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Anti-Israel activist Calla Walsh was unrepentant as she faced sentencing in Hillsborough Superior Court — South on Thursday for her role in the vandalism attack on Elibit Systems in Merrimack.

“Free Palestine,” Walsh said moments before she was handcuffed and taken into custody, eliciting cheers from her comrades in court.

The courtroom was packed with supporters, mostly young, White women, and the majority wearing Palestinian keffiyehs. The comrades cried, shouted support, and made heart shapes with their hands as each woman was taken away by deputies. 

Walsh, 20, and her fellow defendants — Sophie Ross, 23; Bridget Shergalis, 28; and Paige Belanger, 33 — were arrested following their attack on the Elbit facility, protesting the Israeli-owned defense company for providing weapons to Israel. 

The activists staged the attack on November 20, 2023, weeks after Hamas terrorists murdered 1,300 Israelis and took hundreds of hostages on October 7.

Paige Belanger

All four entered guilty pleas to misdemeanor charges of criminal trespass and criminal mischief as part of a negotiated plea agreement. New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella, who personally oversaw the prosecution, originally charged the four activists with a series of felonies, including riot, conspiracy to commit criminal mischief, burglary, and conspiracy to commit falsifying physical evidence. Each charge carries a potential three-and-a-half to seven-year prison sentence.

But in the end, Formella made a deal.

The sentence for each charge is 12 months in jail, but the women will each serve just 60 days under the agreement. The remainder of the jail time is deferred for six months. Along with community service and a pledge to not be charged with any new crimes, the women are under orders to pay Elbit a total of $95,000 to cover the damage they caused at the Merrimack facility on Daniel Webster Highway.

“The resolution reached with these defendants balances the needs of sentencing, as well as the goals of the New Hampshire Department of Justice and the victim, Elbit Systems of America, to ensure the defendants make Elbit America whole by paying restitution in full, completing community service within the community they disrupted, and by facing a significant period of incarceration,” according to a statement from the Attorney General’s Office.

“This resolution also serves the broader goal of deterrence and sends a clear message from law enforcement that criminal conduct aimed at disrupting businesses and communities will be vigorously investigated and prosecuted.”

Some Granite Staters expressed their disappointment that the anti-Israel activists — who broke windows, smashed skylights, damaged equipment, and forced a lockdown of the employees inside the building — will get a slap on the wrist.

Sophie Ross

“I think they got off too easy,” state Rep. Jeanine Notter (R-Merrimack) told NHJournal. “They terrorized the employees of Elbit. Can you imagine being in that building and not knowing the extent of what was happening outside? They padlocked the doors and were up on the roof doing who knows what?

“Terrorizing people should have a stiffer sentence than 60 days in jail,” Notter added.

There’s a good chance the incarcerated activists will get financial help from multi-millionaire and self-declared Communist James “Fergie” Chambers. The scion of the wealthy Cox family, Chambers operates a Marxist commune in Massachusetts, though he lives in the Granite State to take advantage of the state’s tax policies and strong Second Amendment protections.

While he likes low taxes and gun ownership, Chambers hates Israel.

“Israel does not deserve to exist,” Chambers told LA Magazine last year. “It is a false state propped up by the West.” 

Belanger listed herself as the secretary for the Berkshire Communists, the “revolutionary Marxist-Leninist collective” reportedly bankrolled by Chambers. 

The four women are all connected to Palestinian Action U.S., where Chambers is prominent. Chambers often pays bail for radical left-wing protestors, and made sure to front the cash bail for the women last year.

The FBI has an interest in Chambers, and seized Walsh’s cell phone after her arrest last year as part of an investigation into the wealthy Communist benefactor, according to court records.

Calla Walsh (right) and U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

Walsh is a political star in her own right. She gained fame as a 16-year-old activist who helped push Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) to victory in a primary race against Joseph Kennedy III. More recently, she’s been fangirling online for the likes of Hamas and Iran’s repressive, authoritarian regime run by Islamic fundamentalists.

Walsh mourned the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who orchestrated the Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack, going so far as to post an image of her presidential ballot with Sinwar’s name written in.

She also posted messages calling Israelis “the scum of nations and pigs of the Earth.”

Walsh still has a pending criminal case out of Cambridge, Mass. for her protest at the Elbit facility there.

Bridget Shergalis

Shergalis comes to the Marxist, anti-Israel movement via television. The former child actress had featured roles on Nickelodeon and Disney Channel productions, though she does not seem to have parlayed her minor fame into steady work as an adult.

State Sen.-elect Tim McGough (R-Merrimack) told NHJournal he supports the plea deal.

“This sentencing reinforces New Hampshire’s commitment to maintaining the rule of law and protecting our community from destructive behavior,” McGough said.

“It’s clear the negotiated plea deal likely considered the toll these repeated trials would have taken on Elbit Systems’ employees and the significant cost four separate trials would have imposed on the State of New Hampshire. Valley Street Jail is not a fun place to spend the upcoming holidays, and these criminals are in for a rude awakening. This sentencing sends a strong message: our community stands against violence, and those who disrupt our peace will face serious consequences.”

A new force of anti-democratic extremists is taking to New Hampshire’s streets, calling for overthrowing the government while espousing antisemitic hate.

