Pro-Palestine demonstrators were seen burning an American flag and vandalising a First World War memorial in the centre of New York yesterday after police stopped a mob of thousands from reaching the city's exclusive Met Gala.
Protesters targeted Central Park's 107th Infantry Memorial, with footage emerging of activists writing the word "Gaza" on the statue's hulking stone base and putting American flags to the torch.
More demonstrators plastered the statue's near-10-foot-tall bronze soldiers with Palestinian flag stickers which read: "Stop the Genocide. End the apartheid. Free Palestine."
Some of the protesters managed to climb up onto the figures, upon which they stood waving Palestinian flags and draping them over the memorial.
Protesters marched through the streets of New York, with some calling for an "Intifada"
Reuters
Elsewhere in the city's famous green space, protesters targeted a statue of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman, which saw Palestinian flags attached to its front and "Free Gaza" scrawled over its base.
The chaos at the memorials were allowed to pass with minimal police intervention thanks to the NYPD's focus on preventing crowds from accessing the Met Gala at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The thousands-strong horde of protesters were marching as part of a "Day of Rage" demonstration orchestrated by the pro-Palestinian activist group Within Our Lifetime.
Crowds had been marching north on the city's Fifth Avenue, blocking off traffic along the way, before police stopped them at the East 79th Street Transverse in Central Park - cutting them off from reaching the museum.
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Crowds had been marching north on the city's Fifth Avenue ahead of the Met Gala
Reuters
Marchers in the streets of the Big Apple were seen carrying placards calling for an "Intifada" - a civil uprising or revolution.
After police managed to funnel the crowd into Central Park and block its exits, cops were heard sounding confused about what to do next; one was heard telling his partner: "This is an exercise in futility at this point... There's nowhere for them to go."
Crowds then filed out of the park - and though they reached viewing distance of the Met, dozens of officers were able to form a two-man-deep blockade, preventing them from heading further north.
"Is that the Met? Oh no... we were so close," one protester asked a friend, according to the New York Post.
Protesters targeted Central Park's 107th Infantry Memorial
Reuters/Wikimedia Commons
Marchers clashed with police further on - officers made about two dozen arrests as they jostled with protesters, while some were seen tackling at least one woman to the ground.
Demonstrators then threw water bottles at the police, chanting "Who do you serve? Who do you protect?".
While others held up leaflets reading "End the occupation of Palestine", "Shut down the campuses", "End the genocide" and more.
The protests mirrored many of those seen in the streets of Western cities since the October 7 Hamas attacks; demonstrators in London, New York and on university campuses worldwide have called for an end to Israel's overwhelming military response to the terror group's insurgency in Gaza.