After the hate and violence outside Congregation Adas Torah, a synagogue in the Pico Robertson Jewish community of Los Angeles went viral and became a national news story, the perpetrators and their political allies, including those in the media, scrambled to justify it.

The rationalization put forward are that…

1. The terror supporters were really the victims of Jewish violence

2. The terrorist supporters were not there to attack the synagogue but to protest a real estate fair in Israel taking place there.

As a journalist on the scene, I can address both claims together.

The terrorist supporters came there for a fight. They brought bear spray, skateboards and metal water bottles (commonly brought by Antifa and other rioters because they can be legitimately carried, but also make good weapons) and they weren’t there to skateboard. I saw a guy there with ski goggles. And he wasn’t there to ski either. They wore keffiyahs, initially down as scarves, and then over their faces once they began to attack Jews.

You don’t bring this kind of gear for a peaceful protest, you do it in preparation for a fight.

When you bring this kind of equipment to a hate rally in the center of a Jewish community, you’re there to attack that community. Period.

Terror supporters and their allies have responded to the videos of attacks on Jews by posting videos of violence by Jewish counterprotestors. Most of those videos actually come from after the terror rally when the Hamas supporters were marching down a residential street after being pushed out by police after hours of violent attacks on the Jewish community. Some earlier ones still begin an hour and a half or two after the start. These videos show a response to the terror violence and not the beginning of it.

The Jewish community was disorganized. There was no plan. Young teenage girls showed up with Israeli flags. There were lots of elderly people and some families who arrived. There were attempts at singing and dancing.

I was at the scene early on and I saw the violence begin with multiple confrontations by terror supporters.

When I arrived at the scene, before I interacted with anyone, a Middle Eastern man in a keffiyah began threatening me. In a half hour, I began to see people being sprayed with bear spray by masked keffiyah attackers. And while I didn’t have eyes everywhere, what I saw was that the attackers had a pretty clear agenda to escalate the violence, forming in small masked groups, rushing out for sorties and then returning to use the rest of the hate rally for cover.

As far as the real estate fair pretext, had Jews shown up to a mosque to protest any kind of event, no matter how awful, and the whole thing turned into a riot in the middle of a Muslim neighborhood, not a single person in politics or the media would have accepted that rationale.

As others have pointed out, the real estate fair involved homes in “internationally recognized” parts of Israel, but that doesn’t even matter.

The real estate fair was a pretext. As I mentioned in my article, “the terrorist hate rally spread outside three synagogues, Congregation Adas Torah, Chabad Persian Youth, and Congregation Ateret Israel (Glory of Israel), and the confrontations in the center of the street continued.”

None of those were hosting real estate fairs. The violence spread around the community and around Kosher restaurants.

The majority of the signs and chants at the hate rally did not mention the fair, they were generic hatred of Israel and support for terrorism.

The real estate fair was a pretext, not the premise.

The participants had come spoiling for a fight. They came well prepared for one. They organized and deployed. They staged confrontations. They spewed hate. And they got what they wanted.