New York police violently arrest pro-Palestine protesters marking Nakba

Several arrested as they tried to march in Brooklyn to protest the Gaza war and the 1948 ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians.

Police have beaten and arrested several demonstrators at a pro-Palestine protest in New York’s Brooklyn in the latest crackdown on voices speaking against the war on Gaza in the United States.

Protesters gathered on Saturday in the Bay Ridge neighbourhood in southwest Brooklyn, home to a large Muslim community, including people of Palestinian and Yemeni origins.

The peaceful protest to mark the Nakba – the ethnic cleansing of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in 1948 – went on for several hours amid heavy police presence, with officers trying to prevent a march.

“Protesters began to march in the street and shortly after, the New York Police Department came in from a side street and started grabbing people at random,” Katie Smith, a freelance journalist who was at the scene, told Al Jazeera.

“They were tackled to the ground and were often placed under arrest by multiple officers, who beat them, punching them on their upper bodies and around their heads. There were multiple waves of arrests during the march, which was peaceful.”