This day is profoundly painful for so many New Yorkers. It marks three years since the horrific war crimes of October 7. On that day, Hamas killed more than 1,100 Israelis and abducted 251 others. We grieve alongside our many friends and neighbors who still carry that unthinkable loss.
The suffering did not begin nor end that day. It instead continued through the Israeli government’s devastating, ongoing genocide in Gaza, in which it has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians—including more than 21,000 children. Even since the so-called ceasefire, more than 1,400 Palestinians have been killed. That suffering has intensified with every Israeli bomb dropped on ambulances waiting outside hospitals, every drone strike targeting a residential building or journalist, and every shipment of food aid turned away at a border crossing. Many New Yorkers are reckoning with this unbearable grief, and we mourn alongside them – all while knowing that our tax dollars fund these war crimes.
Three years later, we must refuse to accept a world in which occupation and apartheid continue, where war crimes are met with impunity, and our federal government continues its complicity with every arms shipment.
To honor the dead, we must fight for a world in which every person can live with freedom, safety, and dignity.
Mind you, they want us to believe they’re walking around in fear and in need of protection as if they aren’t running rampant and harassing people nonstop.
A group of Israeli settler children attacked a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance transporting a patient.
Take a moment to look at their ages
This is the curriculum of a society that has normalized violence against an entire people- and celebrates it as patriotism
I renew my appeal for an end to the ongoing violence against the Palestinian civilian population in the West Bank, and I urgently call on the international community to work toward advancing the two-state solution, for a just and lasting peace.
The Jewish community is the most prominent religious group on the Upper West Side. The 2023 UJA study estimates 67,000 Jewish residents (about 29% of the roughly 230,000 total population), with 30% of households including a Jewish person. The area has long been known for its large Jewish presence and many synagogues, though the overall population remains diverse.