Palestine (Washington Insider Magazine)— On Wednesday, Pro-Palestinian protesters thwarted morning traffic around Los Angeles International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport—two of the nation’s most engaged experienced coast-to-coast protests that ended with dozens of arrests.
The demonstration took a turn when the Los Angeles Police Department reached around 9:30 a.m. when the group tried to block the road with cement blocks and other things. As officers drove in, the protesters took off running in different directions while others were taken into custody.
Video posted to social media displayed passengers, some carrying suitcases, leaving vehicles behind and stepping over barriers onto the highway median.
Thirty-six people were taken into detention at LAX, where demonstrators became defiant, the Los Angeles Police Department said.
“Protesters threw a police officer to the ground, used construction debris, road signs, tree branches and blocks of concrete to obstruct” a road leading into the airport “while attacking uninvolved passersby in their vehicles,” police stated in a statement.
Most of those arrested were booked on rioting charges, and at least one was apprehended for battery on a police officer, according to the statement.
Airport police said the complex access was reopened within about 45 minutes with “no impacts to fights,” the Los Angeles City News Service reported.
Across the country, the Port Authority Police Department of New York expressed that 26 people were charged with disorderly conduct and interfering with vehicular traffic during a protest along the Van Wyck Expressway inside JFK Airport.
During the turmoil, the Port Authority dispatched two airport buses delivering rides to travellers caught in the resultant traffic backup to assist them in reaching the airport safely, the agency stated. The highway was reopened after about 20 minutes, police said.
Local news coverage of both demonstrations showed demonstrators carrying flags with messages such as “free Palestine” and “relief from genocide” in resistance to Israeli military activity in the Gaza Strip over the past 11 weeks.
Some of the protesters chanted “from the river to the sea,” a phrase regarded as a call for the destruction of Israel and which Jewish watchdogs call antisemitic. The slogan generally occurs as the first half of the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, — directing to the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, surrounding Israel, the West Bank and Gaza.
Pro-Palestinian protests have taken place in cities and universities across the United States since the Israel-Hamas war exploded on October 7, after thousands of Hamas fighters led a brutal invasion into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 240 captives of all ages. Israel launched a war against Hamas, pledging to destroy the terror group that governs Gaza.
The Gaza health ministry claims more than 29,000 people have been killed in the Strip during the war, though this figure cannot be confirmed and does not distinguish between combatants and civilians. Israel states it has killed some 8,000 Hamas operatives.
In New York, pro-Palestinian organisers have reacted to the growing death toll in Gaza with escalating actions sought to disrupt some of the city’s best-known events, including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and the annual tree-lighting ceremony at Rockefeller Center.
At a news conference on Tuesday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams criticised some protest organisers’ tactics and pointed out that police may need to ramp up their reaction.
“I don’t believe that people should be able just to take over and march in our streets,” he said. “I don’t believe people should be able to take over our bridges. I don’t believe you can run a city this complex where people can do whatever they want.”
