Pro-Palestine activists in Somerville say they feel uneasy and afraid since the arrest of Scott Hayes in a shooting at a pro-Israel rally Friday. Hayes has attended several rallies in Somerville armed over several months and made threats of violence, they say, and the incident could repeat.
“What happened in Newton could easily end up happening here,” an anonymous Somerville municipal employee said.
The shooting occurred at a rally in Newton where video footage shows Hayes arguing from across a street with Caleb Gannon, 31. Gannon, wearing a Palestinian flag pin, runs over and tackles Hayes. The ensuing fight involved several people on the scene. At the end of the footage, Gannon is shot and a voice says “Grab my pistol.”
Hayes, 47, who is arguing self-defense, has been released on $5,000 bail and was ordered to stay away from Gannon and prohibited from carrying a firearm. Gannon is expected to survive and also be charged in the incident.
Tracking protests
In the months leading up to the shooting, Hayes, who is not Jewish or Israeli, traveled Eastern Massachusetts to protests of Israeli warfare in Gaza so he could take part in counterprotests supporting Israel. He is an Iraq War veteran and Framingham resident who ran an unsuccessful campaign in 2021 as a write-in candidate for the District 9 Framingham School Committee.
Hayes and his associates “track” public cease-fire and Palestine-related events throughout the region and promote rallies to oppose them all, pro-Palestine protesters said.
Often pictured at events carrying an Israeli flag in one hand and a U.S. flag in the other, Hayes and his associates rally at city council meetings, film screenings and community encampments. In his advocacy, he frequently mentions accusations that Hamas soldiers committed rapes during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Suggestions of violence
Hayes suggested in his own social media that he was armed and might resort to violence, activists said. An anonymous safety marshal for Boston’s chapter of IfNotNow, a Jewish-American-led Palestinian liberation movement, pointed to the screen capture of a May 19 post believed to be by Hayes showing a gun draped with a Star of David necklace. The caption reads “Hey Jew Haters. Bring it.”
On June 10, an account identified as Hayes’ replied to a social media post showing a group of pro-Palestine protesters allegedly attacking a counterprotester. The comment was, “A few rounds of hot lead would have stopped this attack.”
While the IfNotNow marshal disseminated this information within their circles, and many protesters around Hayes assumed he was armed, not everyone did. “I was told this week that when he was there, he was brandishing a gun, and I did not know that,” said Illona Yosefov, a Somerville resident who encountered Hayes at a May 20 protest at Somerville High School.
Behavior in-person and online
Counterprotesters including Hayes try aggressively to agitate opposing protesters, pro-Palestinian organizers say. Yosefov, who identifies as an Israeli Jew, said at this protest, Hayes and his associates “had megaphones that they kept playing siren sounds on, the whole time, maybe a whole hour, just to distress people.”
Another strategy is to call pro-Palestinian protestors “rape supporters,” Yosefov said. In a video she captured at the May 20 protest, Hayes is recorded asking protesters, “Do you love raping Jews, is that your favorite thing to do? I bet.” She said Hayes got very close to two teenage female Somerville High School students and yelled in their ears through a megaphone, asking them if they love rape.
The remarks often turn graphic and personal, the anonymous marshal said. “If they identify you as a woman, they like to tell you what they think would happen to you in Gaza – that you’ll be raped by 10 men,” they said. “Or if they think you’re queer they like to say that Hamas would throw you off a roof.”
This same person said Hayes has been harassing them on social media for months. “He’s kind of obsessed with me – it’s really creepy,” they say. “It’s not the same thing as a punch, but it feels threatening.” Hayes’ social media includes posts accusing them of having a crush on Hayes and refer to them as his “blue-haired southern bred socialist love muffin.” Another says he wants “to have her little commie non-binary kids.”
The anonymous Somerville municipal employee, who identifies as Arab, said that while he has not interacted with Hayes, he is the victim of harassment from Hayes’ associates. At a protest June 26 against the screening of the film “Israelism” at Arts at the Armory, which Hayes attended and promoted on social media, a counterprotester made rape threats against the employee’s family. “I have him on video in Arabic, saying, I’m gonna fuck your mother, I’m gonna fuck your sister,” he said. “To me, it feels like an extra hate crime, since he’s not Arab.”
