One of the women initially charged with malicious harassment in connection with an alleged antisemitic incident last month has had her case dismissed, while the other plans to plead not guilty at her arraignment in Ada County court on Monday. Hannah Tucker, 28, and Crystal Grosenbach, 38, were arrested July 4 on allegations that they verbally and physically accosted a kippah-wearing Jewish man while chanting pro-Palestinian slogans in downtown Boise. Tucker, the only person against whom charges still stand, is accused of striking the man in the nose with her cell phone.
At a preliminary hearing on Aug. 2, the alleged victim, Douglas Pearlstein, testified about the events of that night, which occurred outside Diablo & Sons Saloon, where he and his wife were eating on the patio. “We were eating dinner and we heard chanting, and that chanting is consistent with the verbiage that pro-Palestinian, pro-Hamas protesters are using,” Pearlstein told the court.
“I heard ‘free, free Palestine,' ‘from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,' ‘you’re killing babies, are you OK with killing babies,' ‘America will fall, Israel will fall.’” During direct examination with prosecutor David Swenson, Pearlstein identified Tucker and Grosenbach as the two protesters he said he encountered that night. They wore keffiyehs — the traditional Arab scarf commonly used as a symbol of resistance against the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and Israel’s war o.