די זאליס ווען זיי זעהן אז זיי זענען אין דער ערד לויפן זיי די פרעסע און מאכן חילול ה'.
זייער כ"ק אדמו"ר מסאסמאן שליט"א גיט דאס איבער פארן רעקארד.
Kiryas Joel, NY - One side describes the post-election scene as a melee in which as many as 400 boys and young men shouted at departing poll watchers, pelted at least two women with eggs and shook the van of an attorney they revile.
The other side scoffs at that deion. In their account, the crowd size was closer to 150, no eggs were thrown and the noise that poll watchers heard was merely celebratory singing.
The setting was a wedding banquet hall on Forest Road where Kiryas Joel held an election for two village trustee seats on Wednesday – the latest political battle between two feuding factions within this Satmar Hasidic community.
The friction began around 9:40 p.m. when the poll watchers and lawyers who had stayed to await the voting results filed outside, where a crowd of young spectators had gathered.
Michael Sussman, the attorney for the village's opposition movement, said he met ''what looked like 300-400 young men,'' who screamed at him and followed him to his van as a public safety officer cleared a path through the crowd.
Once behind the wheel, Sussman said in a written account, ''I could only go backwards, into a crowd of hundreds of fist-clenched young men who had pure hatred on their faces and in their hearts. They were screaming; they were rocking my van.''
Moses Witriol, the village's public safety director, denies that last part.
''Nobody touched his van,'' Witriol said. ''Unless I'm blind – and I just bought a new pair of glasses.''
Witriol claims a Kiryas Joel Alliance member who accompanied Sussman had incited the crowd. Had the two men heeded his advice to leave the banquet hall by the back door, the whole incident could have been avoided, he said.
There are no outside police accounts of what happened. Several state troopers reportedly responded to the scene with lights flashing, but no record of their visit exists.
Orange County Sheriff's deputies – who monitored the last village election, in 2005, under court order – had no such obligation this time and got no requests for help, Undersheriff Kenneth Jones said.
Jones recalled a brief moment of friction after the 2005 election, when a crowd of young people rocked the car of two opposition lawyers as they tried to leave. Deputies intervened and quickly ended the altercation, he said.
