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Anti-Israel Protests In NYC Feature Extreme Vitriol Against The Jewish State

  • July 18, 2014

In response to Israel’s military operation, known as Operation Protective Edge, to defend its citizens against the hundreds of rockets being fired by Hamas, anti-Israel rallies invoking extreme rhetoric have been taking place across New York City.

Click here to learn more about the current Israel/Hamas Conflict.

On July 15th hun­dreds of pro­test­ers turned out in the pour­ing rain to hold a demon­stra­tion against Israel out­side the United Nations.

The protest fea­tured numer­ous signs com­par­ing Israel to Nazi Ger­many, includ­ing those that read, “It Wasn’t OK in Nazi Ger­many, Why is it OK in Pales­tine,” “One Holo­caust Does not Jus­tify Another” and “UN Must Stop Mus­lim Holo­caust in Gaza.” One sign read, “Spot the Dif­fer­ence” and fea­tured a pic­ture of Hitler and Israeli Prime Min­is­ter Ben­jamin Netanyahu. Com­par­ing Israel’s defen­sive actions in the past week and a half, which have resulted in the deaths of approx­i­mately 200 Gazans, to the geno­ci­dal mur­der of ten mil­lion peo­ple, includ­ing six mil­lion Jews, is sim­ply outrageous.

One day earlier, twenty pro­test­ers showed up at a pro-Israel press con­fer­ence car­ry­ing signs that stated “New York­ers Stand With Gaza Against Israeli Geno­cide,” “Israel = Ku Klux Klan,” and “Pales­tini­ans are Free­dom Fight­ers.” As speak­ers from the press con­fer­ence, includ­ing elected offi­cials, attempted to deliver their speeches, the pro­test­ers led chants of “Stop bomb­ing Gaza now” and “Free, free Pales­tine!” to the point where the speak­ers could not be heard clearly.

Last Friday, July 11th, sev­eral hun­dred pro­test­ers attended an anti-Israel rally at Union Square in New York City on Fri­day with signs that called for the destruc­tion of Israel and com­pared Israel to Nazi Ger­many. The rally, which was spon­sored by Adalah-NY, brought out pro­test­ers who held signs stat­ing that “All of Israel is Occu­pied Ter­ri­tory!” and “Down with the State of Israel! Free­dom for the Pales­tin­ian Peo­ple!” (The text of the sign was fol­lowed by a Star of David next to a swastika).

After pro­test­ers chanted “Resis­tance is jus­ti­fied when peo­ple are occu­pied!,” and “Not another nickel, not another dime, no more money for Israel’s crimes,” the orga­niz­ers led the crowd to a Max Bren­ner choco­late bar where they called for a boy­cott of the estab­lish­ment because of its alleged ties to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF). The action lasted out­side of Max Bren­ner for approx­i­mately ten min­utes, as pro­test­ers led chants such as “We are left with no other action! Boy­cott, Divest, and Sanction!”

And at the first protest held in New York on July 9, more than 1,000 demon­stra­tors gath­ered out­side the Israeli Con­sulate bear­ing signs com­par­ing Israel to the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi Ger­many, as well as signs legit­imiz­ing vio­lent resis­tance against Israel. At var­i­ous points dur­ing the rally, pro­test­ers in the crowd led chants of “Death to Israel” and “Khaibar, Khaibar ya Yahud, jaysh Muham­mad sawfa ya’ud,” which trans­lates to “Oh Khaiber, Khaiber, oh you Jews, the army of Muham­mad shall return.” The anti-Semitic slo­gan evokes an Islamic story of an alleged bat­tle between the prophet Muham­mad and the Jews of the town of Khaibar, which resulted in the sub­ju­ga­tion of the Jews of Arabia.

Sev­eral dozen mem­bers of Neturei Karta, a fringe ultra-Orthodox anti-Zionist group, were also in atten­dance, hold­ing plac­ards that called for an end to the Jew­ish state and “Zion­ist ter­ror­ism.” The spokesper­son for the group, Yis­roel Dovid Weiss, addressed the crowd in an attempt to absolve Jews from Israel’s alleged crimes, argu­ing that until the advent of Zion­ism, Jews and Mus­lims lived peace­fully together. He also led chants of “Zion­ism No, The State of Israel Must Go.” Another speaker warned the crowd to avoid dia­logue with any­one who sup­ports Israel, say­ing “No for Nor­mal­iza­tion!” He fur­ther praised the fact that Gaza is “fight­ing back” and led the crowd in chants of “When Peo­ple are Occu­pied, Resis­tance is Justified.”