The rally also saw a brief scuffle between a man filming the protesters and a keffiyeh-wearing demonstrator who pushed him toward the exit.
New York — New York University students slammed New York Police Department (NYPD) officers in a rally in Washington Square Park on Tuesday, a day after police cleared out an anti-Israel encampment in an outdoor campus plaza.
The students, who staged a “walk-out” and congregated in the park, directed their ire toward the NYPD officers who arrested 133 students, faculty members, and outside agitators Monday.
“It is right to rebel,” the protesters chanted, “NYPD, go to hell.”
Multiple people present who spoke with National Review cited the mass arrests as a reason for the rally.
“Some students said it became a little more aggressive on the side of NYPD than it could have been,” one protester who wished to remain anonymous told NR. “It was mostly students.”
Another student protester interrupted her, saying it was “students and a little bit of faculty as well that were protecting the students as well.”
A woman named Andrea, who identified herself as an NYU researcher, said she thought the arrests detracted from what could be a moment for education on colonization and oppression.
“I want NYU, first and foremost, to allow students to protest, you know, not call the NYPD on them,” she told NR. “I think it would be amazing for NYU to use this as, like, a learning opportunity for students. Like, so many students are learning about, you know, systems of oppression in their classrooms. And, so, right now, like, this is a chance to, like, have an active learning opportunity that I think, like, students, if the administration just calls the NYPD, they’re learning that it’s, like, not right to speak your mind and that it’s not right to support others in need.”
Andrea also said that she thinks “there’s a lot of assumptions that Zionists aren’t making, and maybe they learned certain things, and it’s all just, like, really deeply held beliefs.”
At one point during the rally, a man walked through the crowd, filming the protesters on his iPhone. Once those around him realized he was filming, shouts of “shame!” broke out, followed by “We don’t want no Zionists here.”
As the man walked toward the edge of the area of the park where demonstrators had gathered, a keffiyeh-clad protester pushed him further away with his forearm. The man filming with his phone shoved back harder, and the two yelled at each other for a moment, with other protesters screaming epithets like “f—ing pig!” at the man they considered an intruder.
The rally featured several other chants that have become commonplace at anti-Israel protests, like “we don’t want no two-state, we want all of it,” “from New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada,” “Israel, go to hell” and “resistance is justified when people are occupied.”
While the more radical protesters refused to speak to NR, one man carrying a sign referencing the so-called “Khazar hypothesis” — a debunked claim purporting that Ashkenazi Jews are not actually Jews and trace their lineage to a Turkic population in the Caucasus — did talk, telling NR his name was Steven.
“When Germans tried to create a German state for German people, we called them fascist,” Steven said, “and in 1948, Israel created a Jewish state for Jewish people, and we call them a democracy.”
After being asked about the sign, he said that “white Jews, contemporary Jews, are descendants of Khazars who were converted to Judaism, not the real Jews.”
He carried a white tote bag with the words “Columbia Harriman Institute: Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies” written across the side. When asked whether he is affiliated with the institute, he became much quieter, indicating that he did not want to answer the question.
Near the outskirts of the protest area, two people — dressed in casual clothing without any keffiyehs or other accessories that would identify them as protesters — looked on. One, an Israeli-born man with a thick Australian accent named Alon, told NR he and his wife live in the neighborhood and came to see what was going on in Washington Square Park.
“They’re very disappointing. They’re ignorant. It’s very difficult for us to be here and see people chanting ‘intifada revolution,’ as you can hear now,” Alon said. “We both know people who were killed in the Second Intifada — a series of violent terrorist attacks in Israel, blowing up buses and stabbing attacks — and the idea that they want to globalize the intifada, to bring the intifada from Jerusalem to New York, is scary.”
Caroline Downey contributed reporting.