Pro-Palestinian activists raised the flag of the Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist group during a rally outside the Israeli consulate in Manhattan, according to a picture published by Israel’s consul general in New York on Saturday.
“So, America: Is this what you want? The flag of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, a proxy of Iran, here in the heart of Manhattan?” Consul General Ofir Akunis wrote on X. “Wake up and stand with Israel!!”
Akunis’s post did not make clear when the demonstration outside the building on the corner of Second Avenue and 42nd Street took place.
Hezbollah, an Iranian proxy with its stronghold in Southern Lebanon, has been designated as a terrorist organization in its entirety by most of the Western world, with the United States blacklisting the group in 1997.
On June 12, the New York City Police Department arrested one suspect after anti-Israel protestors burned American and Israeli flags near the consulate, which was closed as Jews worldwide celebrated Shavuot.
Suspect Jahki Lodgson-McCray is facing charges of second-degree reckless endangerment, third-degree menacing, disorderly conduct and failure to use a sidewalk.
The NYPD has been searching for two additional suspects in the case, releasing their pictures to the public to aid the ongoing investigation.
“This act shows that hatred towards Israel always accompanies anti-American sentiment,” the consulate said in a statement at the time, adding that the NYPD had increased security around the building.
Authorities in New York have witnessed an increase in antisemitic incidents in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist massacre of some 1,200 people, primarily Jewish civilians, in Israel’s northwestern Negev.
Last week, the NYPD released a wanted poster featuring a suspect allegedly involved in a June 10 incident where an anti-Jewish mob singled out “Zionists” on a southbound No. 5 subway train.
According to authorities, the man chanted, “Raise your hands if you’re a Zionist. Repeat after me; this is your chance to get out,” while the train was stopped at Manhattan’s Union Square station. The NYPD is seeking the suspect on suspicion of attempted coercion.
He has since been identified by the Jew Hate Database organization as Christopher Khamis Victor Husary, 36, from California.
A spokesperson for Mayor Eric Adams said, “New York City will always protect the right to free speech, but we will never allow our city to descend into lawlessness. Threatening New Yorkers based on their beliefs is not only vile, it’s illegal and will not be tolerated.”
Earlier this month, a mob of protesters chanting “intifada revolution” rallied outside an exhibit in New York memorializing the hundreds of victims of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on the Supernova music festival in southern Israel.
The crowd lit flares and waved PLO flags, along with one associated with Hezbollah, in front of the Nova music festival exhibition on Wall Street during what was billed by organizers as a “citywide day of rage for Gaza.”
