Hundreds of activists from Jewish Voice for Peace gathered outside the New York Stock Exchange around 9 a.m. this morning posing as financial-district regulars and tourists. Some took group selfies. After a few minutes they shed their disguises, taking off outer layers to reveal red tee-shirts that read “Not in our name” on the front and “Jews say stop arming Israel” on the back. 

The roughly 500 protesters — which included rabbis, elected officials and some celebrities, according to JVP — rushed to take a seat in front of the Stock Exchange, where around 200 of them sat inside the gated area that is technically part of the NYSE. A handful chained themselves to the front entrances of the Exchange, which opens at 9:30 a.m., while the rest sat in front of the gated-off area. 

The participants unfurled banners reading, “Gaza bombed; Wall Street booms,” “Jews say divest from Israel,” “Arms embargo now,” and “Fund FEMA not genocide.”

By the end of the action around noon, over 200 protesters, including all those within the gated area, were arrested. The NYPD and NYSE security had to use bolt cutters to cut the chains off the waists and arms of people who had attached themselves to the Stock Exchange’s entryways, and many of the arrested protesters went limp once they were handcuffed, forcing four cops to carry out one arrestee.

Though the protesters’ chanting could be heard inside the building, the action did not disrupt the NYSE’s business, reported CNBC.

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Since last October Jewish Voice for Peace has been staging mass civil disobedience events in New York, including at Grand Central Station and the Statue of Liberty, and other cities demanding the United States stop funding Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The one the group put on today, though, was planned to be its most strategic yet.

“We’re at the New York Stock Exchange, which represents money and profit in the U.S.,” Sumaya Awad, a Palestinian-American spokesperson for the event and member of Adalah Justice Project, told The Indypendent. “And we know, from multiple [data that has] come out, that weapons manufacturers are making millions and millions of dollars off the genocide.”

Awad said the purpose of the action was to “send a message to the American people that our government is using our tax dollars to fund a genocide, and the American people are not benefitting from this at all — in fact it is the tiny 1% at the top that is making millions of dollars off the suffering of Palestinians — and frankly the suffering of the everyday, working-class American.”

“We know why the U.S. is supporting and arming the Israeli government, and that is that the U.S. has its own interests,” added Beth Miller, JVP’s political director. “Biden likes to say that … he is supporting the Israeli government’s genocide of Palestinians for the safety of Jews everywhere. We as Jews reject that with every fiber of our being, and we know that the U.S. is profiting from this war and from this genocide,” she said. “There are weapons manufacturers here on Wall Street whose stock prices have skyrocketed over the last year.”

With hurricanes Milton and Helene leaving parts of the Southeast looking like war zones, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas reportedly said last week the agency “does not have the funds to make it through” the rest of this hurricane season. Today’s peace activists are appalled by the government’s willingness to throw money at war while it allows U.S. infrastructure to crumble.  

This is a time when “it has perhaps never been clearer how desperately we need to be investing in the future of our own communities here in the United States,” says Miller, so the fact that “the Biden Administration has sent $18 billion in one year to Israel … is abhorrent.”

Jewish Voice for Peace organizers selected Indigenous People’s Day, previously Columbus Day, for their action as another way to call out the U.S. government’s hypocrisy in its funding of Israel. “The fact that the United States claims to stand with and honor indigenous people, highlighting this day as Indigenous People’s Day while they’re actively funding, financially backing the ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population in Palestine is contradictory to their statements,” says Awad.

Jewish Voice for Peace, an explicitly anti-Zionist organization that was founded in 1996 in Berkeley, California, also noted the significance of holding its protest during the Jewish High Holidays.

“This is in the midst of some of the holiest days in the Jewish year, and that’s part of why we’re here doing this,” says Miller. “Jewish tradition teaches us that every life is a universe, and if you destroy one single life you have destroyed an entire universe. And the U.S. has funded the Israeli government as it has destroyed over 42,000 universes in Gaza. Every single one of those people was someone else’s entire world.”

And “on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year,” continued Miller, “the Israeli government carried out more massacres in Gaza and put Jabalia refugee camp under siege. They have locked families in — nothing coming in; nothing coming out. That is not Jewish tradition.”

Over the past week Israel has been carrying out what Palestinian reporters on the ground are saying are some of the most brutal attacks in northern Gaza since the first days of the genocide. Since Oct. 1, no food, water or medicine have been allowed to enter as the IDF lays siege to the area. And Netanyahu is currently considering a plan to annex the north, where around 400,000 Palestinians remain and which has been completely cut off from southern Gaza since November. 

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At the edge of this morning’s civil disobedience, a group of Zionists who frequently show up at anti-Israel demonstrations heckled protesters while a couple of NYPD Community Affairs officers held them at bay. “I work right near here, so whenever I see one of these [actions] happening, I call my buddies and come down here,” a counter protester who called himself Zuzu told The Indypendent.

Throughout the interview, he stopped a few tines to yell “You guys are fucking losers!,” “Death to Hamas!,” “Bomb, bomb Palestine!” and “Kosomack Falastin!,” which means “Fuck Palestine” in Arabic. 

“I’m 100% Syrian!,” he said, going on to explain that his family in Syria was pushed out of their home by Arabs in 1912. 

When asked to respond to the fact that the action he was protesting was organized and carried out by Jewish people, he said that they weren’t “real Jews.” 

“They’re not Orthodox; the only real Judaism is Orthodoxy,” said Zuzu. 

Meanwhile, a tour group continued on its regular path through Wall Street, and many other onlookers supported the action. 

A Black father put his fist up and started taking a video, saying over it, “I support this!”

A man who usually sells items at a table where the direct action was occurring was worried about not being able to make enough sales today, but also acknowledged the participants’ reason for protesting. “I have business to do, but I understand they want to make [people in power] understand that killing is not a solution.”

A Syrian tourist said, “Free Palestine! Stop Arming Israel! That’s all I have to say!”

Christina Shows, from Tulsa, Oklahoma, said she was happy to pass by a protest, and that she and her son even expected to see one while visiting the city. “I think it’s fantastic,” she said of the action. “It’s disgusting what Israel has been allowed to do — bomb camps where they tell people to go for safety.”

“From my point of view, it’s very wrong for an external country to aid a war that’s not theirs,” said Emilio Valdez, a tourist from Mexico. “Being Mexican, we know about having an internal issue and having external forces butting in, so we understand the protesters’ anger today.”

Arancha, who was visiting from Spain with her husband and children and asked to be identified by first name only, said, “I would prefer to see the city without this. We came for tourism, not politics. But I understand that they have to do it. U.S. money should go to the U.S. If I’m traveling and giving my money to your country, I want it to go to the people in your country, not to support war in another country.”

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