Pro-Palestinian protesters plan seders in New York and other cities as college campuses swarm

Pro-Palestinian protesters plan to risk arrest on Tuesday by closing a street in Brooklyn where U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer resides, said a coalition of Jewish groups that oppose Israel’s actions in Gaza. .

The protest, planned for the second night of the week-long Jewish holiday of Passover, is one of dozens that will be held in cities around the country, including Portland, Oregon, and Seattle.

There have been a series of large protests on college campuses from California to Massachusetts over the past week. On many of the campuses, protesters have set up unauthorized camps to press their demands.

In Brooklyn on Tuesday, protesters will hold a Passover seder, a holiday meal and ritual service, and call on Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish-American elected official, to support the U.S. stopping supplying weapons for war. of Israel in Gaza, organizers said in a statement.

“Hundreds will risk arrest to demand that Senator Schumer, who has recently delivered harsh criticism of Netanyahu, take the next step and stop arming Israel,” the statement said, referring to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Since Friday, hundreds of students and others have been arrested at Columbia, Yale and New York universities. Critics, including prominent Republican members of Congress, have stepped up accusations of anti-Semitism and harassment against at least some of the protesters.

On Tuesday, the White House said it was monitoring the situation on college campuses closely and said people had the right to protest in public but not to physically intimidate or advocate violence, citing some “alarming rhetoric.”

“When we see outrageous and dangerously anti-Semitic comments, we will speak out against them in very clear terms,” ​​White House spokesman Andrew Bates told reporters aboard Air Force One as President Joe Biden traveled to Florida. .

Bates said the Department of Education has a “key role to play” in dealing with anti-Semitic protests.

Columbia University in New York City canceled in-person classes on Monday to try to ease tensions on campus and out of concern that Jewish students would be targets of harassment. This Tuesday, the university said that classes for the rest of the year will be hybrid – with students being able to attend them online or in person.

New York police arrested more than 120 protesters on the New York University campus Monday night, a police spokesman said. Police stated that university authorities called for help and that the protesters did not disperse within the deadline given by the university.

The Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, killing 1,200 people and taking dozens hostage, according to Israeli counts. Israel’s retaliatory military offensive against Hamas-ruled Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people, according to the local Health Ministry, displaced nearly all of Gaza’s population of 2.3 million and caused a humanitarian crisis in the enclave.