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Dozens Arrested as 1,000+ Jews Demand Gaza Ceasefire at Rabbi-Led Yom Kippur Protest in NYC
Protesters blocked traffic to the Brooklyn Bridge, embodying the ancient Jewish tenets of justice, righteousness, and saving life.
Oct 03, 2025
Dozens of people were arrested in New York City on Thursday during a protest led by rabbis on Yom Kippur—the holiest day of the Jewish calendar—demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and an end to US complicity in Israel's genocide.
More than 1,000 Jews plus allies turned out for the demonstration, which was led by the group Rabbis for Ceasefire. The protest started around 3:30 pm local time at Brooklyn Borough Hall, where rabbis led a Yizkor, a memorial prayer of mourning recited just four times per year, including on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and repentance.
Some protesters carried a banner reading, "Not Another Bomb," written in Hebrew and English.
"Our heart is broken for every single person who has been murdered, and we want to convey the fact that this has to end," Rabbi Elliot Kukla told CBS New York.
Protesters then marched to the Brooklyn Bridge, where some sat down, locked their arms together, and sang while blocking traffic to the span. New York Police Department (NYPD) officers subsequently arrested at least 56 people, according to the New York Post.
Many of the arrested protesters chanted, "Let Gaza Live!" as their hands were zip-tied and they were hauled off to an awaiting NYPD bus.
Asked why she was arrested, one keffiyeh-clad woman said, "Because I’m using this sacred holiday of Yom Kippur, as a Jewish person whose ancestors perished during the Holocaust, to protest against the genocide of the Palestinian people in my name."
"And I say, not in my name," she added.
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Speakers at the protest included New York City Comptroller Brad Lander—an ally of Democratic mayoral candidate and staunch Palestine defender Zohran Mamdani—who told the crowd that "we must today take collective responsibility for what the Israeli government has been doing, is doing today, on Yom Kippur," with "over 65,000 Palestinians killed, mostly women and children, whole families wiped out, food used as a weapon."
Earlier this week, President Donald Trump welcomed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House. The right-wing Israeli leader is a fugitive from the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which last year ordered his arrest for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder and forced starvation.
Like former President Joe Biden before him, Trump has approved billions of dollars in US armed aid to Israel, even while senior Trump administration officials acknowledge that children and others are starving to death in Gaza.
Lander took aim at US complicity in the genocide, decrying "the bombs funded by our taxpayer dollars in the name of the Jewish state," as well as the "desecration of Judaism."
Grateful to Rabbis for Ceasefire, @jfrejnyc.bsky.social and the other organizers of yesterday's mass mourning and collective atonement at Brooklyn Borough Hall. Let us steady and care for one another, and persevere together. #YomKippur
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— Office of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander (@nyccomptroller.bsky.social) October 3, 2025 at 8:01 AM
The Jewish religion emphasizes the ancient tenets of tzedek, mishpat, and din—righteousness, justice, and law—as well as pikuach nefesh, or saving life, which overrides nearly every other religious law including kosher dietary restrictions and keeping the Sabbath.
Just 2.4% of the US population, Jews have had an outsize presence at pro-Palestine demonstrations since October 2023, with groups like Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Rabbis for Ceasefire often leading large protests against Israel's war and US complicity under both Trump and Biden.
Jews have opposed Zionism—the mainly European settler-colonial movement to reestablish a Jewish homeland in Palestine—since the earliest days of the experiment. Even some early Zionists foresaw the genesis of events like the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack on Israel, with Ahad Ha'am, father of cultural Zionism, writing after an 1891 trip to Palestine that "if the time comes when [Jews are] encroaching upon the native population, they will not easily yield their place."
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Sanders, Mamdani Bring 'Fighting the Oligarchy' Tour to Brooklyn
Sanders blasted Democratic Party leaders for withholding their support from Zohran Mamdani
Sep 07, 2025
U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has been crisscrossing the country on his Fighting the Oligarchy Tour, a series of fiery town halls meant to rally progressive voices from coast to coast. On Saturday night, the movement came home for Sanders, as he returned to his alma mater, Brooklyn College, to share the stage with New York City mayoral hopeful Zohran Mamdani in a packed town hall that echoed with calls for change.
Watch Saturday night's rally here:
Sanders blasted Democratic Party leaders for withholding their support from Zohran Mamdani, hailing Mamdani instead as “the future of the Democratic Party.”
“I find it hard to understand how the major Democratic leaders of New York state are not supporting the Democratic candidate,” Sanders said. “If a candidate started at 2% in the polls, gets 50,000 volunteers, creates enormous excitement, gets young people involved in the political process, gets nontraditional voters to vote, Democratic leaders would be jumping up and down!”
“So we’ve got another fight on our hands,” Mr. Sanders said. “And that is the future of the Democratic Party.”
Sanders and Mamdani turned their fire on Donald Trump’s agenda and the wealthy donors bankrolling efforts to derail Mamdani’s campaign. Sanders warned that America’s richest wield far too much influence, casting the mayoral race as “a test case of whether or not democracy can prevail.”
