Video footage showing Monday’s clash between young chasidic men and the New York Police Department at an iconic synagogue at Crown Heights, Brooklyn, went viral and has now been trending on social media for two days. The chaotic scenes, in which zealous students are seen throwing pews at cops, tearing down wooden panels, and emerging from a tunnel, has opened the floodgates to a rampant stream of invective and antisemitic child trafficking conspiracy theories.        

“What are these NY Jews hiding in these illegal tunnels connected to a NYC Jewish temple?” asked the far-right and alt-right online personality, self-proclaimed Post Apocalyptic War Lord, and talk show host Stew Peters on his X account on Monday. 

Nine members of New York’s chasidic community were arrested at the  Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn. The young Jewish men had been digging a tunnel to connect the synagogue to at least one other nearby building to fulfill what they believe are the wishes of the deeply revered late Rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, who is said to have wanted to expand the chronically overcrowded synagogue. Synagogue authorities, however, had moved on Monday afternoon to fill the unauthorized tunnel with concrete, leading to the clashes with the Jewish youth. 

The conspiracy theories and antisemitic vitriol surrounding the discovery of the tunnel has bubbled for days. On Tuesday Mr. Peters provided some ‘insight’ on his 6pm Stew Peters Show segment, titled “Human Trafficking EXPOSED?” 

“What do you know about these tunnels underneath the Chabad-Lubavitch Global Headquarters?” a visibly concerned Stew Peters asked his guest Vincent James Foxx.

“There’s a lot of information coming out about these tunnels, a lot of misinformation, I should say,” explains Mr. Foxx, whom a ProPublica investigation from 2018 identified as a member of the Rise Above Movement, a white supremacist group based in California that “participated in brawls in cities across California and at the 2017 Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville, VA.” According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Mr. Foxx also participated in the January 6th riot at the U.S. Capitol.     

“There’s a lot of people online that are trying to water this situation down, a lot of mainstream conservatives, by saying that these tunnels were a way to expand the real estate,” Mr. Foxx continues. “But if you look at some of the videos coming out, you see blood stained mattresses, or what we think are blood stained mattresses, the stains are brown, and typically when you have old blood stains, that’s what they look like. You see baby chairs, baby car seats, baby high chairs coming out of these tunnels.” 

As he speaks, the widely circulated images of what seems to be a single dusty baby high chair tossed to the side upon other debris, appears on the screen. 

Talk show host Mr. Peters now repeated long-discredited claims that the Talmud gives permission for Jews to have sex with children. On his X account Mr. Peters put it into simpler language: “Pedophilia is allowed in the Talmud.” 

“The passage does not say that he ‘may’,  It is a discussion of culpability –  clear misquote,” the Head of Crown Heights Jewish Community Council, Eli Cohen, told the Sun on Tuesday evening, adding that “this fellow could have led a blood libel in Medieval Europe 200 years ago.”    

The blood libel against Jews centers on centuries-old antisemitic conspiracy theories that Jews sought “a child of Christian blood” to make matzoh on Passover, and other false stories involving child trafficking, child sexual abuse and child murder. The blood libel was used to justify centuries of deadly violence against Jews, such as the pogroms in Tsarist Russia.

Mr. Cohen was present during Monday’s chaotic confrontation between the young chasidic agitators and New York policemen at the synagogue. He had rushed to the scene with a megaphone in an attempt to diffuse the situation. “But,” he shared with the Sun, he found “a level of irrationality that I could not address.“   

It was Monday afternoon when a group of young male students and former students of the Rabbinical College, that is centered at the synagogue, tried to prevent a construction company from closing illegal tunnels they had dug in an attempt to expand their place of worship. The management of the synagogue called the police at about 3:30pm. When the police arrived, they found the students inside the synagogue, tearing down wood panels and starting to break through a sanctuary wall with hammers. Nine young agitators were arrested and charged with attempted criminal mischief and attempted reckless endangerment, and three were served with summonses for disorderly conduct.  

The synagogue, which is also known as 770, referring to its address on 770 Eastern Parkway at Crown Heights, was built in 1920 and became the home of the spiritual leader of the Chabad Lubavitch chasidic movement, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchok Schneerson, when he arrived in the United States in 1940. His son in law, Menachem, reluctantly ascended to the leadership of the Lubavitch movement after Rabbi Yosef’s death in 1950.

“Between the late 80s and early 90s, talks began to renovate and expand the synagogue,” a member of the Lubavitch community, who prefers to remain anonymous, explained to the Sun. “Because the Lubavitch group was growing. During the ceremonial laying of a cornerstone, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson told his followers that he wanted to see the building expanded, that it should grow all the way to Union Street.” 

There were architectural plans. The expansion was supposed to take place in phases. But apart from a modest renovation in the front, toward the street, the rabbi’s vision has not yet been fully completed. 

