NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Several masked demonstrators carried Hamas flags at an anti-Israel protest in Manhattan on Friday, while a Hezbollah flag waved above the crowd, hours after federal authorities charged an alleged Kataib Hezbollah operative of plotting attacks on Jewish community centers and a Manhattan synagogue.
The protest drew about 500 demonstrators carrying Palestinian flags to Washington Square Park, where chants of “globalize the intifada” rang out as one speaker declared Israel has no right to exist and said Palestinians would take over Israel “by any means necessary.”
Just as the protest was kicking off at around 4:30 p.m., New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the alleged terror plot by Mohammad Baqer Saad Dawood Al-Saadi, a commander in the Kataeb Hezbollah terrorist operation in Iraq.
“Let me be clear: antisemitism, violent extremism, and terrorism have no place in our city. This kind of hate is despicable,” Mamdani said.
ISRAEL, JEWS TARGETED WORLDWIDE AS WELL-FUNDED LEFTIST, ISLAMIST GROUPS JOIN FOR ‘NAKBA 78’ PROTESTS
Demonstrators display imagery associated with Hamas’ military wing, Al-Qassam Brigades, during a “Nakba 78” protest march in Manhattan, New York City, on May 15, 2026. (Michael Dorgan/Fox News Digital)
Two minutes later, a starkly different scene unfolded in Lower Manhattan off W. 4th Street. The activists descended on the busy Washington Square Park with Palestinian flags, pre-printed signs and banners, transforming a corner of the park into a rally staging ground to protest the existence of the state of Israel and demand its dismantling and replacement with a state called Palestine.
Among them, a young anti-Israel demonstrator arrived, draped in the flag of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — Hamas’s military wing — wearing it like a cape. The flag depicted a masked armed fighter beside the Dome of the Rock beneath green script in Arabic, declaring the shahada, or Muslim proclamation of…
