Boston community and faith leaders gathered for a press conference Monday morning calling for action by city leaders after a demonstration by dozens of apparent white supremacists who marched through the city's streets and an alleged attack on a Black man on Saturday.

The Boston Police Department said it learned around 12:30 p.m. that about 100 protesters had gathered on Congress Street near City Hall Plaza Saturday.

Photos and videos posted to social media appeared to show throngs of protesters marching under the banner of the Patriot Front, characterized by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center as a white supremacist group.

Patriot Front has recently made appearances across the country. More than two dozen members were arrested last month in Idaho when they allegedly targeted a Pride festival.

"It's a shame. It's just a shame that in 2022 that we've regressed to this point in our country," said Rod Webber, a local filmmaker working to expose the group. "They're a bunch of Nazis and I said, 'go home, cowards.' And we literally chased them down the street."

Mayor Michelle Wu said Monday that investigators are looking into a confrontation that broke out during the march near Back Bay station, though no charges have been filed at this time. A photo captured by a Boston Herald photographer appears to show marchers clashing with a Black man.

"Investigations are still ongoing, particularly the civil rights investigation around the brief confrontation that happened right outside the police station as this group was departing,"Wu told reporters Monday.

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The victim of that attack was identified by community leaders as Charles Murrell, an artist and peace advocate in the Boston area.

Murrell, whose hand was bandaged Monday, did not want to speak of specific details of his attack.

According to a police report, Murrell was walking down the street when he was in the middle of a group of men with masks who shoved and pushed him. He fought back, and then more men went after him, knocking him to the ground. He received stitches to his hand and had cuts to his head.

Murrell has called for peace and invited those listening to a peace and reconciliation concert on July 14 at 7 p.m. at Copley Square, an event he said would serve as a call to action.

I am appalled that even as a healer I have to get my cup poured into in this incident, but in this incident I will continue to pour into other people's cup as a way to pour into my own cup, Murrell said.

Local activists believe it's time for city leaders to stand up, calling for accountability and saying the mayor and police need to do more to stop racism.

Rev. Kevin C. Peterson of the New Democracy Coalition, who said he is acting as a supporter and advisor for Murrell, said Saturday's events did not come as a surprise to him, but that he and others who work with him on civic engagement and racial justice issues are hopeful it could lead to progress.

"Specifically we ask that the mayor immediately convene a race commission that will allow some of the thought leaders in this city and outside of this city to make a historical assessment about where we are as a city with regard to race and racism and then begin to institutionalize policies that will begin a process of racial repair and racial reconciliation," Peterson said.

The assembled group went on to explain that they are looking for a way to have conversations on race but also to collect data on racial inequities in the city to determine how something like Saturday's march could happen, the groups and people involved, and use that type of information to figure out how to heal what they called the "fractured relationships" between racial groups.

Peterson said the safety of Boston's residents, particularly its Black residents, was at the top of mind.

"What is the call to action? Where is the accountability?" asked Mawakana Onifade.

Massachusetts State Police said there was no indication that Patriot Front will be a problem for the city's July 4 events and that they are prepared to respond to any issues. The mayor noted that they are in touch with city, state and federal law enforcement to monitor any potential disruption and that the city "will not be intimidated" by Saturday's display.

City leaders did speak out about the march when the news first broke on Saturday.

"To the white supremacists who ran through downtown today: When we march, we don't hide our faces. Your hate is as cowardly as it is disgusting, and it goes against all that Boston stands for," Wu wrote on Twitter.

"We do not welcome that here. We condemn them," Wu added in comments made Monday morning. "It is insulting to the city of Boston, especially in a moment when we lift up our role for fighting for equality and liberty for every single person and the parts of that fight that we are still leading the way on today."

The city says it had no prior knowledge of the demonstration.

"I'm outraged and disgusted at the white supremacist group protesting today," added City Council President Ed Flynn in a tweet.

In a longer statement, Flynn referred to the Patriot Front's actions last month at a Pride event in Idaho, where 31 members of the hate group were arrested on charges of conspiracy to riot. Coeur d'Alene Police Chief Lee White said he and his department subsequently received death threats from anonymous callers.

