At least 206 Jewish anti-Israel protesters were arrested Monday after hundreds rushed the New York Stock Exchange and staged a sit-in outside the Manhattan landmark, police said.
Scores of pro-Palestinian protesters wearing red shirts stormed toward the building on Broad Street in Lower Manhattan — then chained themselves to the doors just before the stock market’s opening bell at 9:30 a.m., footage shows.
A handful of demonstrators, who hail from the Jewish Voices for Peace group, could be seen removing their jackets as they set up shop outside the building — jackets they wore in a possible bid to conceal their anti-Israel attire and thwart any attempt to stop them ahead of time.
They are not treading lightly. They have developed a transactional relationship with the Israeli right, where they get to rebaptise arms sales, domestic islamophobia, and unconditional support for whatever the Israeli right does as a stance against antisemitism. They shamelessly suppress Israeli leftist positions and diaspora jewish leftist positions and call that a stance against antisemitism.
Germany needs to tread lightly indeed, but that can’t be just a blank check to Apartheid Israel. They owe more than one debt, exactly as Namibia has called it out.
If anything, Germany must first establish a national policy of Germany as a safe haven for Jewish people everywhere. If they were serious about their historic debt to their former victims, there should be a right to aliyah to Germany. Get their own shit in order first, then lecture others.
Given our history we should strive to do better in the face of atrocities, even more so. It really should not matter, that the state committing these crimes happens to be populated by many ancestors of people the Germans tried to exterminate. I would have thought our commitment to teaching about our historical failures would have taught that lesson to more of us. But apparently recognizing a genocide for what it is is hard still.
