Raucous ‘pro-Palestine’ protests are killing NYC’s recovery

A demonstrator is seen holding a Bangladeshi flag to stand in solidarity with Palestinians and walk across Brooklyn Bridge in New York City. Shutterstock/Ryan Rahman

’Tis the season — for constant eruptions of disruption.

As the tourist-dependent holiday season gets under way, New York is ill-prepared for a repeat of George Floyd summer, winter edition.

Agitated bands of people, having failed to radicalize the common man via the political process, are determined to crash our parades, shopping excursions and sightseeing through not-so-peaceful “peaceful protest.”

The long Thanksgiving weekend was a preview of the next month, absent a change in strategy.

On the holiday, nearly three dozen people halted the Macy’s parade, gluing themselves in front of hapless Grimace to demand a “free Palestine.”

Friday, thousands of disrupters took over Washington Square Park, with a few hundred marching north to block streets and sidewalks near Macy’s.

Saturday, they targeted Columbus Circle’s shopping mall and then marched north to shut down the American Museum of Natural History.

Sunday, obstructors blocked the Manhattan Bridge.

And twice in the past six weeks, trespassers have shut down Grand Central Terminal and also disrupted operations at Moynihan station.

New York has long had a tradition of constitutionally protected public speech, from the pussy-hat marches after Trump’s 2016 election to this year’s United Nations-week climate march.

Protesters stick to a designated route and peacefully make their case with signs and slogans.

One-man or three-woman protests featuring a few signs on the public sidewalk against the Chinese Communist Party or Bank of America are also everywhere.

Whether you agree with their arguments or not, climate marchers and Falun Gong members are making an informational and political case and so are part of the political and policy process.

(How much this actually works is debatable — we’ve been marching for gun control for years in New York, and it’s had absolutely no effect on national politics.)

But what we’ve seen over the past few years is different: an increasingly radical left that has no prayer of getting public or political opinion on its side and isn’t even trying.

Instead, the aim is to menace and harass people and institutions.

New York got its first taste of this approach in 2020, when rioters smashed windows and sprayed paint all over Manhattan in the name of George Floyd.

They had no prayer of persuading voters to “defund” the police, so they gleefully invaded outdoor-dining sheds and screamed and spat at people enjoying an evening out.

Similarly, voters overwhelmingly support Israel over Hamas in the current war. (Even the most negative poll showed support for the Palestinian side in the single digits.)

Since Hamas supporters can’t convince people, they threaten them or target their property.

So all these “protests” have an undercurrent of violence and destruction: After they disrupted the Macy’s parade, vandals attacked the New York Public Library’s research building, causing $60,000 to $75,000 in damage to a cash-strapped institution.

(Don’t think it’s a coincidence that they targeted a building named after someone named Schwarzman.)

Agitators chanted Saturday that Israel supporters’ “days are numbered” and grabbed a counter-protester’s pro-Israel sign, forcing police to protect her.

The only reason these “protests” don’t turn more violent is that institutions “surrender” to protect their people and property.

The natural-history museum — and twice previously Grand Central — shut its doors early rather than physically fight with trespassers to keep them out.

Police could have prevented people from vandalizing the NYPL — but didn’t.

New York doesn’t need this.

Yes, the streets are busier than they were last year, but they’re continue to be far from normal.

We’re still down 45,300 retail jobs since 2019 — that’s 13% missing.

We’re down another 23,300 leisure and hospitality jobs — 5%. (The nation has fully recovered.)

The city’s response to this constant disorder is anemic.

Police no longer “kettle” low-level lawbreakers in one place to keep them from moving their disturbances from one place to another.

Even ringleaders face just the merest of misdemeanor charges or civil summonses — in part because since police and private guards don’t try to stop them, they don’t have anyone or anything to violently resist.

Outright warfare on the streets is inadvisable, of course.

Drivers and walkers alike know this, so they quietly wait for agitators to disburse.

Ironically, the only thing keeping the chanters who menace us by saying our days are “coming to an end” so safe is that the rest of us are already so nonviolent.

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal.