NYPD officer caught on video punching pro-Gaza protester throughout Brooklyn rally | EUROtoday

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Disturbing footage has captured New York Police Department officers slamming a pro-Gaza protester to the bottom and showing to repeatedly punch him.

In two separate movies posted on X, a number of officers are seen tackling the protester, holding him by the neck after which hitting him.

Next to him, a special officer is seen slamming a second protester into the bottom earlier than holding him there along with his physique weight. The officer then seems to press the protester’s head into the bottom.

Officers are heard repeatedly telling the encompassing crowd, together with the videographers capturing the encounters, to “back up.”

Peter Hambrecht, one of many videographers, mentioned that one of many protesters was bleeding from the top as officers escorted them to a police van.

Moments earlier than the bodily altercation with the officers, footage reveals demonstrators carrying a banner throughout the road. They didn’t seem like interacting with regulation enforcement.

The Independent has contacted the New York Police Department for remark.

The incidents got here as demonstrators took to the streets of Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on Saturday for a protest marking the 76th anniversary of the Nabka, when some 700,000 Palestinians have been pushed from or fled their houses through the Arab-Israeli warfare quickly after Israel was established.

That mass eviction created a neighborhood of six million refugees dwelling in camps in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Israeli-occupied West Bank, The Associated Press reported. The Nabka refugees and their descendants make up some 75 per cent of Gaza’s inhabitants.

At the protest in Bay Ridge, organised by pro-Palestine advocacy organisation Within our Lifetime, officers mentioned that 40 arrests have been made.

The New York American Civil Liberties Union condemned the police response on the protest.

“The aggressive escalation by the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group yesterday in Bay Ridge was a violation of New Yorkers’ right to speak out and risks chilling political expression,” the civil rights advocacy organisation mentioned in a press release.

Nerdeen Kiswani, founding father of Within Our Lifetime, advised The New York Times that police have been “indiscriminately” grabbing individuals off the road and sidewalk.

Police used related bodily drive with a number of different protesters on Saturday, the Times reported.

Protests occurred all throughout the US, together with within the nation’s capital, to commemorate the Nabka this weekend.

This comes as Palestinian officers say that Israel’s offensive in Gaza has killed not less than 35,000 individuals, a lot of them ladies and kids.

The United Nations and different worldwide organisations have accused Israel of making a man-made famine in Gaza.

However, Israel denies these accusations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisting that the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) is just responding to the 7 October assaults, when Hamas killed 1,200 Israelis and took over 250 hostages.