New York, March 14 (IANS) About 100 Jewish protesters have been arrested after they occupied the iconic Trump Tower demanding the release of a green card-holding pro-Palestine activist whom President Donald Trump wants to be deported.
New York Police Chief John Chell said that 98 people were arrested after they refused to leave the building on Thursday, while several hundred other protesters left.
The protest was organised by Jewish Voice for Peace, a group of members of the religion who oppose Israel’s policies and support coexistence with Palestinians.
Reflecting their religious affiliation, the protesters wore T-shirts reading, “Not in Our Name” and “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel”, and they held up banners that said, “Free Mahmoud, Free Palestine”.
Mahmoud Khalil is the activist who was arrested and faces deportation.
Meanwhile, under pressure from the Trump administration against the pro-Palestine and pro-Hamas protests that paralysed the Columbia campus last year, the university said that it had expelled some students who had participated in the occupation of one of its buildings last year in the protests led by Khalil.
The Trump administration announced the stopping of $400 million it gave the university saying that it failed to fight anti-Semitism.
The Trump Tower occupation came on the sixth day of protests against the arrest of Khalil, who led the protests at Columbia University last year and was involved in another last week at its associated institution, Barnard College.
He is a green card holder who cannot be automatically deported but has to be stripped of his permanent resident status first.
He was a graduate student at the Ivy League university last year, and officials initially said that his student visa had been cancelled, but his green card and marriage to an American citizen emerged later.
He is being held in a detention centre in Louisiana.
A case was filed on his behalf in a federal court against his arrest and deportation, and a judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked his deportation but allowed the government to hold him.
The Department of Homeland Security accused Khalil of leading “activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization” and said he was arrested “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism”.
His lawyers and several human rights groups have accused the government of retaliating against him in contravention of the Constitutional protection of free speech.
Khalil has not been accused of directly supporting Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist group that attacked Israel in October 2023 killing about 1,200 people and taking about 250 hostage.
The student protests at Columbia and universities across the US demanded an end to Israel’s retaliatory action in Gaza that has killed about 45,000 people.
Some of the protests veered into anti-Semitism with attacks on Jewish students and teachers and virulent messaging.
Reacting to the claims about Khalil facing retaliation for his speeches and protests, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “This is not about free speech. This is about people that don’t have a right to be in the United States, to begin with”
“No one has a right to a green card,” he added.
Trump maintains a residence in the 58-storey Trump Tower that he uses sometimes during visits to the city.
It is one of the few buildings in New York still bearing his name in the Democrat-dominated city after residents had the monicker stripped from their edifices in protest against his policies.
The protesters snuck into heavily guarded buildings by hiding their sloganned T-shirts and going singly or in small groups to the public areas on the lower floor with stores.
Jews are not politically monolithic, and a sizeable section of them support Palestinian rights and a two-state solution.
There are even Jewish fundamentalist sects — called “ultra-orthodox” in US media — that oppose Israel based on their interpretation of the Bible and participate in anti-Israel protests in their distinctive black coats and hats.
–IANS
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