Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major

‘Not like other Passovers’: hundreds of Jewish demonstrators arrested after New York protest seder

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2024-04-24 12:00:08

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The protesters called on Schumer – who is among a minority of Democrats to recently criticize the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu – to stop arming Israel’s military, which relies heavily on US weapons, jet fuel and other military equipment.

“We as American Jews will not be used, we will not be complicit and we will not be silent. Judaism is a beautiful, thousands-year-old tradition, and Israel is a 76-year-old colonial apartheid state,” Morgan Bassichis, an organizer with Jewish Voice for Peace, told the crowd.