Mass Demonstration Confronts Netanyahu During U.N. Address in New York
By: Isaac Darko Boamah, New York
Shortly before midnight on Thursday, a vociferous “No Sleep for Netanyahu” demonstration near the Loews Regency hotel — where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying — resulted in 14 arrests and summonses for unreasonable noise, according to police accounts. The late-night action foreshadowed a larger, sustained outpouring of dissent the following morning.
By midmorning on Friday a multitudinous assembly had coalesced in Times Square, many of them young, brandishing Palestinian banners and placards emblazoned with demands: “End All U.S. Aid to Israel,” “Arrest Netanyahu,” and “Stop Starving Gaza Now!” The congregation erupted in approbation when organizers announced that several heads of state had vacated the General Assembly chamber during Mr. Netanyahu’s remarks, and protesters raised a cadence of denunciatory chants: “Netanyahu you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide!”
The New York Police Department estimated roughly 2,000 demonstrators had joined the march by about 10:15 a.m., the crowd filling 42nd Street and compelling the temporary closure of multiple blocks along Sixth Avenue as it surged uptown toward the United Nations. The mobilization transformed the approach to the U.N. into an audible, visible manifestation of public outrage.
On the ground for The Metro Lens, Managing Editor, Isaac Darko Boamah spoke at length with demonstrators and bystanders, cataloguing a spectrum of sentiment. Some of the protesters told Boamah that they regarded U.S. policy as indifferent to Palestinian suffering: “They don’t care about the death of brown people who are Palestinians; they’re not considered human beings,” they lamented. Many aged who joined the demonstration traveled from New Orleans to participate, told Boamah they were dismayed by what they called American apathy and invoked the International Criminal Court’s indictment of Mr. Netanyahu: “He should not be able to come to New York City and lobby the U.N., Congress or anyone else to try to stave off a cease‑fire,” they said. Young demonstrators told Boamah that Mayor Eric Adams’s facilitation of Mr. Netanyahu’s visit was “absolutely egregious.”
Protesters repeatedly castigated sustained U.S. support for Israel, framing that support as a proximate cause of civilian suffering in Gaza. Health authorities in Gaza report more than 60,000 Palestinian deaths and widespread starvation as Israeli military operations continue, including heavy bombardment that has levelled sections of Gaza City.
Organizers and participants characterized the march as part of an enduring nationwide wave of demonstrations that has swept college campuses and metropolitan streets since Hamas’s 2023 attack on Israel and the ensuing Israeli campaign in Gaza. For many in the crowd, attendance was intended as both moral witness and political pressure — a public insistence that foreign policy, humanitarian law, and accountability be reckoned with on the world stage.
Some demonstrators also targeted New York’s municipal leadership. Mayor Eric Adams attended Mr. Netanyahu’s U.N. address even as a number of foreign leaders exited the chamber; critics on the march accused the mayor of tacitly enabling the prime minister’s presence. In contrast, mayoral contender Zohran Mamdani has publicly said he would honor an International Criminal Court warrant and direct local authorities to act should Mr. Netanyahu set foot in the city.
As the procession dispersed near the United Nations, the tenor remained resolute: what began as a gathering in a commercial crossroads had evolved into a civic summons — an insistence that the international forum and the streets outside it cannot be disentangled from the anguished demands of those who say the prevailing policies have produced catastrophic human costs.