Dozens attend anti-war protest outside US embassy branch in Tel Aviv

About 100 Arabs and Jews are protesting outside the US Embassy Branch Office in Tel Aviv against the fighting and humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The protest marks the end of a three-day hunger strike announced by the High Follow-up Commission, an Arab community umbrella group. Among the protesters are lawmakers Aida Touma-Saliman and Ofer Cassif, of the binational communist Hadash party. Faction chief Ayman Odeh also joins for a few minutes.

Police storm into the crowd twice during the hour-long protest: Once to confiscate what an eyewitness describes as a small sticker bearing the Palestinian flag; and, minutes later, to briefly detain a young man from the front of the crowd. His transgression is unclear, and he is released some 10 minutes later after an angry Touma-Saliman speaks with the cops.

Protesters chant in English, Hebrew and Arabic, accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza and the US of complicity in the crime.

In Arabic, they chant, “Long live Palestine,” and in Hebrew, “We won’t die and we won’t kill for the United States.”

Arab protesters also sing the Arabic revolutionary anthem “If one day the people choose to live.” Jewish protesters, apparently unfamiliar with the lyrics, go mum.

Mohammad Barakeh, head of the High Follow-up Committee, delivers a speech in Hebrew, declaring the protest to be “against the industry of death led by the US government and the Israeli government.”

“Israel’s crime would go on for even another day were it not for the consent, push and support of the United States,” he says, as the crowd jeers. “The US is responsible for every drop of Palestinian blood being spilled in the Gaza Strip.”

Also at the protest are five members of the anti-Zionist Haredi sect Neturei Karta — who are common at protests abroad but a rare sight in Tel Aviv. They stand on the sidelines of the protest, where they draw the attention of numerous Arab journalists.

The group members have come to the protest from Jerusalem and Bnei Brak, a mainly ultra-Orthodox city that neighbors Tel Aviv, he tells The Times of Israel.

Bassem Daud, an elderly gentleman who uses a walking stick, says he came from Daburiyya, an Arab town in northern Israel.

Asked if he has family in Gaza, he says: “We are all a single nation… Everyone feels the other’s pain. Just like we feel pain for Jews who are killed on the altar of [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s seat.”