop.”
In the pouring rain, protesters carried banners saying: "You can’t sell stolen lands," "This is land theft," and "Do not do business on stolen lands."
Leila Hazou, the daughter of a Palestinian who was born in Jerusalem, said that she came from Milford, Pennsylvania, nearly two hours away, to protest "the greatest injustice of our time."
Decrying the meeting inside the synagogue, Hazou told Anadolu: "It's a disgusting situation for me that lands and properties that don’t belong to them and are illegally settled are being sold. It's illegal and morally wrong in many ways. This shouldn’t happen in this country or anywhere else. That's why we had to be here to reject it."
The New Jersey office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also condemned the sales.
"Places of worship should be sacred. The use of places of worship like synagogues to sell stolen lands by violating international law is deeply concerning," CAIR said in a written statement.
The sales meetings, organized by realtor Keller Williams along with the illegal Israeli settlers group "Your Home in Israel," are being held privately in New Jersey, New York, Toronto, and Montreal.
Pre-registration is required for the meetings, and only Jewish members are allowed to enter.
Estimates indicate about 700,000 Israeli settlers live in roughly 300 illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
All Jewish settlements in the occupied territories are considered illegal under international law.
Israel has waged a deadly offensive on the Gaza Strip since a cross-border incursion by the Palestinian group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023. The ensuing Israeli bombardment has killed at least 30,631 people and injured 72,043 others with mass destruction and shortages of necessities.
The Israeli war has pushed 85% of Gaza’s population into internal displacement amid acute shortages of food, clean water, and medicine, while 60% of the enclave's infrastructure has been damaged or destroyed, according to the UN.
Israel stands accused of genocide at the International Court of Justice. An interim ruling in January ordered Tel Aviv to stop genocidal acts and take measures to guarantee that humanitarian assistance is provided to civilians in Gaza.
*Writing by Zehra Nur Duz in Ankara