But it’s not far right, white supremacists like NSC-131. It’s the far left, anti-American Marxists in groups like the Party for Socialism and Liberation driving anti-Israel street demonstrations in Manchester and cheering violence against Jewish people.

There’s been no major violence associated with either political fringe in New Hampshire. But Thomas O’Connor, a former FBI agent who specialized in international and domestic terrorism cases, says the danger is greater now than it’s ever been as the state heads into a high-stakes presidential election year.

“The potential for violence in the 2024 election cycle is more than anything I’ve seen in my two-plus decades working on domestic violence extremism,” O’Connor told NHJournal.

On Saturday, vandals keyed the cars of dozens of Republicans attending the state GOP convention in Concord. On Monday, just 48 hours after Iran launched a massive missile and drone attack on Israel, dozens of pro-Palestine protesters gathered near the State House to denounce the Jewish state.

“From the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free,” they chanted, a phrase critics say calls for the destruction of the nation of Israel.

Left and right fringe groups have long existed on the American political landscape in an almost symbiotic relationship, O’Connor said. When a right wing fringe group appears to cause trouble, a left wing counterpart will show up, and vice versa. Think of Antifa showing up to counter a Proud Boys demonstration.

The increasing polarization of American politics, fueled by heavy social media use and turbo-charged by the disinformation deployed by America’s foreign adversaries, worries experts like O’Connor. Russia, North Korea, and Iran are all known to use social media to put out extremist content and conspiracy theories in an effort to weaken America by turning citizens against each other, he said.

“The majority of the country is somewhere in the middle, but the extremes are much larger than they were four or five years ago,” O’Connor said.

Though law enforcement needs to be careful to allow everyone to exercise their First Amendment rights to protest and speak out, authorities need to be aware of the potential for violence.

O’Connor’s view is bolstered by a 2021 study published by the Criminology, Criminal Justice, Law and Society. The study found that while the far right engages in more violence and more deadly violence than the far left, the far left proportionally commits more murders than the far right.

“The results indicate that the far right remains the greatest threat to public safety for the most severe form of violence, namely ideologically motivated homicide. However, some interesting nuances highlight areas in which the far left might create cause for concern. The far left has a larger proportion of homicides with multiple fatalities and a slightly higher rate of homicides targeting law enforcement, albeit at a frequency much lower than the far right. The far left might create cause for concern; the far left has a larger proportion of homicides with multiple fatalities and a slightly higher rate of homicides targeting law enforcement, albeit at a frequency much lower than the far right n addition, far left extremist violence has increased over the last five years, showing that there may be socio-political scenarios in which the far left’s threat to domestic security increases to levels much higher than its average over the last three decades,” the study found.

Many Granite Staters are familiar with NSC-131 and its white supremacist antics. The New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office filed a civil complaint against NSC-131 in February in the Merrimack Superior Court over the group’s alleged threats and harassment of a drag performer at Teatotaler’s Cafe in Concord.

But, the Marxists with the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) are going largely unnoticed as they organize anti-Israel protests in Manchester and elsewhere. The PSL has operated in the state for years, and it’s taking a more prominent role since the Oct. 7 Hama atrocities in Israel. Days after more than 1,200 people were murdered by Hamas terrorists, members of PSL held a pro-Palestinian rally on Elm Street in Manchester. As they shouted genocidal slogans like “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” the PSL members simultaneously told NHJournal the murder and rape of Israeli civilians was justified and that it never happened.

“We stand with the struggle of the oppressed against the oppressors,” PSL leader Joy Douglas said on Oct. 11. “The U.N. states clearly that those facing oppression, those who are facing apartheid and genocide, have every right to fight back.”

Douglas said that even though Hamas’ Operation Typhoon was justified, it also never happened. No civilians were murdered in their homes, terrorists took no hostages, no concert goers were gunned down.

“There’s no documented evidence that those people are dead,” Douglas said.

In the months since the Oct. 7 attack, PSL has become one of many anti-American Marxist groups targeting Israel in New Hampshire. The PSL is a radical Communist splinter group formed by former members of the World Workers Party in 2004. The PSL is dedicated to fomenting a socialist revolution to overthrow capitalism and the American government.

Eight people were arrested on March 22 in Merrimack at the Elbit Systems facility during a protest that included vandalism and destruction of property. As police responded to the scene, protestors revealed their anti-police and anti-capitalist views.

“Why are the police here defending the capitalists?” one protester was heard shouting at officers. “Why aren’t the police defending the people? Is it because the police are paid by the capitalists?”

It was the second major protest at the Merrimack Elbit facility. Four women are currently charged with felonies for their roles in the November protest that included setting off smoke bombs. Three of those suspects, Calla Walsh, 19, Bridget Shergalis, 27, and Sophie Ross, 22, had their bail paid by James “Fergie” Chambers, a multi-millionaire Marxist who moved to New Hampshire in order to avoid taxes.

Chambers is involved in various anti-police and anti-Israel protest movements throughout the country. He recently told left-leaning Mother Jones magazine, “I think the most important thing for the prosperity of humanity is the destruction of the US.”

Chambers also called Russian President Vladimir Putin “one of the better statesmen of our century,” and he described Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack as “a moment of hope and inspiration for tens of millions of people,” according to Mother Jones.