Anti-Israel protesters marched in New York City on Wednesday calling for intifada and revolution, which Israel diplomats argued demonstrated commitment to the same ideology strain that motivated the New Orleans car-ramming terrorist attack the same day.
The All Out for Palestine on New Year’s Day march at Times Square was organized by local chapters of the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), Writers Against the War on Gaza, NYV Healthcare Workers for Palestine, The People’s Forum, Pal-Awda, Party for Socialism and Liberation, and Jewish Voice for Peace to protest the war in the Levant between Israel and Iranian proxies.
“New year’s resolution: Intifada revolution,” chanted protesters waving Palestinian flags.
PYM NYC said on Instagram on Wednesday that its activists were on the streets as part of efforts “to disrupt the US war machine.”
The organizations, many of which are part of the Shut It Down for Palestine coalition, which has been responsible for many demonstrations across the US since October 7, said they would not be distracted from its quest for liberation by “corporate holidays.”
“Every single second of 2024, our people in Gaza faced a brutal US-Israeli genocide,” said a Sunday PYM NYC Instagram post. “On this New Year’s Day, we declare that there is nothing new in the US while the same genocide takes place in Palestine. There can be no new beginnings when our people are being ethnically cleansed, terrorized, and tortured under the sound of US-funded drones and bombs.”
Ideological connection
While planned before the New Orleans attack, the calls for violence ignited the ire of local and Israeli officials, who saw an ideological connection between the activists and the terrorist who killed 15 people and had an ISIS flag in his vehicle. Two Israelis were among the dozens wounded in the car ramming.
“Pro-Hamas demonstrators chanted ‘intifada revolution’ in NYC while jihadist terrorists carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans, killing over a dozen Americans,” Israeli Foreign Ministry Digital Diplomacy Bureau diplomat Yaki Lopez said on social media Thursday. “This is the grim reality of the ‘globalization of the intifada’ they called for. It’s terror, pure and simple.”
Digital Diplomacy Bureau Director David Saranga also noted on X/Twitter that the calls for intifada came on the heels of the attack.
New York Congressman Ritchie Torres decried the marchers for failing to condemn the ISIS attack on their own country and instead choosing to verbally attack the US and Israel.
The hatred for America and Israel far exceeds the hatred for actual terror, apartheid, and genocide in the world. For an ideologue, ideology has more reality than reality itself,” Torres said on social media.s said on social media.