Tuesday afternoon, Jews and non-Jews gathered on the National Mall in droves for a March for Israel rally in support of the Jewish state, in honor of the hostages Hamas abducted during its October 7 attack, and against the rising tide of antisemitism in the United States and the world.
In addition to figures like Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky and actress Debra Messing, the crowd — which, according to CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations William Daroff, reached 290,000 at its peak — heard from several U.S. political leaders.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), who is the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in American history, emphasized the hatred of Jews inherent in Hamas as an organization.
“When Hamas says ‘from the river to the sea,’ they mean all of present-day Israel should be a Jewish-free land,” he said. “In fact, Hamas has said that what they did — the horror that they did on October 7 to the Jewish communities near the Gaza border — they should do to all Israelis. Just look at Hamas’s founding document. It says, ‘Is that a Jew behind the tree? Cut down the tree so you can shoot him.’ That is the evil of Hamas. Never, never, never will we forget the evil of Hamas.”
The crowd reacted to his speech with cheers of “Chucky! Chucky! Chucky!” and Schumer himself led a “U-S-A!” chant after proclaiming that he and other lawmakers “will do everything” to ensure America’s support for Israel “never, ever changes.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) said to an eruption of applause that “the calls for a ceasefire are outrageous.” He then condemned the explosion of antisemitism that has occurred since October 7.
“Hamas’s genocidal and antisemitic rhetoric isn’t just confined to Gaza. As you know, the war in Israel has awakened an alarming amount of antisemitism towards Jewish people here in the United States and across the globe,” he said. “From the halls of Congress to college campuses, this rise of antisemitism must be stopped.”
The “halls of Congress” remark — a thinly-veiled dig at lawmakers like Representative Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) — drew cheers, and the next speaker, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D., N.Y.), seemed to pleasantly surprise the audience with his remarks. Jeffries, who did not support the House’s resolution to censor Tlaib after her litany of false statements about Israel and eliminationist rhetoric, argued that “the moral case for Israel is anchored in the painful history of the Jewish people.”
“For centuries, Jewish people have been brutalized, persecuted by antisemitism, and violently thrown out of country after country,” he said. “The Jewish people were violently expelled from Jerusalem by the Roman Empire. The Jewish people were violently expelled from France. The Jewish people were violently expelled from England. The Jewish people were violently expelled from Spain. The Jewish people were violently expelled from Switzerland. The Jewish people were violently expelled from Portugal. The Jewish people were violently expelled from countries all throughout Europe. The Jewish people were violently expelled from the Middle East. The Jewish people were systematically murdered by the Nazi regime. The Jewish people were violently attacked by Hamas on October 7, resulting in the largest loss of Jewish life in a single day since the Holocaust.”
Jeffries pledged to support Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure it will continue to be a beacon of light for Jews whose historical struggles he outlined in his remarks.
“Here we are, more than 100,000 people strong, to unequivocally declare, ‘Never again,’” he said. “‘Never again.’ The state of Israel will always exist as a safe haven for the Jewish people, and so we stand together with the Jewish community and Israel.”