Sanders highlighted that Mamdani’s rising popularity—and the White House’s backlash—were signs of a progressive wave gaining unstoppable momentum.
“What they fear is Mamdani becoming a model for what could sweep across the country,” Sanders told the cheering supporters.
New York faces the clearest choice of this election year:Zohran Mamdani and Bernie Sandersv.Andrew Cuomo and Donald Trump
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— John Nichols (@nicholsuprising.bsky.social) September 6, 2025 at 10:48 PM
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Solidarity Marches Held Across Globe to Demand Cease-Fire in Gaza
Organizers held rallies in the U.S., Europe, and Asia to mark Nakba Day and condemn Israel's bombing and starvation of Palestinian civilians.
May 19, 2024
As one United Nations official on Saturday said that "brand new words" are needed to adequately describe the devastation Israel has wrought across Gaza in its U.S.-backed military assault, tens of thousands of people across the globe marched in solidarity with Palestinians to demand an end to the "ongoing Nakba."
The marches were held to honor Nakba Day, which was marked on May 15—the 76th anniversary of the mass displacement of 700,000 Palestinians who were forced from their homes when Israel declared statehood in 1948. The protesters demanded a cease-fire in Gaza, where Israeli forces have killed at least 35,456 people since October, the majority of them women and children.
Protesters in London carried signs reading, "Solidarity is a verb," and "The Nakba never ended" as they marched through Whitehall, close to the home and office of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Palestinian photojournalist Motaz Azaiza, who covered the first months of Israel's bombardment and evacuated Gaza in January, joined the marchers and told the crowd that mass protests around the world have given Palestinians hope.
"I didn't believe that I would stay alive to stand here in London today in front of the people, who saw me there under the bombing," said Azaiza. "Occupation is using all the weapons against us, the bombs, the killing, the starvation, the apartheid in the West Bank, and now killing the people and forcing them to leave their lands... I did my best to show you, and I believe you will do more, we all together will do more to stop this genocide."
In Dublin, Ireland, where politicians have harshly criticized Israel and its supporters for the assault on Gaza and the near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that has pushed parts of the enclave into famine, more than 100 civil society groups supported a march organized by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
Irish Palestinian Zak Hania, a researcher and translator who was trapped in Gaza until earlier this month when he was finally granted permission by Egyptian and Israeli authorities to leave, thanked the crowd for choosing "to stand with justice and to stand with an oppressed people."
"I am proud to be an Irish Palestinian," said Hania. "I am proud to see all of you. It is part of my healing... We inherited a dream from our parents. We are trying for all our lives to fulfill our dreams and our parents' dreams. My parents are dead, but I will work to fulfill their dreams. Their dream is to have a free Palestine."
Other protests included a rally outside the German embassy in Bangkok, a march of about 400 people in Washington, D.C., and a demonstration in Brooklyn where police violently arrested at least 34 people, according to The New York Times.
Nerdeen Kiswani, founder of pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, told the Times she witnessed "police indiscriminately grabbing people off the street and the sidewalk. They were grabbing people at random."
Independent journalists posted videos on social media of police officers punching and kicking protesters.
The latest show of global outrage toward the Israeli government and the Western leaders who have supported its assault on Gaza came as U.N. humanitarian aid officer Yasmina Guerda told U.N. News about her latest deployment to Rafah, where 900,000 people have now been forced to flee following Israel's incursion in the city.
"We would need to invent brand new words to adequately describe the situation that Palestinians in Gaza find themselves in today," said Guerda. "No matter where you look, no matter where you go, there's destruction, there's devastation, there's loss. There's a lack of everything. There's pain. There's just incredible suffering. People are living on top of the rubble and the waste that used to be their lives. They're hungry. Everything has become absolutely unaffordable. I heard the other day that some eggs were being sold for $3 each, which is unthinkable for someone who has no salary and has lost all access to their bank accounts."
"Access to clean water is a daily battle," she added. "Many people haven't been able to change clothes in seven months because they just had to flee with whatever they were wearing. They were given 10 minutes notice and they had to run away. Many have been displaced six, seven, eight times, or more."
The daily reality described by Guerda is continuing to unfold as the Israeli forces have prevented 3,000 aid trucks from entering Gaza in the past two weeks, according to the Government Media Office in the enclave. The closure of the Rafah and Karem Abu Salem crossings for the past 13 days, since Israel launched its new offensive in Rafah, has also prevented nearly 700 injured and sick people from leaving Gaza for treatment.
"This constitutes a clear danger in light of the collapse of the health system," said the office.
On Sunday, U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths warned that the blockade on aid is leading to "apocalyptic" consequences, with the famine that has taken hold in parts of northern Gaza close to spreading across the enclave.
"If fuel runs out, aid doesn't get to the people where they need it, that famine, which we have talked about for so long, and which is looming, will not be looming any more," said Griffiths. "It will be present."
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