NYC protesters link U.S. aid to Israeli strikes on Lebanon

Thousands of people came out on New York City streets on Sept. 24 to protest the slaughter of Lebanese people by the Zionist apartheid regime occupying Palestine. 

One march, called by the Palestinian Youth Movement and backed by the Shut It Down for Palestine Coalition, rallied in New York’s crowded Herald Square, where several subway lines cross. It marched through the streets past Grand Central Terminal, ending in Times Square. 

Another, called by Within Our Lifetime, gathered in Madison Square Park and marched to Grand Central Terminal. That march was ambushed and viciously attacked by NYPD’s Strategic Response Unit, who arrested at least 25 people. The cops broke one activist’s wrist. 

At the Herald Square rally, speakers denounced President Biden for supplying the bombs that Netanyahu’s planes dropped on Lebanese and Palestinian children. They linked the U.S.-backed genocide in those countries to racist police violence and state terror in the United States. 

That terror is exemplified by the state murder that very evening of Khaliifah Ibn Rayford Daniels, aka Marcellus Williams. The state of Missouri executed the Black man despite strong evidence of his innocence. A poem he wrote from death row, The Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine, was read at the rally. 

Chants and speakers emphasized the unity of the people of Palestine and Lebanon in the fight for liberation and the full responsibility of U.S. imperialism in this genocidal war. 

Hands off Lebanon! Free Palestine!