Differing standards and responses
In the wake of the Gannon shooting, the city employee said his community is feeling scared. “Generally, some of these standouts have children. A lot of communities don’t want children to be part of them anymore,” he said.
Hayes has received an outpouring of support since the shooting in Newton. A crowdfunding effort online has raised more than $250,000 as of Wednesday, saying that “Even though Scott is not Jewish he has been defending the Jewish people and its right for self determination and governance all across Boston.”
The Somerville employee disagrees with the characterization of Hayes and his associates as heroic: “They’re there to agitate and to elicit responses.”
Yosefov also sees a double standard in how protests and counterprotests are policed. “I would not go to protest with a stick taped to a sign – we have signs carved out of foam. And there’s Zionist protesters and counterprotesters who come into protests armed, not just with sticks on flags, not with pokey signs, but with guns,” she said.
Complaints of inaction
The municipal employee attributes the harassment at protests to the city’s inaction. In February, the group Somerville for Palestine met with Mayor Katjana Ballantyne after a threat captured on film. Despite the evidence, the employee claims no action was taken to ensure the group’s safety. “None of them reached out to us. The police did not reach out to us. There was not any investigation done,” he said.
Though he feels fear in the aftermath of the shooting, he now sees an opportunity to make change. Somerville for Palestine has faced months of delays in securing a second meeting with Ballantyne to discuss community safety. “Now that this has happened with Scott Hayes, there’s a lot of interest suddenly in granting us a date,” he said.
Somerville spokespeople and the Mayor’s Office were contacted for comment Wednesday, but there was no immediate reply. Cambridge Day was told the city spokespeople were out of the office.
“What happened could easily end up happening again because of a lack of inaction on all these parts,” he said. “It could happen in any community.”
A stronger
Please consider making a financial contribution to maintain, expand and improve Cambridge Day.
We are now a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and all donations are tax deductible.
Please consider a recurring contribution.
So the poor peaceful protester was provoked to attack a Pro-Israel protester, possibly because he was so outraged by the baseless claims that Israeli women were raped on October 7th?
What a psycho, throw the book at him for all the gun charges. Bringing guns to a protest? Go back to Charlottesville, loser.
“[A]ccusations that Hamas soldiers committed rapes during its Oct. 7 attack on Israel.”? Seriously? That Hamas committed mass rape on October 7 is a fact as you can see from the overwhelming video and photographic evidence that is available, eyewitness testimony, and admissions of Hamas terrorists. Please go ahead and try to explain away women being found with their pants off, underwear torn, and blood stains in their genital areas.
The sexual violence against Israeli women was premeditated. Hamas provided its terrorists in advance with an Arabic-Hebrew phrasebook that included the phrase “take off your pants.”
Given the author’s position on the mass rape perpetrated by Hamas terrorists on October 7, I expect that she will be the first to question allegations of sexual violence against women in Massachusetts. It appears that “believe her” had its moment but no longer applies.
Violence on the part of either side is unacceptable in our streets, obviously.
But the question is, who issued (or was one issued) a permit to carry a concealed weapon? I thought our state was supposed to have some of the toughest gun laws in the country. Did the Framingham police fail to do their job and issue him a carry permit considering his public gun threats etc. on social media or was he doing so illegally?
Cambridgejoe: Each municipality issues permits according to their own policies, or at least, prior to the Supreme Court ruling, the policies that were in effect then.
Since that ruling, a lot of those policies have been altered in accordance with it. Formerly, for example, Cambridge issued permits in several categories, and to my knowledge, most restricted the carrying to activities such as going to the range, hunting, camping, hiking and the like, and did not authorize the bearer to carry a concealed firearm outside of those activities. Other municipalities had less-restrictive policies.
Since the Supreme Court ruling, restrictions such as the Cambridge ones are no longer in effect, so if someone has a license to carry, they can, except for some legally restricted locations (e.g., federal buildings).
Even prior to the Court ruling, municipalities officially had to have an objective, defensible reason to deny a permit.