Jewish Defenders of Palestine Protest on Passover Against ICE Abductions and Gaza Genocide

Hundreds of Jewish activists staged a Passover "Seder of Liberation" protest at Federal Plaza in Manhattan on April 15, 2025, organized by Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP).

The protest denounced U.S. political and military support for Israel's offensive in Gaza and recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrests of Palestine supporters.

Resumen Latinoamericano -

Organizers explicitly framed the holiday's liberation theme as a call to stop U.S. complicity and to resist what speakers described as a siege and starvation of Palestinians, and demonstrators carried signs reading "Stop arming Israel" and chanted support for students and political prisoners.

The action targeted both U.S. immigration enforcement tactics and continued U.S. backing for the Gaza offensive.

Speakers at the protest named detained activists and demanded concrete steps: an end to deportations, an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, and the release of detainees including Mahmoud Khalil and Mohsen Mahdawi.

Organisers said celebrating Passover while Palestinians endure siege conditions and starvation was unconscionable.

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Rabbi Abby Stein and JVP organiser Jay Saper condemned marking the holiday amid such suffering and directly linked U.S. policy to the repression of Palestine defenders.

The rally combined domestic civil-rights demands against ICE with international demands over U.S. backing for the Gaza offensive.

The protest explicitly accused U.S. immigration enforcement of abusive tactics, highlighting recent campus abductions and the targeting of foreign students and activists.

Attorney Ramzi Kassem, who represents several targeted foreign nationals including Turkish student Rümeysa Öztürk, criticised ICE for abducting Öztürk on campus in plainclothes despite a State Department finding there was no basis to revoke her visa.

Demonstrators and organisers linked these domestic enforcement actions to a broader pattern of silencing and punishing Palestine supporters in the U.S.

The article situates the Manhattan action amid a prolonged, 557-day Israeli offensive in Gaza, which it describes as producing "massive casualties, near-total displacement, famine and disease."

Protesters and organisers framed U.S. political and military support — under both Biden and Trump administrations, the article notes — as enabling that offensive and as warranting direct domestic pressure, including an end to arms transfers and to deportations of Palestine supporters.

Resumen Latinoamericano -

The demonstration thus combined urgent humanitarian claims about Gaza’s devastation with a demand that the U.S. stop enabling the offensive’s human costs.