(New York Jewish Week) – Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrated outside the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center on the Upper East Side during a rally on Monday, accusing the hospital of abetting genocide.
Video showed the crowd of hundreds shouting at the hospital during a protest that included delegations of healthcare workers. It was led by a hardline pro-Palestinian group, Within Our Lifetime, that has echoed Hamas talking points and routinely calls for Israel’s destruction.
Protest leader Nerdeen Kiswani, who leads Within Our Lifetime, called the hospital “another complicit institution” as the protesters walked past, with the crowd erupting in shouts of “Shame.”
“Make sure they hear you, they’re in the windows,” Kiswani told the crowd, before leading the rally in chants of, “MSK, shame on you, you support genocide too.”
Video of the incident showed what appeared to be children watching the protest from within the hospital.
Kiswani wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that the protest targeted the hospital because it had accepted a donation from billionaire investor Ken Griffin after he spoke out against Harvard students who signed a letter blaming Israel for the Oct. 7 attack, which killed 1,200 people in Israel, mostly civilians. Griffin has also donated hundreds of millions of dollars to Harvard, his alma mater.
Anti-Israel protesters in New York City and elsewhere have targeted organizations with tenuous links to Israel. Protesters have caused disruptions in the city by blocking bridges and tunnels, targeting transportation hubs and interrupting holiday events. In November, Within Our Lifetime published a map including the locations of Jewish organizations in the city under the headline “Know your enemy.”
Monday’s rally was held on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Organizers billed Monday’s rally as “Flood Manhattan for Gaza MLK Day March for Healthcare,” echoing the name Hamas gave to its Oct. 7 invasion of Israel, “Al-Aqsa Flood.”
Within Our Lifetime endorsed the Oct. 7 attack and Kiswani has posted open support for Hamas on social media.
The group marches with banners reading “By any means necessary” and leads chants of “Globalize the intifada” during regular events that draw thousands, and calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and the targeting of “Zionists” worldwide.
