A pro-Palestinian protest took a chilling turn Saturday as hundreds of demonstrators packed Columbus Circle, at one point dragging a burning Israeli flag down the street and issuing a chilling warning for those who support Israel: “Your days are numbered.”
“For those who support genocide in the U.S. your days are numbered and are coming to an end,” one organizer yelled into a microphone.
“U.S. government is the #1 funder of Israel terrorism.”
Roughly 300 demonstrators started at Columbus Circle around 2 p.m. and marched up the West Side to the American Museum of Natural History.
They flooded into The Shops at Columbus Circle, chanting, “Bombs are dropping while you’re shopping,” prompting store owners to quickly run to shut their doors.
Some protesters also harassed a woman carrying a pro-Israel sign, snatching it away, along with a sign held by a man nearby, and screaming at them.
The woman was able to run to police, who escorted her a few blocks away.
A statue of Abraham Lincoln was also wrapped in a Palestinian flag and its hat was slapped with a sticker that read, “Every time the media lies, a neighborhood in Gaze dies.”
The museum was barricaded by the time protesters arrived nearly three hours later, and around 30 officers were lined up blocking the entrances.
Protesters demanded the cops move and allow them inside, chanting, “One, two, three, four, open up the museum’s doors.”
The museum closed two hours early Saturday in anticipation of the protest, claimed Nerdeen Kiswani, of the pro-Palestinian group Within Our Lifetime, which organized Saturday’s demonstration along with numerous others in the Big Apple since Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 Israelis on Oct. 7 and kidnapped more than 200 people.
“The museum makes over a million dollars a day, so the fact that they are willing to lose hundreds of thousands of dollars to not be associated with Palestine really shows a lot, what cowards they are,” she claimed.
“All we planned on doing was entering inside as regular New Yorkers, to look at the colonial exhibits… it looks bad for you to lock out a bunch of people just because they support Palestine,” she said, adding, “The board of the museum have people on there that are Zionists.”
Protesters also prayed outside the museum.
Police had threatened to arrest protesters for vandalizing a Starbucks near West 64th Street while on the way to the museum, but no one had been taken into custody as the crowd began to leave, the NYPD later said.
Kiswani said protesters were taking a stand after Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul showed support for Israel.
“Israel bombs, USA pays, how many kids did you kill today?” she chanted, before a now common refrain at pro-Palestinian demonstrations, “Joe Biden, you can’t hide, we charge you with genocide.”
