Article Summary –
Hundreds of Jewish anti-war protestors were arrested during a Passover seder in New York that functioned as a demonstration against US military aid to Israel. The protest, which involved about 300 arrests, was held near the residence of Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, who recently criticised Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The protestors urged Schumer to halt US assistance to Israel’s military, particularly after the Senate passed a military package including $26bn for Israel.
Anti-War Demonstrations in New York During a Passover Seder Result in Hundreds of Arrests
Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators were arrested during a Passover seder turned protest in New York as they called for a ceasefire and demanded an end to US military aid to Israel. The majority of the 300 arrests occurred on Tuesday evening at Grand Army Plaza, near the Brooklyn residence of Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. Jewish New Yorkers, who numbered in the thousands, had gathered there to participate in the seder which was observed worldwide as a festival of freedom.
Just before the seder, the US Senate overwhelmingly passed a military aid package that includes $26bn for Israel. The protesters urged Schumer, who has recently criticized Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to end Israel’s dependence on US military equipment and weapons.
Demonstrator Morgan Bassichis, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, declared that American Jews would not be complicit or silent. “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,” said Bassichis.
Following the seder rituals, mass arrests ensued. Notable speakers at the event included journalist and author Naomi Klein, Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour, and several Jewish students suspended from Columbia University and Barnard College over recent campus protests.
Klein, while addressing the crowd, said, “This Passover is not like other Passovers… Our Judaism cannot be contained by an ethnostate, for our Judaism is internationalist by its very nature. Our Judaism cannot be protected by the rampaging military of that ethnostate, for all that military does is sow sorrow and reap hatred, including hatred against us as Jews.”
The protest was inspired by the 1969 Freedom Seder, organized by Arthur Waskow on the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr’s death. This historical event linked the Jewish exodus story with the struggle for civil rights in the US and against the Vietnam War. A protester remarked that Passover was about liberation and the call for it was more important now than ever, expressing shock at the billions of tax dollars spent on the Israeli military.
Since October 7, Jewish groups have staged several high-profile antiwar actions in the US. Israel’s offensive has reportedly resulted in the death of 34,000 Palestinians in Gaza, including 13,000 children. In contrast, the attack by Hamas on October 7, 2023, resulted in about 1,200 casualties in southern Israel. Tuesday marked the 200th day since the war began.
Read More US News
This article may have been created with the assistance of AI.
All Good Info News Wire articles are open source through CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. You are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium, as long as you follow these guidelines:
-
You must give Good Info News Wire credit, including https://goodinfo.news/ and the author’s name.
-
Stories may be edited for in-house style or to shorten, but you must indicate if any changes were made.
-
You can publish our graphics and any photos that are credited to Good Info News Wire with the stories with which they originally appeared.
-
Don’t sell the story, publish it behind a paywall, or sell ads against the story. However, you can publish it on a page with ads you’ve already sold.
Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our web site. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of photos and graphics.
