Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters marched through the streets of midtown Manhattan on Tuesday to decry the Israeli government's role in the escalating violence in the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
The march, billed as an "Emergency Rally for Palestine," brought throngs of demonstrators to the Israeli Consulate on East 42nd Street, where they waved flags and carried banners calling to "Abolish the Settler State."
The event marked the largest demonstration for Palestinian solidarity in recent memory, according to Nerdeen Kiswani, a CUNY law student and founder of the pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetime.
"I grew up my whole life knowing this oppression is happening," said Kiswani, whose parents hail from the Israeli-occupied village of Beit Iksa. "With social media, other people are finally seeing what we’ve lived all along."
The gathering was one of many protests that erupted across the globe on Tuesday, as Israel rained bombs down on Gaza and hundreds of thousands Israelis fled Hamas rocket fire, in the worst flare-up of violence in the region since 2014.
At least 53 people, including 14 children, have been killed in the Israeli bombardment, according to Palestinian authorities; Israeli officials have reported six deaths in the country.
In Manhattan, a handful of scuffles broke out between pro-Israel demonstrators and Palestine supporters on Tuesday night. One video showed a man bleeding from the head, after reportedly sprinting into the pro-Palestine side and shouting "You all ain't shit."
A spokesperson for the NYPD did not immediately respond to questions about arrests made at the event.
A pro-Israel protester seen at Tuesday's rally
Itay Milner, a spokesperson for the Israeli Consulate in New York, said that the building was evacuated ahead of the protest, which he described as "disturbing" and "fueled by misinformation" about the Israeli government.
He pointed to recent pro-Israel statements made by Governor Andrew Cuomo, as well as mayoral candidates Andrew Yang and Eric Adams, as evidence that "we have a much larger support than Palestinians." (After backlash, Yang released a second statement on Wednesday to "acknowledge the pain and suffering on both sides.")
Wassim Kanaan, an organizer with the New Jersey Chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, accused the Democratic politicians of "blatant chest-thumping and pandering to the right wing." He said that anger at the Israeli government had reached a "boiling point" across globe, and predicted that the protest in Midtown was only a preview of what was to come.
"Just as we saw like the moment for Black lives, this is a movement of human dignity, human liberation," he said. "It isn't a conflict. It's the relationship between an oppressor and the oppressed."
