The police arrested ten protestors after about half an hour of their chanting and obstructing the street.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
About a dozen anti-Israel protestors blocked the route of New York City’s Pride Parade Sunday for a short time before the police arrested them so the march could go on.
The small group, some of them wearing “Queers for Palestine” t-shirts, first broke through the metal barricades lining the route and threw red paint at a Human Rights Campaign float and on the street. Several covered their hands in the fake blood as well.
They then sat down in the middle of Christopher Street in the West Village with large Palestinian flags and banners saying “No Queer Liberation Without Palestinian Liberation” and “Palestine will be free.”
They chanted “Shut it Down,” seemingly referring to the war in the Gaza Strip, and got the onlookers to repeat after them, “Free, free, free Palestine.”
They also chanted “Forty thousand dead,” driving up even the unverified number of victims that Hamas claims, which also does not differentiate between fighters and civilians.
The IDF, which tracks the number of terrorists it has killed since Hamas and other Muslim extremists invaded Israel on October 7, massacring 1,200 and taking 252 people hostage, says 15,000 of the Gazan dead are combatants.
Military experts agree that less than a 2-to-1 ratio of civilians to soldiers killed in a war is considered extremely low and acceptable by any army in the world.
After about half an hour, some two dozen police officers arrived to clear the area. The protestors did not resist as their hands were zip tied and they were led away.
Calls of “Shame, shame” and loud boos were directed at the police from the crowd as they did their jobs.
The authorities said later that ten demonstrators had been arrested, out of whom seven received criminal summonses.
Pro-Palestinian protestors had interrupted parades in other cities during June’s Pride Month, including Boston, Philadelphia and Denver.
“It is certainly a more active presence this year in terms of protest at Pride events,” said Sandra Pérez, the executive director of NYC Pride. “But we were born out of a protest.”
Israel had its share of supporters in the New York march as well. Several were spotted carrying the Israeli flag and rainbow Pride flags with Stars of David in the middle as they walked down the route, which was flanked by tens of thousands of onlookers.
Those who know that Gaza is run by Hamas according to Sharia (religious Muslim law) find it hard to understand why the LGBTQ+ community would support them when they put to death anyone suspected of not being “straight,” while Israel gives them equal rights and protections as it does for every citizen.