Anti-Israel protestors arrested in clashes with police outside presidential debate

The crowd, with many masked or wrapped in keffiyehs, demanded a “Free Palestine” and did not seem to support either candidate.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Several anti-Israel protestors were detained during a clash with police outside the arena where the presidential debate took place in Philadelphia Tuesday night between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump.

According to the protest organizers Philly Palestine Coalition, at least three people were taken into custody.

One man, wearing a mask with black horns, was arrested after setting off a red flare. People around him scuffled with police as they demanded to know why he was being detained. Others threw water at officers.

The police did not comment on how many they removed from the scene as they tried to disperse the crowd of hundreds away from the area of the National Constitution Center, which had been blocked off for about 100 yards in each direction with heavy metal barriers.

Video clips uploaded to social media showed some 100 police dressed in riot gear and safety helmets walking their bicycles slowly into the demonstrators on the street to push them even further away.

The demonstrators shouted for a ceasefire in the Hamas-Israel war, chanted such slogans as “Free, free Palestine” and called for an “intifada” and a “revolution.”

Many waved Palestinian flags, but one held Hamas’ green flag and another carried the flag of a smaller terrorist group, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

Many in the mostly young crowd were masked or wore keffiyehs to identify with the Palestinian cause.

Some held signs calling for an arms embargo on Israel, and banners calling the country “a Zionist Terrorist Organization.” Others signs were both anti-Trump and anti-Harris, claiming, for example, that both were “pro-genocide.”

One black woman told an interviewer from TRT World, “We need white supremacy and Zionist supremacy to end,” and that “We will not be free until Palestine is free.”

Dozens advocated for the Party for Socialism and Liberation’s candidate for president, Claudia De la Cruz, who co-founded the group “People’s Forum” that has been front and center in many anti-Israel protests since the start of the war.

The Marxist-Leninist party supports ending all American aid to Israel, among other causes.