The holdups were for “probably a lot of reasons,” the community member continued to explain. “Many of these reasons are disputes over who controls the building and over the use of the building. These disputes have dragged on for decades and are still being litigated in court.”     

Mr. Cohen, who empathized that the disputes among the community were not a matter of “black and white”, but rather “a massive gray with many, many shades,” clarified that there is a general consensus among everyone that the synagogue needs to be expanded. Also for practical reasons, especially on holidays the place overflows. People come from all over the world, and it gets very crowded.  

“It is imperative to expand the building,” Mr. Cohen said, “but not in this way. You do it through permits and plans and agreements.” 

What remains unclear is when exactly the young students, who form a singular small fraction of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, decided to take the expansion project into their hands and start digging unauthorized tunnels. Eli Cohen and several other sources close to the movement believe the digging started within the last six months. 

What is known, however, is their intention. They wanted to honor the word of their spiritual leader, who, they believe, is the messiah of the Jewish people. 

“The young men felt that this was their form of civil disobedience,” said the anonymous member, who listened to a nine minute long voice message from one of the agitators,  “to break down the walls and basically force the expansion to happen, sooner rather than later, while it was tied up in disputes and bureaucracy.”  

A 24 second short video, which the Sun watched, and that was shared among the agitators, shows a digital version of the expansion the students envisioned. A message in Hebrew letters reads: This is no longer a dream, expand NOW.” 

The synagogue is the basement and first floor of the historic building, a former apartment building, which, according to Eli Cohen, was turned into the synagogue about 50 years ago.  Next to the building, there are three smaller buildings which are all attached to each other. Two of them are owned by the same religious organization that owns the synagogue and the last one is an abandoned, privately owned property, with an abandoned men’s mikvah, a ritual bath house, where men purify and wash themselves before prayer.  

It appears that the three-foot-high dirt tunnel which the eager students were digging was supposed to reach from the synagogue to this former bathhouse.     

In mid December neighbors reported to the management of the synagogue that they were hearing strange noises. The management installed cameras, which soon caught the unauthorized builders breaking into the synagogue in the middle of the night. Their tunnels were discovered and closed. 

When the management sent cement trucks on Monday to close the tunnels, the students began ripping down wood panels in the prayer hall. Others had entered the tunnel from the other side, and were sitting inside with books, as a form of protest. 

One of the videos clearly shows that the mattresses, which have caused so much speculation, were stacked between the wood panels and the cinder block wall. It is possible, not confirmed, that these mattresses were placed behind the wood panels when they were installed a few years ago. Mr. Cohen told the Sun.  

The community member, who spoke to the Sun, said that he saw social media posts that claimed the tunnel led to the Jewish Children’s Museum, which is across the street at 792 Eastern Parkway. These posts falsely suggested this was evidence of a child predation ring.

“First of all, the tunnel does not lead to the Jewish Children’s Museum. That’s just wild conspiracy nonsense and factually incorrect. There is no allegation the tunnel goes under Kingston Avenue. It goes the other way from Eastern Parkway to Union Street South.” 

“That antisemites start inferring things about child sexual abuse,” he added, “and frankly inventing facts is troubling but it has nothing to do with the situation. These people will find any reason to express their antisemitism.”

Indeed, antisemites were having a field day on X, formerly known as Twitter. Pelham @Resist_05, for instance, posted falsely that, “It’s now almost certain the tunnels found at the Chabad synagogue in Brooklyn were designed for child sex tracking. This footage released shows the Jewish synagogue had dystopian tunnels made with stained mattresses that have been sent for forensic analysis. Items such as baby high chairs and clothing have also been taken by forensics. A group of extremist students were blamed for the child abduction tunnels and attempted to bury the tunnels with cement before forensics could begin their investigations. Advocates for child sex abuse say Israel has become a ‘refuge for pedophiles’ and many Jewish-Americans hide from justice in Israel…” 

Mr. Cohen sees a parallel to the notorious “pizzagate” conspiracy theory, circa 2016, which claimed that Democrats in Hillary Clinton’s circle were operating a child sex ring under a Washington D.C. pizzeria that was popular with families. “It just shows how wild fantasy and malevolence can turn one thing into something different that is just so, so far from any part of reality.”

The Iranian-American journalist, Yashar Ali, tweeted on Tuesday night that, “The bad behavior of some extremists at the Chabad in Crown Heights should have been a local news issue at most. Instead, it’s turned into a global antisemitic flood of some of the most dangerous conspiracy theories about Jews dating back to the Middle Ages. The attempt — one that shouldn’t have been made and was wrong — to expand a basement has now turned into ‘the Jews have tunnels where they are [insert blood libel here].’ I’m seeing this spread aggressively all over the world…it’s not surprising, but still depressing.”