New York police arrested dozens of anti-Israel protesters on Monday who rushed and staged a sit-in outside of the New York Stock Exchange building.
Wearing keffiyehs and red “Stop Arming Israel” t-shirts, the protesters chained themselves to the building’s doors around 9:30 A.M. Many protesters identified themselves as members of Jewish Voices for Peace, an anti-Israel group that promotes Hamas terrorists as “freedom fighters.”
“Today there were 500 Jews who came here, in front of the New York Stock Exchange, to shut down business as usual on Wall Street with a message to say the U.S. government should stop sending weapons to the Israeli government and stop profiting from the genocide of Palestinians,” the group’s political director Beth Miller told the New York Post. “The reason we were here, specifically as Jews, is because the Biden administration and the Israeli government often say this genocide they are committing is in the name of Jewish safety and we reject that with every fiber of our being.”
“We were taught in our Jewish tradition that every single life is a universe and that to destroy a single life is to destroy an entire universe,” she added.
Miller said that 200 out of the nearly 500 protesters who gathered were arrested. The New York Police Department has not yet confirmed that number though they did report that “multiple people” were taken into custody following the protest.
Anti-Israel activists had signs that read “Jews say stop arming Israel,” “Arms embargo now,” “Fund FEMA not genocide,” and “Jews say divest from Israel,” and chanted slogans such as “Let Gaza live!” and “Up up with liberation, down down with occupation!”
“As Gaza is bombed, Wall Street booms,” activist and writer Emma Seligman told Teen Vogue. “Right now, the Israeli military is dropping bombs on homes, schools, refugee camps, and hospitals in North Gaza. Meanwhile, the members of Congress who vote to send these weapons to Israel invest in these companies and get richer every day,” she added, referring to defense manufacturers Lockheed Martin and Raytheon.
The protest comes one week after the first anniversary of Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, during which terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and took hundreds more hostage.