Earlier today, demonstrators took over a large portion of Washington Square Park and squared off on the anniversary of Hamas’ attack against Israel last year. Some were there to commemorate the 1,175 Israeli victims of the offensive and defend the Israeli state’s actions since, while a great deal more were there to protest the invasion of Gaza that followed, as well as the decades-long military occupation against the Palestinian people. All together, there were as many as 300 people in the Garibaldi Plaza section of the park.
“I think that the calling of the Israeli defense a genocide is completely patently untrue and an abuse of the word,” said Blaze, a 30-year-old law student, when asked why she was attending the event. The UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, as well as numerous human rights organizations, have declared that they believe the “intent to destroy” a population, as a benchmark for genocide under international law, has been met. The attack on Israel last year, the largest ever on Israeli soil, was a decisive factor for Blaze: “Israel is in a very vulnerable point where they have no choice but to simply defend themselves.”
At around 3pm, two groups of somewhat similar size stood facing each other in the park’s Garibaldi Plaza, just east of the central fountain. Every 10 or so minutes, another group protesting against Israel’s war arrived, carrying Palestinian and Lebanese flags, which occurred at least three times until the supporters of Israel were vastly outnumbered, perhaps by 10 to 1. At least twenty officers were on scene, forming a porous barrier between the two groups. La Voce also saw private security guards at the demonstration as well. When the group demonstrating for Israel wished to leave Garibaldi Plaza, at this point surrounded by the far more numerous protesters for Palestine, the police carved out a path for them to reach the open area around Washington Square Fountain. While some traded insults and accusations throughout the protest, at no point did protesters in either camp grow aggressive, violent, or intimidate the other side.
“To be honest, before October the 7th last year, I had never even heard of Palestine,” said Ari, a 27-year-old who works in air traffic control. “But after doing some research and listening to both stories, it’s a definite clear answer to me that the Palestinian movement is the right movement to support,” she told La Voce. For Ari, the actions of Israel over the past year do amount to genocide, and constitute a shocking irony: “to got through that, and just to repeat it over in Palestine, it just makes no sense to me.”
Israel’s increasingly strong stance against the United Nations – as seen in Netanyahu’s combative speech at the General Assembly two weeks ago, where he said Israel was the victim of “lies and slander” – was echoed at the rally.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres triggered the ire of Israeli officials last year after he stated that the attack on October 7th “did not occur in a vacuum,” and just recently was banned from entering the country. Eyal, a 51-year-old native New Yorker working in tech who now lives in Spain, agreed with the ban, calling Guterres a “bad man” and accusing him of bias against the country: “I don’t know if he’s an anti-semite or not, but he’s definitely definitely anti-Israeli, anti-Zionist, which for me is very close to anti-semitic.” Eyal also told La Voce that he “gives no credence” to the UN’s reports of “wretched” and “unlivable” conditions in Gaza pre-October 7th.
Both sides began to disperse after about an hour of demonstrations, with the pro-Palestine contingent moving on towards Union Square.
