Anti-Israel protesters in New York City vowed they would only be “louder” about the war in Gaza as they took to the streets of Brooklyn Saturday — the same day Instagram banned the organizer’s account.
Tensions were high between protesters and the NYPD outside the Brooklyn Museum as police officers tried to contain the crowd and keep them on the sidewalks.
“The more you try to silence us the louder we will be,” protesters chanted as they started marching through the streets of Park Slope shortly before 4 p.m.
They were referring to the reported “permanent” ban on Within Our Lifetime’s Instagram pages, which the group claimed on X that they were given “no option to appeal or request a review to restore them.”
Three accounts associated with the WOL, including leader Nerdeen Kiswani‘s, are no longer active on the platform.
“We will not let the NYPD repressive forces or companies like META silence us!” Kiswani said outside the Brooklyn Public Library Saturday.
The Post has reached out to Meta, which owns Instagram, for comment.
Around 1,000 protesters looped around the Brooklyn Museum and the Brooklyn Library carrying Palestinian flags and signs and wearing traditional headscarves, whiling chanting that the war-torn Gaza “will be free.”
A group of demonstrators were seen carrying a banner that read: “By all means necessary,” while others carried one demanding “cease-fire now,” as they took over Franklin Avenue and Eastern Parkway, a major roadway.
Vendors along the route started yelling at protesters to “go somewhere else to spew their nonsense,” leading to a heated verbal dispute that was broken up by police.
The Post observed one vendor getting in a protester’s face after accusing them of putting a sticker near his stand. The demonstrator went to the cops asking to press charges and was promptly told no one would corroborate his story and they would be arrested for making a false report.
Many passersby make remarks to protesters, which led to arguments along the marching route, and chants of “Shut it down.”
Around 60 NYPD officers were still stationed at the museum around 5 p.m., just before the crowd dispersed.
In Manhattan, protesters occupied the Museum of Modern Art in Midtown, holding a large banner with the words: “Cultural workers stand for Gaza” as they staged a sit-in.
The protests came a day after Israel announced it was creating an evacuation plan for the people of Rafah, a city along the border of Egypt and Gaza, which the Israel Defense Forces plan to invade.