"It is incumbent upon all of us to acknowledge, call out, and disavow the growing extremism and creeping hate in our country wherever we see it," Flynn wrote. "We must always stand with the Jewish community and our communities of color, educate our children about the horrors of the past so that history does not repeat itself, and make clear to all neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups that they are not welcome and will never represent our values."

Revolutionary Spaces, which operates the Old State House, slammed the group for protesting outside the historic site.

"No place was more central to the birth of our most fundamental democratic ideals than the Old State House," Revolutionary Spaces President and CEO Nathaniel Sheidley said in a statement. "The presence in its shadow of those who would reject these ideals is an important reminder that democracy is fragile and the work of building a society rooted in liberty and justice for all is not finished."

City Councilor At-Large Ruthzee Louijeune said the protesters are "Cowards, all of them. No place for what they're selling in our city."

"This is disgusting. Hate groups have no place in our society," City Councilor Ricardo Arroyo said in a tweet. "Boston is for everyone, recognizes the gift that is our diversity, and will never cower or capitulate to hate."

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Community Leaders Condemn Hate After White Supremacists March Through Boston - NBC10 Boston

Danzig served in the Israeli Army and is a former police officer with the New York Police Department. He is an attorney and active member of StandWithUs, where he is the local advisory board president, and Herut North American, where he is a national board member. He lives in Del Mar.

On Oct. 26, the San Diego Unified School District Board of Education passed a resolution condemning antisemitism, as its defined by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), and as requested by every synagogue and mainstream Jewish organization in San Diego. Since then, Israel-haters in San Diego have been wringing their virtual hands over the audacity of a school district to define antisemitism the way most Jews define it (in a state that over the previous five years saw a 40 percent increase in antisemitic hate crimes, and in a country where Jews are the targets of 60 percent of all faith-based hate crimes).

Recognizing they cant simply say that they oppose such resolutions because Israel-haters want to exploit Jew-hatred in order to incite hatred against Israel (the worlds only Jewish state and home to nearly half of the worlds Jews), the Israel-haters wax apoplectic about how the IHRA definition chills free speech because it supposedly makes legitimate criticism of Israel antisemitic, is a tool for weaponizing antisemitism, and will somehow increase anti-Arab or anti-Muslim hatred.

I addressed why these claims are specious and themselves antisemitic in an an essay last month.

Likely because the IHRA definition in pertinent part provides it is antisemitic to deny the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor, we are seeing claims that being anti-Zionist is not antisemitic, as well as claims by Israel-haters actually comparing Zionism with racist colonialist ideologies like Manifest Destiny (which was used to justify Americas westward expansion and brutal conquest of Native Americans).

These claims are false and also incredibly insulting to the vast majority of Jews, who either are Israeli or feel a very strong attachment to Israel. Moreover, these claims get to the core of why the Arab-Israeli conflict persists, and why, despite at least eight different peace and partition offers since 1937 (to create the first independent Arab state west of the Jordan River), no such offer has ever been accepted.

While the Israel-haters try to redefine Zionism to make it seem somehow equivalent to colonialist ideologies like Manifest Destiny, the truth is that the definition of Zionism is quite simple: Zionism is the belief that the Jewish people, like all other peoples, have a right to self-determination and sovereignty in part of their Indigenous homeland.

Not only is there nothing in the definition of Zionism that believes Jews are superior to any other people or race, the idea of Jews being Zionist and even willing to fight for their right to be sovereign in their homeland predates the phony European concept of race by over 1,500 years. We just finished celebrating Hanukkah. While many Americans may think Hanukkah is a Jewish version of Christmas, or just a fun, candle-lighting, jelly-donut-eating holiday, that would be incorrect. Not that Hanukkah isnt fun (it is), but at its core, Hanukkah is a celebration of a successful Jewish revolt in the land of Israel and the reestablishment, after centuries of Greek colonial rule, of Jewish sovereignty and self-determination in Zion (another word in Hebrew for Jerusalem).

