By:  Ilana Siyance

As the war in Israel lags on for a fifth week, with little progress on the release of the roughly 240 hostages being held by the Hamas terror group, New Yorkers continue to feel the ripple effects.

As reported by the NY Post, on Saturday morning, a grenade was found near the Holocaust Memorial Park in Brooklyn.  A man who had been walking around the bay with a metal detector, found the device and called the police at about 10 a.m., reporting a “possible grenade”. The NYPD Bomb Squad came to the scene at the West End Avenue public Holocaust Memorial park located at the water’s edge between Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard in Sheepshead Bay.  “The Bomb Squad deemed the grenade inert,” the NYPD said, indicating that it was a dummy.

In the meantime, Pro-Palestinian rallies continue at full force. As per the Post, on Friday night, an anti-Israel rally in Manhattan near Grand Central Station grew ugly as hundreds of protesters called for the elimination of the Jewish State.  NYPD police arrested six protesters at the hate-mongers event, which was organized as part of the “Flood Manhattan for Gaza” protest which first met on Columbus Circle earlier in the evening.  Protesters there had set fire to an Israeli flag and taunted a small group of counter-demonstrators that had showed up.   “Settlers, settlers go back home! Palestine is ours alone!” the protesters had chanted.  “It is right to rebel. Israel, go to Hell!” others yelled.

The group marched through Manhattan and when they came to the New York Times building, and they splattered fake blood.  At the subsequent rally at Grand Central, one 17-year old protester, who was arrested, had climbed up a light pole and was tearing down several flags, including an American flag.  Another of the arrests was Raymund Garcia, 34, of Queens, who was charged with assaulting a police officer, firefighter and EMT, and resisting arrest, as per an NYPD spokesman.

Jews across New York are doing what they can to make a positive impact.  As reported by the NY Post, on the same weekend, one synagogue in Long Island put out a long dining table for Shabbat outside on the lawn, with place settings for each of the hostages being held in Gaza since the Oct. 7 massacre.  At Ohr Torah in Valley Stream the table was set for the 240 hostages still being held, with a poster of one hostage affixed to the back of each chair.  Congregants of the Orthodox synagogue, sisters Jackie, Ariella and Orta Lankri, prepared the symbolic Shabbat table.  The inspiration came from the “The Empty Shabbat Table” which was an art installation created outside the Tel Aviv Museum of Art last month to honor the Israeli hostages, which include children and elderly.  Among the Israelis being held hostage, Hamas is also holding citizens of the United States of America, Germany and Thailand.

In a show of solidarity, similar displays of empty Shabbat tables have been set up across the U.S., in the old Jewish quarter of Rome and in Sydney Australia’s Bondi Beach.