On the Ground, Literally, With the Celebrities Who Were Arrested Protesting Netanyahu

Outside of the United Nations, on the corner of First Avenue and 39th Street in New York City, Benjamin Netanyahu was nowhere to be seen.

“Ne-tan-ya-hu, you can’t hide!” the protesters chanted. “You are wanted for gen-o-cide!”

Inside, the Israeli prime minister was preparing to speak to the United Nations, the international body that had, at least on paper, agrees with the protesters’ claims, with a 2025 commission finding that the nation is committing genocide in its ongoing war in the Gaza Strip.

On the asphalt in the intersection of 39th and First, the advocacy group Jewish Voice for Peace had assembled a cultural moment: over a hundred protesters, many of whom were bold-face names that usually find their way into this magazine and others for their work onscreen or onstage. In the front row: the actress Hannah Einbinder, musicians Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus, and the comedian Mary Beth Barone, as well as presumptive incoming Congresswomen Darializa Avila Chevalier and Melat Kiros, and New York City Councilmember Chi Osse. Susan Sarandon floated around the crowd. Cynthia Nixon was sitting a few rows back in the middle. On one edge, comedian Caleb Hearon and actor Elliott Page chanted along, with incoming Congressman Brad Lander standing, hands in his pockets, a little ways behind. There were more, too — candidates for Congress and state legislatures, entertainers, musicians, and actors, all alongside the everyday activist core of JVP’s membership.

I joined the scrum of press jockeying to get a picture of the front of the crowd, the United Nations building in the background. Everyone seated in the street planned to be arrested. The cops planned to arrest them. But neither party was in any hurry. Prison buses made their way up First Avenue. The long-time activist Chelsea Manning walked up, dressed in a sharp blue slim-cut pantsuit. I asked her why she was there, on the street, at a protest that would and could not actually disrupt Netanyahu’s speech.

“This is a way that we, as people, outside of these institutions can show a rejection of the policies of empire, of ethnic cleansing, of genocide,” she said. “We can’t be in there. This is the closest that we can get.”

The tactics of Thursday’s protest were familiar: a kind of civil disobedience flash-mob, matching T-shirts and a single act of peaceful resistance that gets everyone involved arrested and booked on a misdemeanor charge. I’ve seen them many times before. It’s cynical to call it a photo-op, but in some ways that is this kind of demonstration’s most tangible benefit to a movement that has spread across basically the entire world. Already, photos of Einbinder and Sarandon being led away in zip ties are flying around social media. The celebrities present in the crowd — some who were arrested, some who were not — were there to be recognized.

As the police started to move closer, I caught the singers Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus moving through the crowd. Both Baker and Dacus have been outspoken about the Palestinian cause, often on far bigger stages than the corner of 39th and First, but here they were, on the asphalt.

“We have a history of protesting even before anyone was listening to us,” Dacus said.

A line of police officers pushed in behind us, a loudspeaker blaring out a repeated warning: leave the street or be arrested for disorderly conduct. “No matter what level you’re at — direct action is possible,” Baker said, as the loudspeaker drowned us both out.

There’s little chance Netanyahu had any knowledge of the protest on the street, but the heavily secured United Nations building didn’t offer protection from the sentiment driving the opposition to his war in Gaza.

As Netanyahu began his speech, a massive group of delegates walked out of the building in protest, while others booed. He then launched into a defiant address full of grievance and denials.

“To all those who are spreading these lies, whether they sit in this hall or in the office of the antisemitic Mayor of New York, I say shame on you,” Netanyahu thundered from the lectern. “Mr. Mamdani … you count as friends people like Hasan Piker, who said America deserved 9/11. Your wife liked a post praising the October 7 massacre. You tried to stop me from coming here, you tried to silence me — well you can’t silence me. You can’t silence the truth. Israel didn’t commit genocide, Israel prevented genocide.”

Mamdani did not attend the protest, nor did Piker, but it’s clear that they have become proxies, in Netanyahu’s mind, for the cultural forces outside. In the intersection, an hour before Netanyahu’s speech, police officers got off a set of prison buses and walked up with stacks of flexible zip-ties. Detectives walked around the crowd, politely warning everyone still sitting in the road that they were about to be arrested. For almost everyone involved, it was a familiar dance – thrilling, in a way, for the participants voluntarily taking a criminal charge, but not of any real interest or threat to the police. The press snapped away, news got made.

Underneath some scaffolding near 38th Street, a clean-cut elderly man with two prosthetic legs stopped his mobility scooter and frowned at the crowd. “FUCK HAMAS!” he yelled, until one of JVP’s organizers wandered over and engaged him in a seemingly polite discussion. The only other counter-protester was a man in a pink jacket that read “PROUD INFIDEL” above a graphic of two crossed rifles. He wore a “TRUMP 2020” MAGA hat and was carrying an extremely offensive sign bearing a photo of Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a pig.

For those protesting Netanyahu, the demonstration represented one of the few times that months of work on policy and messaging can feel like it’s actually making an impact.

“It feels deeply incoherent to try to live a normal life — making dinner with a full fridge, while aid trucks are stopped at the Gazan border,” Stefanie Fox, the executive director of JVP told me on the sidewalk, as a line of bicycle cops made a ring around the knot of protesters still sitting in the street. “Being here feels like the only coherent place to be.”

Netanyahu, for his part, did not stay in the city long. He made his speech to the UN, and was reportedly planning to fly out immediately after, unwilling to tarry long in a city that did its best to make him feel unwelcome.

“There’s always the next thing,” Manning told me, before she was arrested and led away. “We have a vision of a better world. Sometimes we take small steps, sometimes big steps, but we’re always moving forward, moving towards that better world.”