NY’s anti-Zionist protesters celebrate ceasefire as victory, hail the ‘resistance’
No indication of a change in direction among anti-Israel activists after Gaza deal announced — only vows to continue calling to eradicate the Jewish state

NEW YORK — On October 8, 2023, while the blood was still wet in southern Israel and long before Israel launched its offensive in Gaza, hundreds of anti-Israel activists gathered in New York City’s Times Square to celebrate the Hamas invasion and rail against the Jewish state.
On New Year’s Day 2025, before a Gaza ceasefire agreement was announced, the same groups gathered in the same location beneath the plaza’s enormous, illuminated American flag. And on Thursday, after the hostage deal was announced, they were there again.
Regardless of the shifting landscape in the Middle East and spiraling toll in Gaza, the rallying cry at all three events was the same: “Long live the intifada.” The protesters vow to continue on the same path.
The standard-bearers for New York’s anti-Israel activist network nominally backed a ceasefire in scattered statements they made throughout the conflict. The overriding goal, though, was always the eradication of Israel and remains so now. “Smash the settler Zionist state,” one of their chants says.
Within Our Lifetime, the most prominent anti-Israel protest group in the city, hailed the Hamas attack the day it happened.
“We must defend the Palestinian right to resist zionist settler violence and support Palestinian resistance in all its forms. By any means necessary. With no exceptions and no fine print,” the group has said.
Columbia University’s anti-Israel student coalition, which instigated a protest encampment movement that spread across the US and abroad, marks October 7, 2023, as part of the “heroic struggle for Palestinian liberation.”

Both groups also celebrated the ceasefire announcement, not as a cessation of violence, but as a step forward in their struggle. Within Our Lifetime put out a statement that said, “Gaza has won, Palestine has won, resistance has won.” Columbia University Apartheid Divest, led by the campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, said, “We must fight and escalate.”
The activist network includes an array of groups, including large outfits dedicated to the conflict, hard-left socialists, student organizations and niche groups for constituencies like teachers and medical professionals. Some were more mournful in their ceasefire statements and did not include calls for further resistance, but the lead groups, such as Within Our Lifetime, National Students for Justice in Palestine and the Palestinian Youth Movement, all celebrated the ceasefire as a victory. (The groups are linked by more than ideology — all three route their funding through the same nonprofit.)
There aren’t any non-Jewish pro-Palestinian protest groups in New York calling for peace and two states, and none condemn Hamas or October 7. Palestinian advocates who don’t toe the line are shouted down.

Explicit support for Hamas and violence is not widespread at the protests. Both Within Our Lifetime and the Columbia students have made statements condoning violence in the past, though. The leader of Within Our Lifetime, Nerdeen Kiswani, posted open support for the terror group on Instagram several months into the conflict. The Columbia protesters said in October that “violence is the only path” while walking back an apology for a student leader’s claim that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”
When demonstrators do openly support terrorism at rallies, it is accepted. At the New Year’s protest, a woman shouted “Hamas” repeatedly at pro-Israel counter-protesters. At Wednesday’s rally, two men wore Hamas headbands. No one appeared to have any issue with it in either case. At another protest this month at a Manhattan hospital, a demonstrator flaunting a Hamas headband mocked the hostages. He then joined the protest’s leadership for a prayer session in Union Square. The inverted red triangle, a Hamas symbol, is ubiquitous. The protesters label their rallies “floods,” echoing the Hamas term for the attack that started the war, the “Al Aqsa Flood.”
Within Our Lifetime announced another rally to “Flood New York City” on Saturday. “The struggle continues, and the flood rises stronger!” the group said.

And like Hamas claiming victory and further resistance from the ruins of Gaza, the protesters in New York have not achieved most of their aims in their months on the streets. The colleges haven’t divested, the politicians haven’t flipped, the police haven’t folded. The campus disruptions have become more scarce and the street protests more sporadic. Student leaders have been suspended from their prestigious universities, faculty have lost their jobs and activists are facing lengthy prison terms. The Biden administration they demonstrated against lost, but the incoming Trump administration has little tolerance for their activism. Leftist Israelis in the city, potentially potent allies in a push for Palestinian statehood, want nothing to do with them.
The protesters are also unpopular with the public, according to polls. They have targeted cancer patients, museums, memorials, libraries, transportation hubs and holiday events, and lambasted some of the politicians most sympathetic to the Palestinians.
“You guys are protesting at a hospital. What the fuck is wrong with you?” a counter-protester shouted at demonstrators outside the NYU Langone Health Center earlier this month.
Despite the setbacks, and after the ceasefire, the groups have only vowed to continue on the same path.
At Thursday night’s protest, as a dusting of snow descended on the crowd, a speaker lauded the “heroism of resistance” and the “Al Aqsa Flood.”
“The price has been devastatingly high but so has it been in every revolution,” she said. “Now is not the time to rest but to reignite the fire.”
“We must continue to struggle. This is what we’ve learned in the last 15 months,” she said, to cheers.
“Long live the intifada,” the crowd chanted.
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