Three people have been charged with hate crimes for allegedly vandalising the homes of leaders of the Brooklyn Museum, including the institution’s director Anne Pasternak and two board members with “Jewish-sounding names”.
Last June, pro-Palestine activists targeted the homes of two museum board members and Pasternak; the main entrance of the latter’s building in Brooklyn Heights was splashed with red paint, and a banner was installed in front of the main doorway that read “Brooklyn Museum Anne Pasternak White-Supremacist Zionist” and “Funds Genocide”. In August, two people allegedly involved with the action—Queens resident Taylor Pelton and Brooklyn-based journalist Samuel Seligson—were arrested and charged with, among other things, hate crimes.
This week’s charges, filed by Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez, concern Pelton, Seligson and a third suspect, Brooklyn resident Gabriel Schubiner. The 25-count indictment against them includes charges of making a terroristic threat as a hate crime, third- and fourth-degree criminal mischief as a hate crime, making graffiti and fifth-degree conspiracy. Schubiner was arraigned Monday (4 November) and released without bail; Seligson and Pelton are scheduled for arraignment next week.
According to Gonzalez, the suspects deliberately targeted the homes of museum board members with Jewish-sounding names.
“Acts of vandalism that target individuals in their own homes are a deeply disturbing violation meant to intimidate, terrorise and instil fear,” Gonzalez said in a statement. “These defendants allegedly targeted museum board members with threats and antisemitic graffiti based on their perceived heritage These actions are not protests; they are hate crimes, and we are deeply committed to holding accountable anyone who uses such unlawful tactics in Brooklyn.”
A spokesperson for the Brooklyn Museum did not respond to a request for a comment regarding the latest charges stemming from the vandalism at the homes of institutional leaders.
Gonzalez’s office claims that the three indicted individuals and three other suspects who have not been apprehended first visited the home of a Brooklyn Museum board member in the Boerum Hill neighbourhood of Brooklyn in the early morning hours of 12 June. They allegedly used red paint to write the message “Brooklyn Museum, blood on your hands” and left a banner with the board member’s name and the words “blood on your hands, war crimes, funds genocide”. After then allegedly targeting Pasternak’s home in Brooklyn Heights, the group proceeded to the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where they tagged the home of the chair of the museum’s board of directors, Barbara M. Vogelstein, with red paint.
The targeted attacks on museum leaders’ homes came less than two weeks after a major pro-Palestine demonstration at the Brooklyn Museum, which was met with a violent response from the NYPD and resulted in more than 30 arrests. Like many US institutions, since the onset of the Israel-Hamas the Brooklyn Museum has faced calls to cut ties with corporate partners and individual donors whose finances activists say are tied to Israel's government, its military or the Israeli defense industry.
Around 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s terror attacks on Israel on 7 October 2023, and around 250 people were taken hostage (around 100 hostages are still being held). According to Anti-Defamation League data, incidents of antisemitism in the US tripled in the year after the 7 October attacks compared to the previous 12-month period.
More than 43,000 people have been killed in the Israeli military’s ongoing aerial and ground campaign in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health ministry there. According to an analysis by the United Nations’ Human Rights Office, around 70% of the conflict’s victims are women and children.