Pro-Palestinian protester wearing keffiyeh charged with violating New York face mask ban

A pro-Palestinian protester wearing a keffiyeh scarf has been charged with violating a suburban New York City county’s new law banning face masks in public, reviving fears from opponents that the statute is being used to diminish free speech rights.

Police said the 26-year-old North Bellmore resident was arrested on Sunday afternoon during a protest in front of Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, an Orthodox synagogue near the New York City borough of Queens.

A Nassau county police department spokesperson, Scott Skrynecki, said on Thursday that officers questioned the man because he had been concealing his face with a keffiyeh, which has become a symbol of support for Palestinian people.

Police on the scene asked him if he was wearing the garment for medical or religious purposes, which are the two major exceptions to the new ban, according to Skrynecki. When the man confirmed he was wearing it in solidarity with Palestinians and not for either of those reasons, he was placed under arrest, Skrynecki said. He was eventually released with a notice to appear in court on 2 October.

Videos showing some of the arrest have been shared on social media. They show the man wearing the keffiyeh around his neck as he is led away in handcuffs by officers and continues to lead others in pro-Palestinian chants. The man did not respond to calls and social media messages by the Associated Press seeking comment on Thursday.

Rachel Hu, a spokesperson for Answer Coalition, which organized a rally this week against the arrest, said the man was seeking legal counsel and would not be commenting on the case until then.

She added that organizers believed the man was targeted as one of the leaders of Pro-Palestinian protest movements on Long Island.

“We feel that this arrest (and this ban overall) was aimed at intimidating known activists to discourage us from using our first amendment right to protest,” Hu wrote in an email.

Other progressive groups denounced the mask ban as unconstitutional following Sunday’s arrest.

Kiana Abbady, a board chair with the Long Island Progressive Coalition, told Newsday that the mask ban is unconstitutional and being used to harass people.

“Banning a mask is not going to stop a hate crime or stop someone who has hate in their heart,” she said. “You can’t determine if someone is wearing a mask to commit a crime.”

Rabbi Dovid Feldman of the Neturei Karta religious movement attended Sunday’s rally and criticized the arrest as a form of silencing.

“We hope the citizens of the United States will have the rights, the freedom to express their voice to choose their dress,” he said to Newsday. “No one should be silenced for standing up for what they believe in.”

The New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also denounced the arrest as proof that the local law was being used as a “silencing tactic” against Palestinian supporters.

“Barring other criminal misconduct, wearing a keffiyeh or a mask does not make you suspicious,” Lamya Agarwala, supervising attorney for the organization, said in a statement. “Using this policy to arrest protesters is an affront to our fundamental rights as Americans.”

Skrynecki responded that police officers, as with all laws, “enforce the Mask Transparency Act equally and fairly regardless of the demographics of the defendant”.

A spokesperson for the Nassau county executive, Bruce Blakeman, did not respond to the critiques but confirmed the Republican, who is Nassau’s first Jewish county executive, was at the synagogue at the time of the protest.

Sunday’s arrest is among the first under the Mask Transparency Act approved by Nassau county’s Republican-controlled legislature and signed into law by Blakeman last month.

The first instance was an 18-year-old arrested as he walked around the Levittown and Hicksville area wearing a black ski mask late last month. Police said at the time that the teen displayed other suspicious behavior, including attempting to conceal something in his waistband that turned out to be a large hunting knife.

Another arrest involved a 27-year-old Manhattan man who police say was attempting to break into a residence in Jericho while wearing a black ski mask. Both cases are pending, according to the Nassau county district attorney’s office.

The law, which came in response to “antisemitic incidents” since the 7 October start of the Israel-Hamas war, makes it a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine for anyone in Nassau to wear a face covering to hide their identity in public.

But it exempts people who wear masks “for health, safety, religious or cultural purposes, or for the peaceful celebration of a holiday or similar religious or cultural event for which masks or facial coverings are customarily worn”.

Disability Rights of New York, a group that advocates for people with disabilities, has filed a legal challenge arguing that the mask law is unconstitutional and discriminates against people with disabilities.

The latest row over the mask ban comes as more than two dozen employees at New York cultural institutions say they have been fired or left their jobs due to conflict with their employers about supporting Palestine.

Two former employees at the Noguchi Museum in Queens, New York, say they were among three people who were laid off after wearing a keffiyeh scarf at work, the art magazine Hyperallergic reported.

The dismissal comes after the museum instituted a new policy in August that barred employees from wearing “political dress” that could make museum visitors feel “unsafe” or “uncomfortable”. Other New York institutions, including the 92nd Street Y community center, have implemented similar policies.

The Associated Press contributed reporting