Police arrest 100 pro-Gaza protesters a block from Senate leader Chuck Schumer’s home
‘This will not be a Seder as usual. These are not usual times’
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Your support makes all the difference.More than 100 protesters were arrested during a “Seder in the Streets” protest near Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s home in Brooklyn on Tuesday.
The mostly Jewish protesters gathered in Grand Army Plaza, one block away from Mr Schumer’s home, for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.
The protesters called on Mr Schumer – who is among a minority of Democrats to recently criticise the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – to call for an end to the United States’ military support of Israel.
Hundreds of people were seen gathered around a circular banner representing a Seder plate, which included the words “Jews say stop arming Israel” alongside images of foods eaten during the Seder meal.
“We as American Jews will not be used, we will not be complicit and we will not be silent. Judaism is a beautiful, thousands-year-old tradition, and Israel is a 76-year-old colonial apartheid state,” they added.
“This is the Passover that we take our exodus from Zionism. Not in our name. Let Gaza live.”
Several other speakers addressed the crowd, including journalist and author Naomi Klein, Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour and several Jewish students suspended from Columbia University and Barnard College following pro-Palestinian protests in recent days, before a large portion of the crowd moved into the street, blocking the flow of traffic.
Police who had been monitoring the event warned protesters that they would be arrested if they did not move before moving in to make arrests when their warnings were ignored.
Protesters, some of whom were wearing T-shirts that read “Jews Say Cease-Fire Now”, were then led away in pairs.
Senator Schumer was not home at the time. He was in Washington passing a bill that included $26bn in aid for Israel.
While Mr Schumer, who is the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the US, has not called for a ceasefire, he has been openly critical of prime minister Netanyahu and his war on Gaza, which has seen more than 34,000 Palestinians killed since Hamas murdered 1,400 Israelis on October 7, according to the enclave’s health ministry.
He recently called for elections to replace Mr Netanyahu once the war winds down and repeatedly slammed the Israeli prime minister as one of the main stumbling blocks to Israeli-Palestinian peace.
However, protesters did not seem to think Mr Schumer had gone far enough in his rebuke of Mr Netanyahu.
“Senator Schumer just very recently spoke very harshly about prime minister Netanyahu on the Senate floor,” Beth Miller, the political director for Jewish Voice for Peace, said at the protest on Tuesday. “For him to do that with one hand, and then on the other hand reward prime minister Netanyahu by pushing forward this military funding package, shows that he is not serious about actually shifting US policy to leverage change.”
Meanwhile, Stefanie Fox, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace, said that the protest was held during Passover to send a message to Mr Schumer ahead of the Senate vote on military aid for Israel.
“Everything in our tradition compels us to bring everything we have to stopping these historic atrocities being done in our names and with our tax dollars,” she said.
Another protester told The Guardian she came to the demonstration because “Passover is about liberation. In our family, Palestinians have always been part of our celebration and mourning.
“The call for liberation is more important now than ever … as Americans, the billions of our tax dollars in the Israeli military bill is outrageous and horrifying,” she said.
The protest came amid a wave of pro-Palestinian demonstrations at college campuses across the US, which have seen hundreds of arrests take place at Columbia, Yale and NYU.
On Monday, the first night of Passover, Jewish activists held a seder at Columbia’s protest encampment.
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