Pro-Palestine protesters stage sit-in outside New York Stock Exchange; over 200 arrested

US police have arrested more than 200 pro-Palestinian protesters staging a sit-in outside the New York Stock Exchange to demand an end to US support for Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish-led pro-Palestinian group, organized the protest in front of the iconic New York Stock Exchange building near Wall Street in lower Manhattan just before the opening bell on Monday.

The protesters in red shirts bearing "Jews say stop arming Israel" and "Not in our name" chanted "let Gaza live" and “Up up with liberation, down down with occupation,” requesting and end to funding of genocide.

“At this very moment, the Israeli military is massacring family after family in North Gaza in a war of extermination. So hundreds of Jews and friends are shutting down the New York Stock Exchange to demand the US stop arming Israel and profiting from genocide,” the Jewish Voice for Peace said on X.

Many also chanted slogans against Israeli attacks in Lebanon, as well as American defense contractors and weapons manufacturers.

The organizers said about 500 demonstrators attended the protest and none of them entered the stock exchange, but several people made it past the police security fence outside the main building on Broad Street.

A police spokesperson said 206 people were detained, without giving details. A journalist was also arrested by the police, but she was released soon after.

“Stocks are rising while children are dying. As Israel drops bombs on homes, schools, and hospitals in Gaza, Wall Street booms, and all the members of Congress who invest in these companies get richer every day,” Jay Saper of Jewish Voice for Peace said in a press release.

Also the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace Action, Beth Miller, said that over the past year, Israel has been utilizing US bombs to massacre communities in Gaza, all while weapons manufacturers on Wall Street experience a surge in their stock prices.

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Protests erupted once again amid widespread outrage over US backing of Israel's massacre in Gaza and Lebanon. In Gaza, at least 42,289 people have been killed while over 2,000 lives have been lost in Lebanon since October 7, 2023.

Since October, the US has provided Israel with $17.9bn in military aid alone, according to a report published by Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.

The report also noted that the US has spent an additional $4.86bn funding pro-Israel operations in the region, including in Yemen, since the eruption of the war. In inflation-adjusted dollars, this marks the highest amount of military aid to the regime.

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