Man Is Charged After Hitting Protester With His Car in Manhattan

A man who got into an argument with pro-Palestinian demonstrators before hitting one with his car on the Upper East Side of Manhattan on Tuesday has been charged with assault, according to the police.

The man, Reuven Kahane, 57, was arguing with two demonstrators around 9 a.m. when he struck a 55-year-old woman with his vehicle, the police said. In reaction, the demonstrators hit Mr. Kahane’s car.

Mr. Kahane was charged with second-degree assault. The demonstrator who was hit, Maryellen Novak, was treated at Weill Cornell Medical Center for minor injuries. She was arrested and charged with criminal mischief and unlawful assembly. The other demonstrator involved, John Rozendaal, 63, was also arrested and charged with criminal mischief.

Mr. Kahane was arraigned Wednesday morning and released without bail. The Manhattan district attorney’s office declined to prosecute Ms. Novak and Mr. Rozendaal, according to a statement.

Lawyers for Mr. Kahane, Sara Shulevitz and Mindy Meyer, said that “more facts will come to light” in the course of the case.

“We’re confident that our client will be exonerated of all charges,” they said.

The protesters were part of a group of about 25 people demonstrating outside of 755 Park Avenue, the police said, and the group was walking away when Mr. Kahane got into “a verbal dispute” with two of them.

A student group, Columbia University Apartheid Divest, disputed the police’s account, saying in a statement that Mr. Kahane drove up to the protesters in his car and asked for a flier before “grabbing the protester’s arm.”

As they were leaving, the group said, he “circled the block to drive into our peaceful demonstration” and struck a person whom they identified as one of the group’s de-escalation team members.

The episode is the second time in a week that members of their group have been assaulted and the fourth hospitalization, the statement said.

In a phone call on Wednesday, Mr. Rozendaal said that he was also at the demonstration as a de-escalator at the request of the student group. He had attended other demonstrations as a protester, but on Tuesday his sole role was “keeping people safe,” he said.

Mr. Rozendaal, a musician who lives in Manhattan, declined to give an account of what exactly led to the confrontation with Mr. Kahane or the aftermath. But he said that over the course of their demonstration in front of a Columbia University trustee’s home, they were approached by people who were “ really, really angry.”

“It was a challenge during those two hours to have compassion for everybody on the scene because anger comes from fear and it doesn’t come from nowhere,” he said. “But it also felt like it was making people unsafe.”

As the group was leaving the area, he said, the confrontation with Mr. Kahane occurred.

Mr. Rozendaal, who was not struck, said he was released from central booking — where people arrested are taken to be processed — around 2:30 a.m. on Wednesday and was told that the Manhattan district attorney’s office had “declined to prosecute” his case.

“The story is what’s happening to the people in Gaza and United States complicity and Columbia University’s complicity,” he said. “And the other piece of the story is the courage of Columbia University students in refusing to be complicit. And I was there to support that.”

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.