NEW YORK – On October 7, I attended the main pro-Palestinian rally in Manhattan as an Israeli citizen who made aliyah from New York City in 2022.
The rally flyer, published on X by the Within Our Lifetime organization, said the rally would reach Times Square at 5:30 p.m. When I arrived there, demonstrators waving Palestinian flags and donning keffiyehs were scattered. I walked up and down the avenues, attempting to find the marchers.
In addition to seeing pro-Palestinian groups of people, I also saw pro-Israel counter-protesters, some of whom attempted to debate with anti-Israel demonstrators. The anti-Israel demonstrators refused to speak with the pro-Israel groups.
Finally, I followed four keffiyeh-clad women to 33rd Street and 8th Avenue.
The protest itself was not as large as expected. Organizers of the rally boasted that there were thousands in attendance, but my estimate is closer to several hundred. Police lined either side of the marchers, as the crowds filled the streets.
I saw two members of Neturei Karta at the rally but not a single other visibly Jewish individual.
“Long live the intifada,” “Intifada, revolution,” “Globalize the intifada,” “Resistance is justified when people are occupied,” “Israel bombs, USA pays, how many kids did you kill today,” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine is almost free,” were some of the chants heard at the rally.
Additionally, there were signs saying, “Israel has a right to go to hell,” “Israel is a terrorist state,” “Bombing children is not ‘self-defense,’” “The US and Israel are partners in genocide,” and “Israel, eat s***.”
One of the signs said, “NYPD, KKK, IOF [‘Israel Occupation Forces’], they’re all the same,” accompanied by the New York police badge, the IDF emblem, a Star of David, and a person divided in half, with one side depicting him as a police officer and the other as a member of the Ku Klux Klan.
Anti-Israel signs and flags
There were also Green Party Jill Stein affiliates at the rally, who carried a large Israeli flag with “Racist,” “Genocidal,” “Not in our name,” and other phrases scrawled across the Star of David in red marker.
Scores of people carried a massive Palestinian flag above their heads so that it was visible from the sky. Another flag, in red, had a picture of Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terrorist Abu Ali Mustafa on it, and it said “Revolution until victory” in Arabic. Another flag, in green, had a picture of the Dome of the Rock and said, “Defend al-Aqsa.”
Numerous demonstrators wore Hamas armbands or headbands, and a few Hamas flags were waved.
According to the flyer posted on social media, the demonstrators were supposed to march uptown, but they instead marched downtown to Madison Square on West 25th Street.
Once there, many packed into the small park, and others dispersed. Several stood outside the park, including American Civil Liberties Union protest monitors. I stood behind a US monument, where many of the march leaders gathered.
Opposite me was a sign that read “Ceasefire,” an apparent contradiction to the rhetoric of the march, which was calling for an intifada and a revolution.
At this point, a leader of the march began to speak. From my point of view, I could not see the speaker, and it was very loud; there was one person who kept blowing a horn. “We need to show them, we’re not afraid to take to the streets on October 7,” the speaker shouted. “We are here for one thing and one thing only, and that is justice.”
During the speech, demonstrators chanted “Allahu akbar.”
“We have Allah, we have truth, and we have freedom on our side,” the speaker said.
During the speech, a young man jumped on the national monument and waved a Palestinian flag from the top as the crowd cheered.
As the rally took place, thousands in Israel huddled in bomb shelters as rockets flew in from Lebanon, Gaza, and Yemen on the anniversary of Hamas’s massacre.
Toward the end of the march, I wondered what I would think of the rally if I was not Israeli. I concluded that it would seem no different from any other protest I have attended in New York if I did not understand the symbols, the messaging embedded in the flags, the chants, and the rhetoric.
The next day, in response to a tweet regarding a Jewish revolt at Auschwitz on October 7, 1944, Within Our Lifetime leader Nerdeen Kiswani wrote on X, “October 7 has always been a day against Nazism, and now it’s counterpart Zionism! Long live resistance against Nazism, Zionism, white supremacy, and all forms of genocide, settler colonialism, and fascism! Long live October 7! [sic]”