NYU students joined hundreds in a citywide protest on Thursday against Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address at the United Nations General Assembly.  

Demonstrators marched from Grand Central Station to Netanyahu’s hotel on Park Avenue, many planning to camp outside through the night. Hundreds chanted while marching to the hotel, with a series of speakers addressing the group at Grand Central — one of which called on college students in the city to “walk out” in support of Palestinians under siege in Gaza. Also at the station, dozens of counter protesters waved Israeli flags and chanted across the street, leading dozens of police officers to divide the two groups and block off its entrances. 

Around 20 NYU students gathered at Garibaldi Plaza in Washington Square Park in the evening before leaving to meet the larger group uptown. 

“What brings me here is the fact that there has been so much violence and so much impunity coming from the Israelis as well as the Israeli government itself,” graduate student Jasmine Khelil said in an interview with WSN. “This is why we’re taking over the streets today — to say, as NYU students, that this is not okay, that we do not stand for this and that we take power back to our hands.”

The march overlapped with several other protests across the city, including one at the Tandon School of Engineering which saw around a dozen students calling for the school to cut its ties with Israeli-backed companies. 

Netanyahu spoke at last year’s U.N. General Assembly, where he said he would “sweep through the Middle East.” On Thursday afternoon, he said he would use “full force” and continue Israel’s escalating bombardment in Lebanon. 

“His presence here is still tantalizing just because we reject the current genocide in Gaza,” said a member of NYU’s Students for Justice in Palestine, who wished to remain anonymous due to safety concerns. “We don’t accept the fact that someone who is directly involved with the genocide is here to speak but isn’t being faced with any repercussions.”

On Tuesday, dozens of students attended a vigil to mourn the hundreds killed, thousands injured and tens of thousands of people displaced in southern Lebanon as a result of Israeli aggression. Before attending the vigil, some attendees had come from a citywide demonstration that ended at a barricade to the United Nations headquarters.

Contact Rory Lustberg and Sophia Chen at [email protected].