Nearly 300 years after the successful Jewish revolt against the Greek/Selucid Empire, the Jewish peoples Zionism led to other Jewish revolts against colonial rule, this time against the Romans. From those ultimately unsuccessful revolts, archeologists have found numerous Judean coins, including coins inscribed in ancient Hebrew with the words: Freedom for Zion. It is that longing for freedom in Zion, the 3,000-plus year history of the land of Israels centrality in the Jewish peoples faith, culture and consciousness, coupled with the sad reality that the Jewish people have been regularly subjected to deadly discrimination and oppression in almost every land in the Diaspora, which led to the 19th century political movement called Zionism. And when Israel gained its independence in 1948, Zionism became the worlds first successful Indigenous movement of a dispossessed and colonized people regaining sovereignty in their Indigenous homeland.

Like many Indigenous peoples throughout the world, Jews were consistent victims of European oppression and violence for centuries, precisely because they were perceived as not being a part of the superior European world beginning with the Greek colonialization and attempted Hellenization of the land of Israel and continuing through World War II when over 6 million Jews were murdered. Throughout this time period, the Jewish peoples dream of freedom in Zion and for sovereignty in the land of Israel (what the Romans called Palestina) never waned. It is why at every Passover seder, and in countless other prayers, the Jewish people have regularly prayed and sang in Hebrew about their longing for a return to Zion.

It is this context that makes the arguments of the I am only anti-Zionist antisemites so clearly hollow. As Zionism simply stands for the proposition that the Jewish people have a right to sovereignty in part of their Indigenous and historical homeland, saying you are anti-Zionist, but not anti-Jewish, is the equivalent of saying you are not anti-Maori, but only want to deny the Maori any sovereignty in their Indigenous lands, or that you are not anti-Algonquin, Mississaugas, Odawa, Oji-Cree, Ojibwe, or Potawatomi, you just hate the Anishinaabe movement for a sovereign Native American state called Anishinaabaki.

As for those dishonestly comparing Zionism with Manifest Destiny, or other supremacist forms of colonialism, it bears noting that when the descendants of the English, French and Spanish conquered and colonized North America, they never discovered a single archeological finding written in ancient English, French or Spanish; but archeological artifacts written in Hebrew and referring to Jewish kings, Jewish prayers (that Jews still say to this day) and even to ancient vitners in the land of Israel are ubiquitous.

What the I am only anti-Zionist antisemites also ignore (or more aptly seek to deflect attention from) is how closely anti-Zionist tropes track antisemitic tropes, which for centuries were used to incite discrimination and violence against Jews.

The 19th-century antisemite demonized Jews, among all peoples on Earth, as the primary cause of the worlds problems. Anti-Zionists demonize Israel, the Jew among the nations, as the primary cause of the worlds problems. For the 19th-century antisemite, Jews were bloodthirsty baby killers. Anti-Zionists routinely demonize the one Jewish state as a bloodthirsty baby killer. The 19th-century antisemite demonized Jews as being nefariously in control of banks, the media and governments. Anti-Zionists regularly demonize Israel or Zionists as controlling the banks, media and foreign governments. The parallels are clear.

But the most antisemitic aspect of the anti-Zionist creed has to be the ubiquitous attempts to erase Jewish history and to tar Zionism as a colonialist endeavor. George Orwell famously said, The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

That erasure is at the core of anti-Zionism. It is also at the core of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Because ultimately, the anti-Zionists claims about colonialism are what psychologists refer to as projection. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arab armies from the Arabian Peninsula conquered and colonized all of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Since then, their descendants, just like the descendants of Europeans in all of the lands conquered by Europeans, have generally resisted all Indigenous rights and independence movements. It is why over the past millennia, there has never been an independent state for the Kurds, Amazigh, Copts, or any other Indigenous people in the MENA (other than the Jewish people).

Antisemitism is the oldest form of bigotry. For over 2,000 years. it has led to countless expulsions and murders of Jews. Today, it includes anti-Zionism, a hatred of Jewish sovereignty and of the ability of Jews to defend themselves in their own state. Many want to paint this hatred as somehow being progressive, when the core motivation behind this hatred is a regressive desire to destroy the one successful Indigenous rights movement in the MENA, and to once again make Jews stateless and defenseless. No one should allow themselves to be taken in by such counterfactual duplicity.

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Opinion: Dont be fooled. Zionism is an Indigenous rights movement and being anti-Zionist is antisemitic. - The San Diego Union-Tribune