Hours after a man drove a pickup truck with an ISIS flag into a crowd in New Orleans, killing 15 and injuring 35, in the wee hours of the morning on New Year’s Day, hundreds of anti-Israel protesters supported Palestinian terror in a march in New York City.
“These protesters in New York City are marching not to condemn the ISIS terrorist attack against their own country but to falsely accuse their own country, as well as Israel, of terrorism,” wrote Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.).
“The hatred for America and Israel far exceeds the hatred for actual terror, apartheid and genocide in the world,” the pro-Israel congressman added. “For an ideologue, ideology has more reality than reality itself.”
Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) wrote that “hours after a jihadist sympathizer killed 10 Americans, pro-Hamas agitators are marching through New York City calling for a global intifada.” (New Orleans police first said that 10 people had been killed, but authorities now say at least 15 are dead.)
“The governor and the mayor must put an end to this nonsense—now,” he wrote. “Silence is not an option.”
The New York Post reported that hundreds of anti-Israel protesters, many with Palestinian flags, chanted “there is only one solution: intifada revolution” as they marched in New York City on New Year’s Day. Many Jewish organizations and scholars have long said that language calls for violence against Jews.
There was also a chant of “we will honor all our martyrs,” per the Post.
Rep. Keith Self (R-Texas) called the protesters “the enemy among us.”
Earlier in the day, Jessica Sarah, the Jewish commissioner of the New York City Police Department, wrote that investigations hadn’t turned up any ties between the New Orleans attack and New York City.
“However, in an abundance of caution, the NYPD will continue to enhance presence across the city at relevant locations as warranted,” she stated. She had not commented publicly at press time about the anti-Israel protest.
“There’s little distinction between the actions of Shamsud Jabbar in New Orleans, who used a truck as a weapon and terrorist attacks in the West Bank where cars are used to run over Israelis,” wrote Joe Truzman, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and editor of its Long War Journal.
“It’s terrorism, yet there are people in this country who support ‘resistance’ and ‘intifada,’” he wrote.
The Israeli diplomat Yaki Lopez wrote that “pro-Hamas demonstrators chanted ‘intifada revolution’ in New York City while Jihadist terrorists carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans, killing over a dozen Americans.”
“This is the grim reality of the ‘globalization of the intifada’ they called for,” Lopez wrote. “It’s terror, pure and simple.”
