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Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday when Jewish New Yorkers and allies gathered for what they called a “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” on the second night of Passover. The demonstration, held one block away from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, came just hours before the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes about $17 billion in arms and security funding to Israel. “At the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free,” Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, told Democracy Now! “The Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom.”
Transcript
AMY GOODMAN: As many as 300 protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday night, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for a “Seder in the Streets” to stop arming Israel, they said, this on the second night of Passover. The demonstration was held at Grand Army Plaza, one block away from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. It came just hours before the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes some $14 billion in arms and security funding to Israel.
A series of speakers addressed the rally, including journalist and author Naomi Klein, Palestinian activist Linda Sarsour and several Jewish students suspended from Columbia University, where students have held a Gaza Solidarity Encampment. These are some of the voices of the demonstrators yesterday speaking at the Seder in the Streets.
BETH MILLER: Tonight’s Seder in the Streets, which will be happening on the second night of Passover, which is a holiday we observe every year that is all about liberation and how our liberations are intertwined with one another, is coming just hours ahead of a likely Senate vote on $14 billion in military funding and weapons to Israel. So we’re here to tell Senator Schumer that this is enough and we need to end U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide against Palestinians. And at the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free. And right now what we’re seeing is that the Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months, in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom.
PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live!
EVA BORGWARDT: Today the most meaningful way we could possibly celebrate a holiday for Jewish liberation is in the streets protesting this genocide, because our liberation is tied together with Palestinian liberation. And honestly, I am more moved than I have been in months, watching young Jews get arrested alongside Jewish elders, saying, “Not in our name,” as we have been for six months. And the Senate is still about to pass this massive funding package?
PROTESTER: Happy Passover. Free Palestine.
PROTESTERS: Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live! Let Gaza live!
You’re all the same! NYPD, KKK, IOF, you’re all the same!
UNA OSATO: And now we are hundreds in the streets. People are taking arrest, saying business as usual not go on. We are here at the doorstep of Senator Chuck Schumer. To the people in Palestine: We love you. We are with you. We are going to stop this U.S. funding, so that you can fight for your own liberation.
POLICE OFFICER: If you do not move, you will be arrested.
AMY GOODMAN: Some of the voices at the “Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel” that was held at Grand Army Plaza on Tuesday on the second night of Passover.
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