Several hundred people marched through Downtown Manhattan on Thursday night toward the New York Stock Exchange in protest of the US supplying the Israeli Defense Force with weapons made by American manufacturers.
The protest was organized by Within Our Lifetime, which describes themselves as a Palestinian-led community organization.
“Wall St. has Palestinian blood on its hands - US manufactures and investment companies are making the bombs being dropped on Gaza and are profiting off the on-going genocide of Palestinian people,” according to a statement Within Our Lifetime posted on its Instagram.
“Last week, President Biden called on Congress to pass an additional $14 billion in military aid to the occupation to fund more death and destruction in Gaza, which will end up as blood-stained money in the pockets of the weapons manufacturers,” the post said.
The organization has led several protests throughout New York City since the beginning of the Israel-Gaza war and has another protest scheduled on Saturday in Brooklyn.
Within Our Lifetime did not return The Jerusalem Post’s request for comment.
A heavy police presence was between the New York Stock Exchange and Zuccotti park, where the protesters met. Several New York Police Department deputy commissioners were also in attendance.
Two counter protesters stood at the edge of the group in Zuccotti park. They both said they weren’t planning on coming to the protest but showed up at the park because they worked in the area.
An Israeli in New York
Iv Menache, a 25-year-old Israeli, said he only left his office to have a cigarette.
“You will never have Israel,” he said to several protesters, who then surrounded him.
Police intervened and encouraged Menache to step aside.
Menache said he’s been in disbelief in the weeks since Hamas’ attack on Israel.
“A lot of these people don’t know what they’re even protesting for,” he said. “They can protest all they want, I’m for protest, but once they come in my face and start circling around me, that’s when I become a little fearful for myself.”
Michael Arad stood next to the protesters holding fliers of the hostages who remain captured in Gaza.
“I was leaving work, I’ve had these in my backpack and pulled them out,” Arad said of the fliers he was holding.
“When I hear somebody saying ‘Palestine from the river to the sea,’ they’re not asking for peaceful coexistence, they’re not asking for a two-state solution.”
Arad said he’s not a fan of Netanyahu and is against settlements.
“But to do this, to ignore the humanity of people, is wrong,” Arad said of the protestors.
Pro-Palestinian groups in New York
The protest group was lined by police motorcycles as they made their way to Wall Street.
A first-generation Palestinian-American woman was in tears as the protest arrived in front of the New York Stock Exchange.
She declined to share her name due to fear for her safety, but said she was “at a loss for words” that President Joe Biden questioned the number of fatalities in Gaza.
“I don’t even feel like I belong here any more, I feel betrayed by my own country,” she said. “I feel betrayed. I feel ashamed.”
“To associate the entire population of Palestine with Hamas and clump us together like we’re collateral damage, how?” she said.
Jews protest against Israel
Max, a 37-year-old Jewish man from New York, stood in front of the Stock Exchange with his wife and young daughter who he wore strapped to his chest. He held a sign in support of a ceasefire.
“I’m Jewish, and I have family in Israel, and I feel a special responsibility to fight for rights for Palestinians.”
Max said that he thinks Zionism has started to cause a “moral rot in Judaism, and that Zionism is bad for the Jews.”
“It affects me deeply, personally, to see people who I’m somehow connected to religiously and ethnically do such horrible things, and try to justify it in perceived victimhood when the power differential is so incredibly wide,” Max said.
Yitzchok Deutsch, a member of the Satmar community in Brooklyn, was among the protestors and was joined by several members of his religious community who held Palestinian flags and signs that read “Israel is responsible for 75 years of tragic bloodshed of Arab and Jew.”
“We are here as Jewish people, we have pain when all people are killed,” Deutsch said.
“They used my religion to justify the killing of Palestinian people,” Deutsch said. “Judaism is a religion, Zionism is a political movement. We stand up for Palestinians rights.”
A volunteer with the American Civil Liberties Union said he saw a few non-violent altercations between protests and counter protestors, and said he does not believe any arrests were made.
An organizer with Within Our Lifetime declined to talk to The Jerusalem Post at the protest.