Pro-Palestine protesters staged a walkout on Columbia University’s Morningside Heights campus. (Credit: Ana Gonzalez Vilá)
On the one-year anniversary of October 7, New York City experienced a wave of protests across Manhattan, stretching from Columbia University’s Morningside campus, to Washington Square Park, all the way down to Wall Street. There were no reports of violence, but one group said that they redirected events in response to threats from others.
The day marks one year since Hamas-led attacks on Israel, which resulted in 1,200 deaths and 250 hostages taken. Since then, the Israel-Hamas war has seen devastating escalation, with more than 40,000 Palestinians killed. The war has spread to Lebanon, where Israeli airstrikes have killed 2,000 people and displaced over a million residents.
At Columbia, a focal point of protests this past spring, security ramped up at the start of the academic year. Fewer gates than usual have remained open and guards at those entrances check campus identification and bags. On the anniversary of the attacks, the university expanded security presence and added more metal barricades.
At 11:45 a.m. on October 7, a horde of students trickled out of campus buildings, carrying out a planned walkout.
Starting around noon, students who support Palestine and students who support Israel gathered on the steps of the historic Low Library. While separated by a barricade, they shouted overlapping chants.
Each side recited the names and ages of those lost in the war. Pro-Israel students waved both American and Israeli flags. The pro-Palestine side chanted to the beat of drums and donned keffiyehs, the traditional checkered scarves that have come to represent the Palestinian cause.
Tensions ran high. As the chants grew louder on the Palestinian side, Columbia Business School professor Shai Davidai stopped his speech of mourning for the hostages and shouted across the barrier, “Today, this is about us. This is not about them.” Davidai has been vocal about the Israel-Hamas war and Columbia University protests, becoming a controversial figure on campus. Last academic year, he was under investigation by the University’s Office of Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action.
Down the steps and across a lawn from the chanting, a Jewish student who gave her name as Tanyah, was unwilling to identify herself due to fears of antisemitism. She stood in front of an art installation of giant replicas of milk cartons depicting those kidnapped and murdered by Hamas. “I was apprehensive coming back to school because of the protests and the people who shouted ‘we don’t want Zionists here,’” she said. “But I will not leave. I chose this school. This is my campus, too.”
As the crowds dwindled near midday at Columbia, they were beginning to build across Manhattan. About two hundred Columbia students left campus to join the city-wide protests.The pro-Palestine group Within Our Lifetimes (WOL) had organized a cascade of rallies throughout the day, the first beginning outside the New York Stock Exchange at 1 p.m.
Protesters began their rally at Wall Street. (Credit: Meera Navlakha)
Metal barricades and swaths of New York City Police Department officers surrounded the area, forming a human fence around the hundreds of protesters at all times. Onlookers hurried by on their way to work, sometimes not even breaking stride as they offered support for a side. “Pro Israel!” yelled a man in a suit, mid-phone call. Other pedestrians stopped to pick up keffiyehs and Palestine posters being handed out by organizers.
Speaking to a gathering of news crews, WOL founder and chair Nerdeen Kiswani said that the location was chosen because, “Wall Street is one of the many homes of genocide within this country.”
“U.S. tax dollars are being used to fund genocide,” she said. “And we are protesting today to say that this is firmly without our consent.”
Nas Shuaib, a pro-Palestine protester who said his grandparents and other family members currently live in Palestine, missed work to attend the demonstration on Wall Street.
“I’m contesting for my people to get our freedom, that Palestinians deserve a country like anyone else, just like America deserves to be free,” Shuaib said.
As the protests moved onward to City Hall, a group of Orthodox Jewish fathers and sons gathered. Young boys, who looked around 8 to 11 years-old, held signs that read “Judaism demands freedom for Gaza and All Palestine.” As they waved flags and hoisted signs in the air, a young boy chanted, “Anti-Zionism is not antisemitism.”
Rabbi Yitzchok Deutsch, who joined the group, expressed his solidarity with the Palestinian people, and his opposition to the Israeli state.
“We are Jewish people and we are ashamed and embarrassed of the actions taking place by Israel,” Deutsch said.
Protesters continued onto Washington Square Park, where New York University students appeared to make up much of the crowd. One protester had her face painted in the colors of the Palestinian flag and several pro-Israel protesters wove into the march.
Several people interviewed asked for divestment from Israel.
“There need to be cuts, financially, from the US to Israel,” said Anna Kabarton, a student at NYU.
Meanwhile, two pro-Israel students in the crowd, who only gave their first names, Maya and Nava, said they were both in Israel on October 7 and had to hide in bomb shelters while waiting for the attacks to end. Today is “personally a painful day,” Maya said, adding that Israel “was peaceful before October 7.” Others waving the Israeli flag said to pro-Palestine protesters, “You are celebrating terrorism.”
By the time protesters reached Union Square, NYPD officers on the scene estimated the crowd had reached several thousand. Tensions again increased. Here, a pro-Palestine group burned a cardboard cut-out of a pig’s head; a group of people were pushed and yelling elsewhere, and an Israeli man left with a bloody nose following this confrontation.
A cardboard pig head is set on fire by protesters in Union Square. (Credit: Jennifer Gan)
As pro-Israel protesters arrived in Times Square, NYPD officers used handheld metal detectors to scan people who entered the demonstration area. Captain Florent Groberg, the keynote speaker for the one-year anniversary gathering for Israel, addressed the crowd.
“Our sole mission, our sole purpose should be to bring the hostages home. We got to bring them home,” Groberg said.
The pro-Israel crowd was not joined by pro-Palestine marchers there, however. That had been the next stop for WOL Palestine, but the group diverted to Madison Square Park in the early evening, where about one hundred men engaged in Muslim prayer while onlookers observed quietly.
The change of plan was announced in a post on WOL’s account on X, formerly known as Twitter. “Due to several violent threats from zionists we are not marching to Times Square or Columbus Circle,” it said. The group marched on, dispersing in the early evening. “Get home safe, leave in groups, and stay tuned for our next action,” they wrote.
Reporting contributed by Dante Dallago, Ismael El Bou Cottereau, Ana Gonzalez Vilá, Fiona Sullivan, Megha Gupta, Chiara Schmid, Claire Leibowitz, Jennifer Gan, Jennifer Zhou, Ali Jaswal, Kori Shao
About the author(s)
Meera Navlakha is a freelance journalist and student at Columbia Journalism School. She has written features and breaking news for Vice, Mashable, W Magazine, and others.
Hope Talbot is a multimedia freelance journalist and MS candidate at the Columbia Journalism School. She previously wrote for The Independent, The Daily Dot and Euronews.