New York City, NY – Amid a wave of terrorist attacks in Israel that left 11 people dead, pro-Palestinian demonstrators marched through midtown Manhattan last week carrying signs reading “Intifada until victory,” “We will free Palestine within our lifetime,” and “Resistance until return.”
The protesters also chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” “Resistance is justified when people are colonized,” “New York to Gaza, globalize the intifada,” “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” and “We don’t want no Zionists here.”
“Intifada” means “uprising” in Arabic, and is generally used in the Israeli-Palestinian context to refer to periods of intense Palestinian violence targeting Israelis. In the Second Intifada in the early 2000s, more than 1,000 Israelis, around 2/3 of whom were civilians, were murdered in bombings, shootings, and stabbings perpetrated by Palestinian terrorists.
Last Wednesday’s rally was organized by the groups Within Our Lifetime and Defund Racism.
One of the speakers, Within Our Lifetime and CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) activist Nerdeen Kiswani, launched a vehemently antisemitic tirade against numerous mainstream U.S. Jewish communal organizations, claiming, “They do not represent the Jewish people. They are Zionist organizations hiding behind Judaism.”
“So every single organization on that list is a legitimate target because every single organization on that list supports the Zionist entity,” she continued.
Fatima Mohammed, another CUNY Law SJP activist, told the crowd, “Demand that Zionist professors are not welcomed on your campus. Demand that Zionist students are not in spaces where Palestinian students are.”
The Jewish right to self-determination is a core tenet of Zionism, and the denial of this right is an example of contemporary antisemitism, according to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
Watch video footage from the demonstration here (via Canary Mission):
