NEW YORK — A New York real estate developer has been charged with felonious assault after police say he ran over a woman with his car during a pro-Palestinian rally led by students linked to the Columbia University protest movement.
Reuven Kahane, 57, was arrested Tuesday morning after driving his car into a 55-year-old security officer during the protest, according to witnesses and an NYPD spokesperson.
The woman, who was treated at a hospital for minor injuries, was also arrested, but criminal mischief charges against her and another protester were dropped Wednesday by the Manhattan district attorney. Kahane was released from custody pending trial.
Kahane is related to Rabbi Meir Kahane, the Brooklyn-born founder of the Jewish Defense League, a group that advocated the removal of Arabs from Israel and orchestrated a series of violent attacks in the U.S. and abroad. Kahane’s political party was banned from the Israeli parliament in the 1980s and the US classified the Jewish Defense League as a terrorist group. He was murdered in New York in 1990.
Reached by phone Wednesday afternoon, Reuven Kahane, who lives in the Manhattan neighborhood where the protest took place, declined to comment on the events that led to his arrest but said he had no connection to the Jewish Defense League.
“What does the fact that I’m a distant cousin of someone who passed away 35 years ago have to do with this?” he said, describing his politics as “pro-peace.”
Police said the arrest followed a verbal dispute started by protesters involved in the demonstration. The vehicle moved during the confrontation, police said, but Kahane is not accused of trying to run over a group of protesters.
Several students present at the scene disputed the NYPD’s version of events. They said they were leaving the home of a university administrator, where they had spent the morning picketing and distributing leaflets, when Kahane began harassing the protest from inside his car.
They said Kahane attempted to pass through a crosswalk where protesters were walking in a group, prompting one of the volunteer security officers, Maryellen Novak, to step in front of the vehicle to block his path.
“I saw her put her hands on the hood of the car trying to stop it,” said Ava Garcia, one of the protesters. “The car continued moving and she was pushed against the hood of the car because she was accelerating. It was only when she fell to the ground that the car stopped.”
Ha Vu, another security volunteer, described herself as “scared and shocked” by the scene. “Maryellen jumping in front of the car helped save a lot of people,” she said.
Police arrested Kahane, along with Novak and another 63-year-old security volunteer.
The incident occurred a week after police stormed Columbia University to end the occupation of a university building and clear an encampment set up by pro-Palestinian student protesters.
In a statement, Columbia University’s Apartheid Divest, a student group affiliated with the camp, described the altercation as the “latest example of anti-Palestinian violence from Israel to the US.”
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