In New York, police arrested some 100 protesters as the group Jewish Voice for Peace led a major sit-in protest inside Trump Tower to call for the release of detained Palestinian activist, recent Columbia University graduate, Mahmoud Khalil. Those arrested include Jewish elders, descendants of Holocaust survivors, and students. Demonstrators donned red T-shirts with the message “Jews say stop arming Israel” as they took over the lobby of the Manhattan skyscraper. This is Nate Cohen, a member of Jewish Voice for Peace, speaking outside Trump Tower.
Nate Cohen: “We know that fascist regimes try these things. They test these cases. They try to see if people will comply, if people will roll over and allow them to force this kind of illegal, undemocratic activity on us. And we believe that it’s deeply important to stand up in these kinds of moments, to say that we will not sit idly by, we will not comply. ‘Never again’ means right now. ‘Never again’ means for everyone. What happened to Mahmoud should never have happened, and we’re not going to let it happen to anyone else.”
Also on Thursday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations filed a new lawsuit on behalf of Mahmoud Khalil and other Columbia students against Columbia University and a U.S. House committee for respectively disclosing and requesting student records. A lawyer for CAIR said, “No student should fear that their private information will be handed over to politicians who seek to punish advocacy for Palestinian human rights.”
