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The Los Angeles City Council is considering whether to give public funds to private, armed security patrols to protect its religious communities, following a protest against the marketing of West Bank settlement properties at an LA synagogue last month that turned violent.
The group is alarmed that city leaders are choosing to fund individuals who served a military that commits ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.
Magen Am’s director for its veterans program, Leibel Mangel, who served in the IDF’s counterterrorism unit during the 2014 Gaza War, flew to Israel in the days following October 7 to join the conflict, according to a post on Instagram.
He shared in a podcast interview that he was stationed with other reservists along Israel’s southern border with Gaza, and later, in the West Bank, “protecting communities there, trying to put a dent in Hamas infrastructure.” One post showed him carrying an assault rifle and looking out into a desert with the caption, “Their spilled blood will be avenged.”
Mangel and Pike did not respond to requests for comment.“An organization that thinks it’s appropriate to have that be one of their instructors who is going to then teach other people how to patrol our streets is really scary,” said Camnitzer, who is gay and whose father escaped Nazi Germany with his family in 1939.
They were there to oppose a real estate event taking place inside the house of worship, in which companies marketed the sale of properties in both Israel and in West Bank settlements considered illegal under international law.The demonstrators were met with opposition from pro-Israel counterprotesters, whose agitation led to several fights, multiple injuries, and a couple of arrests, authorities said at the time.
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