By Dion J. Pierre | The Algemeiner | October 2, 2024
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Within Our Lifetime (WOL), one of the most outspoken anti-Israel organizations in the US, is planning to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel with a mass demonstration in New York City, The Algemeiner has learned.
“Flood New York City for Palestine,” says a poster advertising the event. “No work. No school. All out for Gaza.”
WOL is calling on pro-Hamas agitators to storm several areas across Manhattan, including Wall Street, City Hall, Washington Square Park, Union Square, Grand Central, Times Square, and Columbus Circle.
“As we approach the one year mark of the monstrous kidnappings and massacres of Oct. 7, it is astounding to see people rally in support of Iran and its proxies,” Roz Rothstein of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, told The Algemeiner on Wednesday in response to the news. “Israel will continue to defend its citizens against the heinous terrorism coming from Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and it will do so with courage, strategy, and integrity.”
This is not WOL’s first pro-Hamas promotion of Islamist terrorism.
Just last week, its followers amassed in the hundreds for a demonstration held outside the Loews Regency New York Hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was staying before addressing the United Nations the following morning.
“Netanyahu, we’re gonna get you,” the protesters, led by WOL and its founder and leader Nerdeen Kiswani chanted, appearing to threaten the prime minister’s life. Flanked on all sides by dozens of New York City Police Department (NYPD) Bike Unit officers assigned to contain the demonstration, they waved Palestinian flags and signs calling for the destruction of Israel.
Later in the night, the protesters defied law enforcement officers’ orders to stay within the space they allowed, resulting in several arrests and additional charges for resisting arrest and obstructing justice. During the detainments, they screamed expletives at officers, calling them “fascists,” “p—ssies,” and “pieces of sh—t.” Others, jamming their cell phone cameras into the thick of the confrontations, demanded to know the officers’ names, presumably to report them for misconduct.
Within Our Lifetime has been one of the principal agents of mass demonstrations in New York City, the aim of which is the disruption of the local economy and sabotaging of public services, as happened in April when it led the local operation of the “Coordinated Economic Blockade to Free Palestine.” Seeking to block the “arteries of capitalism,” Kiswani led WOL to Wall Street, where it attempted to bring trading on the New York Stock Exchange to a halt.
In July, Kiswani indiscriminately targeted individual Jews, defending a man who had entered subway cars asking Zionists to identify themselves and deboard.
“We don’t want zionists in Palestine, NYC, our schools, on the train, ANYWHERE [sic],” she later tweeted. “This is free speech, it is saying we don’t want racists here.”
During the summer, WOL participated in demonstrations designed to disrupt Fourth of July celebrations marking US Independence Day. A crush of anti-Zionists poured into the streets of New York City and Philadelphia, chanting anti-American slogans and others — such as “long live the intifada” — calling for terrorism. For its contribution, WOL set hundreds of people for a march through Washington Square Park, where they burned the American flag.
Earlier in the year, the group conducted a siege on the Brooklyn Museum.
“Some of the most heinous antisemitic rhetoric and incidents seen in New York City since Oct. 7 have been perpetrated by WOL supporters and members, including vociferously demanding the expulsion of Zionists from New York City,” the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism has said about the group. “Since Oct. 7, WOL has hosted or co-sponsored some 100 anti-Israel rallies many of which included explicit support for violence against Israeli civilians by US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Hezbollah, the Houthis, and affiliated individuals such as Leila Khaled and Hamas’ military wing spokesperson Abu Obaida. WOL also expressed enthusiastic support for Iran’s unprecedented April 13 drone-and-missile attack on Israel.”
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