Monday night, There were 10 men was arrested after an altercation with New York police officers at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, a synagogue that served followers of the insular Orthodox Jewish movement. The reason: Structural engineers were trying to fill a mysterious secret tunnel that had been illegally dug under the building, and a group of young men came out to protest.
Although the story mainly focused on a small community of Orthodox Jews in New York, with most of the community members disapproving the destruction of the center, quickly began to rise nationwide. Footage from the tunnel, as well as violent skirmishes between some of the Chabad men and the NYPD, went viral, garnering thousands of retweets on X, formerly known as Twitter. After the fight, 10 men were charged with criminal mischief and reckless endangerment, while one of the men was also charged with obstructing government administration.
The story went viral because it was, objectively, strange: as originally reported, a small sect of Hasidic Jews had constructed an elaborate system of underground tunnels beneath the streets of Brooklyn for no immediately apparent reason. But it also sparked an onslaught of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, with some well-known far-right figures suggesting the tunnel was being used for nefarious trafficking purposes, playing on notorious anti-Jewish tropes or drawing comparisons to tunnels made by the terror group Hamas, referring to them as “Jewish tunnels” or “Zionist tunnels”.
“Secret underground tunnels, blood-soaked mattresses, baby carriages… Getting really strong 'Simon of Trent' vibes here,” wrote one influencer, referring to a dangerous anti-Semitic blood libel conspiracy theory from the Middle Ages involving the murder of a Christian of a child which resulted in 15 members of the Jewish community being burned at the stake. This post has garnered more than 1.2 million views on X, including 3,000 retweets.
In a statement, Jonathan Greenblatt, director of the Anti-Defamation League, which fights anti-Semitism worldwide, says Rolling rock finds the proliferation of such posts incredibly disturbing, echoing centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. “It is deeply troubling that someone would use this incident, which the Chabad movement has strongly condemned, to make inappropriate and false comparisons with the Hamas tunnels in Gaza or to propagate old anti-Semitic conspiracy theories such as the Jews who involved in human trafficking or organ harvesting,” says Greenblatt.
Actually, the tunnel explanation was (at least somewhat) more common. The tunnel wasn't actually a “tunnel” at all, but an eight-foot-wide, five-foot-high, 60-foot-long passage dug under the building, the New York City Department of Buildings said in a statement on Wednesday, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. The move was the result of an ongoing dispute between the Chabad Lubavitch community and a sect that has long been embroiled in turmoil over ownership of the building that houses its headquarters. Members of the splinter group believe that Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, who led the Chabad Lubavitch movement before his death at age 92 in 1994, is the Messiah, a claim that the mainstream Chabad movement rejects.
In a statement, Motti Seligson, a spokesman for Chabad Lubovitch, dismissed the idea that the underground passage consisted of a system of “secret underground tunnels,” as originally reported, referring to the men who dug it as “young rioters.” “This basement space — a long eight-foot-wide room — was dug out by young agitators under a ground-level extension made to the synagogue decades ago,” he said. Rolling rock. “This is not the site referred to in press reports as the 'secret tunnel' that runs parallel to Kingston Avenue.
In 2006, a court ruled that the Chabad Lubavitch community had control of the building, which is located on Eastern Parkway in the heavily Hasidic Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. However, there is still tension between the two groups, with the newspaper the Jewish Chronicle reference about six months ago today, a small group of members of the messianic movement began building a network of underground tunnels to gain illegal access to the building.
When Chabad discovered the existence of the tunnels last December, according to the Jewish publication the Forward, ordered a cement truck to fill them, fearing the building would suffer structural damage from the underground network. Seligson says that on Monday night, Chabad “notified the authorities of the destruction and vandalism of the synagogue grounds,” trying to evacuate the building. Those efforts resulted in protests Monday night, as well as the temporary closure of the building to review its structural integrity.
Initially, the infighting between what are essentially two small sects of the already small Crown Heights Orthodox Jewish community primarily garnered only local media attention. The mainstream Chabad Lubavitch community also immediately made it clear that it did not approve of the tunnels, with president Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky issuing a statement calling the actions of the “young rioters” “abhorrent.” “This episode was deeply painful for us and the entire Jewish community,” says Seligson. “The synagogue has deep significance for the Chabad-Lubavitch movement and the Jewish people around the world.”
At X, however, the story took off, with verified accounts known for disinformation, such as that of QAnon conspiracy theorist Stew Peters (who has more than 520,000 followers) and far-right operative Dom Lucre (who has nearly a million) using the story to promote hatred of Jews. In a tweet, Lucre referred to the network as “the Jewish tunnels.” He also posted a clip of Oprah Winfrey interviewing a Jewish survivor of “satanic ritual sexual abuse” while referring to a “stained bed mattress” apparently seen in the footage of the tunnels and referred to other “Jewish families across the country who are the same actions.” This post has over 9,000 reposts.
Mike Rothschild, the author of the book Jewish Space Lasers: The Rothschilds and 200 Years of Conspiracy Theories (no relation to the famous family), says the onslaught of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories about the tunnel has been particularly troubling in light of the dramatic increase in misinformation about X since its 2022 acquisition by Elon Musk, which resulted in the destruction of his trust and security. club. “If there are two things modern conspiracy theorists obsess over, it's Jews and secret tunnels,” says Rothschild. Rolling rock. “So obviously, Jews digging secret tunnels will set off alarms for people – even if the purpose of the tunnels turns out to be completely harmless. However, the damage caused by these theories is not limited to the Chabad community. He regards all Jews as aggressive, secretive and tribal. doing strange things under cover of darkness for unknown purposes'.
The flurry of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories is also worrying given the general increase in anti-Semitic crimes and hate speech in light of the Israel-Hamas war, with the Anti-Defamation League reporting a 337% increase in such reports following the Hamas terror attack on Israel on October 7, which left more than 1,000 dead. Rolling rock has previously stated that in light of the war, which has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians, many mainstream far-right accounts have focused on focusing exclusively on anti-Semitic hate speech and spreading misinformation about Jews. And thanks to lax regulations on X, says Rothschild, “they have a huge following and can post anything they want without pushback.”
“In a time of rising anti-Semitism worldwide, it is more important now than ever that good people stand up to Jew-hatred and stop the spread of dangerous conspiracy theories that have resulted in people being killed,” says Greenblatt. “It is our moral responsibility.”
Thursday, January 11, 10:08 am This story has been updated with new information about the tunnel.
from our partners at https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/secret-chabad-tunnels-new-york-1234942995/
