Why I urged my parents to avoid the counterprotest in Philadelphia

Executive Briefing

According to reporting by The Forward, Parents usually tell their children whether they can go out, but last week, on a phone call with my parents, our roles reversed, and I urged them not to join a Philadelphia food crawl with their friends. The event was organized in response to a bicycle rally.

Detailed Factual Report

Pro-Israel counterprotesters and anti-Zionist protesters exchange heated words in Rittenhouse Square on Sunday, November 8, 2026. Photo by Matthew Hatcher

Parents usually tell their children whether they can go out, but last week, on a phone call with my parents, our roles reversed, and I urged them not to join a Philadelphia food crawl with their friends. The event was organized in response to a bicycle rally calling for the boycott of six restaurants, all Jewish-owned, to “show these zionist business owners that we see them for the disgusting humans they are.”

The counterprotest intended to show solidarity with these businesses by patronizing and protecting them on the day of the protest, given the hostile framing of the boycott against the restaurants and their Jewish owners. However, I was concerned that it would be co-opted by pro-Israel partisans, who not only would instrumentalize it for their own agenda — one which, in my view, is actively detrimental to the fight against antisemitism — but would also stoke chaos and violence. It’s a film that’s played out time and again, including when I was an undergraduate at UCLA : A call is put out that Jews are under attack, counterprotesters mobilize in response, and anger quickly morphs into belligerence, hostility, and violence.

Fortunately, it appears that no one was seriously hurt during Sunday’s bike rally and counterprotest . As I had feared, though, some demonstrators became aggressive as verbal confrontations and scuffles broke out across Rittenhouse Square. While it’s likely that some of the pro-Israel demonstrators were there for the sole purpose of displaying that they are not “Jews with trembling knees,” others ostensibly were there because, as the names of two of the organizations behind it would suggest, they want to StopAntisemitism and EndJewHatred .

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Source & Verification Provenance

Information in this article was compiled directly from records provided by The Forward. Access the primary source document at: https://forward.com/opinion/862328/philly-bike-on-your-left-rittenhouse-square/. Reporting and editorial review conducted by the USA NOW News Desk.