STORY: Thousands rally in New York in support of Palestinians 
DATELINE: Oct. 14, 2023
LENGTH: 0:06:51
LOCATION: NEW YORK, U.S.
CATEGORY: POLITICS

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the protest
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): Protester
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): Protester
4. SOUNDBITE 3 (English): Protester
5. SOUNDBITE 4 (English): Protester

STORYLINE:

Thousands of people gathered in a rally at Times Square in New York on Friday afternoon to support Palestinians in the wake of the escalating conflict between Israel and Hamas.
   
The protest started at 2 p.m. local time (1800 GMT) in Manhattan at the Baruch College plaza with a peaceful prayer service. Then demonstrators marched along 41st Street and Broadway toward Times Square and the Consulate General of Israel.
   
They chanted and waved Palestine's red, black and green flag. Some held signs reading "Free Palestine," "Stand with Palestine," and "Occupation is terrorism."
   
Protesters demanded ending the bombardment of Gaza, stopping the killing of innocent civilians, and terminating all U.S. aid to Israeli apartheid.
   
SOUNDBITE 1 (English): Protester
"The United States has always been an ally to Israel, which didn't help this course. It's always exacerbated the situation for the Palestinians. So the U.S. has the obligation and responsibility to be fair and unbiased. And if they choose not to be, then they should let someone else who could try to be fair with between Palestinians and Israel."

SOUNDBITE 2 (English): Protester
"Human rights for everybody in the region. Really, they have to live together. You can't expect one group of people, the Palestinians to be held captive, put in concentration camps and refugee camps and not given full rights as citizens. And so the only solution I see is one state with equal rights for every single person. The United States enables apartheid state to exist in Israel by funding it, and giving its diplomatic cover. So that's what it does. It's an outpost in the Middle East, maybe for oil, where the oil is. And I think Joe Biden said, if Israel didn't exist, they'd have to create it. So it's an outpost, it's an American imperial outpost, but it's a horror, that Palestinians have had many horrors, so many deaths, unnecessary deaths. I want to see peace, not revenge and vengeance."

SOUNDBITE 3 (English): Protester
"If somebody's trying to kill somebody, I think that guy should be stopped. The oppressor has to be stopped. The United States has to stop the funding to Israel. They have to stop all those dollars, which are enabling Israel to keep the occupation and the genocide, and apartheid, whatever they're doing there to caging people."

SOUNDBITE 4 (English): Protester"That Israel has only tasted a little bit of what Palestine has endured for the past 75 years. Fox 5, New York Times, they only report Israel's crimes. So if you see something about Palestine, that's because they only report Palestinian crimes. They're not even crimes because they're resisting actually. Resistance is not a crime to the oppressed."

The demonstrations came after former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal called for Friday to be a global day of protests against Israel's retaliation against Hamas, and urged supporters to send a "message of rage to Zionists and to America."
   
Police have stepped up their presence in key areas of New York City, which hosts the largest Jewish population in the world outside Israel, following the attacks by militants from Gaza on Israel last Saturday.
   
Eric Adams, mayor of New York City, ordered additional resources to be sent to schools and houses of worship to brace for potential violence and ensure the safety of the American Jewish community.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from New York, U.S.
(XHTV)