A massive mob of anti-Israel protesters flooded Trump Tower Thursday to protest the arrest of Columbia rally ringleader Mahmoud Khalil — and were quickly arrested themselves.
The furious crowd of about 150 demonstrators — who were from the Palestinian support group “Jewish Voice for Peace” — wore red shirts emblazoned with the message, “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel” as they gathered at about noon in a public, downstairs atrium filled with dining tables outside the Trump Grill restaurant.
NYPD officers descended on the throng around 12:30 p.m. and made 98 arrests of rally-goers, who they zip-tied, hauled away and loaded onto buses for a trip to jail
“Those arrests are for trespassing, obstructing government administration, and resisting arrest by virtue of us having to carry some of the people out of the escalator, which you saw,” said NYPD Chief of Department John Chell.
“We gave warnings on our pager system and once we did that warning three times, the NYPD with its professionalism, as you saw, went in and made the arrests, there were no injuries. There were no incidents. There was no damaged property.”
The group had walked into the public plaza wearing ordinary “civilian clothes,” but once they were in place, they revealed their red shirts emblazoned with the message “Jews Say Stop Arming Israel,” according to Chell and a livestream of the protest.
“They’re well-known to do this,” Chell said.
The group waved signs demanding, “Fight Nazis not students,” “No Muslim Ban Ever,” and “Jews for Palestinian Freedom.”
“We are saying if you come for one of us, you face us all,” a protester said on the group’s live X feed.
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While the protesters congregated in a public area, it is only “open to the public to a point,” Chell said.
“Once Trump security deems it to be a problem for them, then they become the complainant,” the chief said. “We get permission from them, we give the warnings. As you know some people left and some people stayed on the bottom floor and we made the arrests.”
The protesters were loaded onto MTA buses and taken to the mass arrest processing center at One Police Plaza.
Two buses could be seen arriving at police headquarters later in the afternoon.
The scene was cleared up a little after 1 p.m.
Before the rally was broken up, a protester on the group’s X feed could also be heard laying out the group’s demands to “free Mahmoud and free Palestine.”
“As Jews, we refuse to be the scapegoats of fascism,” she said. “We aren’t leaving and we call on all people of consciousness to join us and refuse to comply with Trump’s regime’s attacks.”
“Colleges and universities must stop complying in advance,” the protester declared. “Columbia and every other university must start taking active measures to protect their students. We call for all universities to protect freedom of speech, collective protest and to defend their students.”
The latest rally comes after groups calling for Khalil’s freedom swarmed Lower Manhattan earlier this week.
Khalil was arrested Saturday in the Big Apple by federal immigration immigration agents under President Trump’s administration — becoming the poster boy of a crackdown on alleged antisemitism by foreign citizens on college campuses.
Khalil, who fronts a radical group, Columbia United Apartheid Divest (CUAD), which sympathizes with terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and calls for the “end of Western civilization,” faces having his green card revoked.
A judge Monday temporarily blocked any attempt to deport him.
