A Rockville man is facing a criminal trial in Montgomery County District Court for allegedly threatening violence against people participating in a pro-Palestinian rally held in Rockville in November.
Yosef Appleboum was charged Nov. 20 with one count of “threat of mass violence” for his alleged behavior while counterprotesting a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Nov. 5 in Rockville near the County Executive Office Building on Monroe Street, according to court records. The charge is considered criminal misdemeanor.
The protest was one of many across the country after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel in which at least 1,200 people were killed and more than 240 were taken hostage, sparking the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. According to CNN, 120 Israelis are still being held hostage by Hamas as of June 14.
At least 37,718 civilians have been killed and more than 86,377 people have been injured in the Gaza strip during more than eight months of war since Oct. 7, according to Gaza’s health ministry, Barron’s and AFP reported Wednesday. The majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million residents have been displaced, according to Reuters.
The Nov. 5 demonstration in Rockville was intended to draw awareness for Palestinian civilian casualties incurred in the war and protest Israel’s use of military force and call for a ceasefire, according to participants who spoke to MoCo360.
Appleboum’s June 10 trial was postponed due to the anticipated length of time it would take, according to Lauren DeMarco, spokesperson for the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office, which is prosecuting the case. Both prosecutors and the defense requested the move.
According to court documents obtained by MoCo360, the prosecution and defense proposed a new trial date of Aug. 1 or 2. According to DeMarco, a date has not yet been set.
Appleboum appears to be among pro-Israel counterprotesters in a video of the rally that went viral on X, formerly known as Twitter, in November, receiving more than 1 million views. Appleboum’s lawyer acknowledged in an interview with MoCo360 that Appleboum was in the video.
In the video, the counter protesters yell several inflammatory phrases at the pro-Palestinian demonstrators, including “We will secure America against you animals … against you barbarians. You’ll never live again because we’ll take your heads, we’ll take your life,” and “you are murderers,” and “we will remove Gaza from the earth.”
The counter protesters are also heard in the video calling the pro-Palestinian protesters “terrorists” and “against America” and using a homophobic slur.
Appleboum did not respond to multiple requests for comment from MoCo360. He is represented by David Martella of the Rockville law firm Barry H. Helfand and David Martella, who told MoCo360 in an interview Tuesday that he believes the charge against Appleboum will be dismissed on First Amendment grounds. He noted that a request for a peace order filed against Appleboum on Nov. 19 was dismissed by a judge.
“It occurred in a political protest context and there clearly was no intent in the mind of Mr. Applebaum to cause harm to the specific persons that he was shouting out through a bullhorn to with multiple police officers standing around,” Martella said of Appleboum’s actions during the counterprotest.
According to Washington Jewish Week, Appleboum is one of the co-founders of Tsav 8 DMV, a pro-Israel advocacy group created after the Israel-Hamas war began.
“Two weeks into [the post-Oct. 7 conflict], I did my best to figure out how I can assist the fight of Israel from here or in public opinion and be able to help,” Appleboum told Washington Jewish Week in March.
Tsav 8 DMV did not respond to a request for comment from MoCo360. It is unclear if the group officially organized the counterprotest on Nov. 5.
Martella said he believes the social media video of counter protesters was edited to take Appelboum’s quotes out of context. However, he said even if Appleboum did say those words, he believes they are still legally protected.
“The First Amendment is there to protect not necessarily the nice speech, but the speech that might offend people or that they may not like,” Martella said. “There is abundant case law that says speech of this kind is protected free speech. You can’t send people to jail, you can’t successfully prosecute them for showing up to a protest and saying things that might offend other people.”
When the video was released, Montgomery County Council President Andrew Friedson (D-Dist. 1) condemned the behavior of the counter protesters.
“Hate speech of any kind is absolutely unacceptable,” Friedson posted on social media. “I don’t condone referring to people as animals, promoting terror, or suggesting violence. That is never in bounds at any peaceful protest. … Our words matter.”
Sarah Shakir, a county resident who filed a complaint against Appleboum with the state’s attorney in November, told MoCo360 she attended the Nov. 5 protest thinking it would be a peaceful way to demonstrate support for Palestinians and condemn violence against civilians. However, it quickly turned “intimidating” when the counter protesters showed up, she said.
“[The counter protesters] were yelling things like ‘we killed your people’ and ‘we killed your brothers in Gaza’ and ‘we will take your heads,’ ” said Shakir, who brought her 13-year-old daughter to the protest.
Shakir said counter protesters were making obscene gestures and yelling profanities in the faces of her daughter and other children.
“She was standing there holding a sign and they started yelling the F-word at her,” Shakir said. “They were flipping children off and using vulgar gestures … and that was the most disturbing part of it. My daughter had never seen behavior like this before.”
Shakir said she and her daughter felt unsafe and chose to leave the protest.
Sydney, a Washington, D.C., resident who participated in the rally and agreed to speak with MoCo360 on the condition her last name isn’t published, said she attended the rally to show support for the Palestinian people. She said as tensions flared, she chose to position herself physically to protect children and elderly people at the protest, and counter protesters physically got close to her face.
“Children were receiving vile treatment from those people. [The counterprotesters] ended up screaming at me, ‘you should be beheaded, you should be raped,’ ” Sydney said. “It’s par for the course to expect some sort of public pushback, but we were not expecting the level of pushback we saw.”
Hiruy Hadgu, a Howard County resident, told MoCo360 he chose to make the trip to Rockville for the rally to support Palestine, and has attended similar demonstrations but did not expect the pushback that he experienced on Nov. 5. He said he was most disturbed by language directed at Palestinian civilians.
“These are civilians, these are children, these are the people that they were talking about. And just I was taken aback by how insensitive [the counterprotesters] were being,” Hadgu said. “There was a total lack of feelings to the solemn nature of what was going on. Their goal was trying to drown out this message of peace.”
Hadgu ran unsuccessfully for Howard County’s school board on a pro-Palestinian platform in the May 14 primary election.
“[The counter protesters] were being completely dehumanizing. Islamophobia doesn’t even begin to describe what they were doing,” Hadgy said.
Hadgu said he chose not to engage with the counter protesters because he didn’t want to escalate the conflict, but he did take photos and videos to document what was happening. He shared a video he took with MoCo360 in which counter protesters can be heard calling the pro-Palestinian protesters “ISIS supporters.”
Ron Halber, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Washington (JCRC), told MoCo360 Wednesday he was “disgusted” by the language and behavior exhibited in the viral video.
“That’s not what the Jewish community stands for. That’s not who we are,” Halber said. “When you start engaging in that type of vitriolic hate … devolving into attacks on a group based on their racial or ethnic background, not only is it morally wrong and always unacceptable, but from a strategic point of view, you’ve lost your entire audience. You might as well not even show up.”
Halber said that while JCRC is a “strong defender” of Israel and has organized pro-Israel rallies, the organization chooses to focus rally efforts on government entities, such as one it held at the Qatar Embassy in Washington, D.C., in February, and does not typically counterprotest community-organized rallies.
“It’s a recipe for violence and it’s not helpful. It does nothing to further our cause,” Halber said.